All that Jazz

Following Jim Comes to Joburg's cultural success, ¹ AFP attempted to exploit developing black cinema audiences in the 1950s by creating two films, Zonk! (1950) and Song of Africa (1951). Davis asserts that AFP ‘were so peeved at not getting the distribution rights’ for Jim Comes to Joburg that they retorted with their own ‘all-black movie’ (1996: 34), Zonk!. These two films reflect a leap for AFP from their earlier work that promoted white/Afrikaner identity into a new market where they would necessarily transgress their earlier representations of black identities. Since Zonk! was already a successful variety show it was probably a safe bet on AFP's part. In any event, AFP had already tested the concert format in Kom Saam Vanaand (1949), which they emulated with differing emphases in these two films. ² The meanings that these films produce have a unique significance, both in the light of AFP's earlier films and as fiction films focused on black identities in the early 1950s.