21 years ago, for ITV's award-winning TV series 7UP South Africa, acclaimed director Angus Gibson filmed a cross-section of the country's seven-year-old children and asked them about their lives, hopes and dreams. He's filmed the children every seven years since: first for 14UP, then 21UP, and now, as adults, for 28UP, to be screened on ITV tonight at 10.35pm.
The South African show is a spinoff from British director Michael Apted's multi-award-winning UP series, which is on The British Film Institute's list of The Greatest British TV Shows.
The premise of the series is taken from the Jesuit motto Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man'. The South African version is fascinating, because it shows the country's transformation as well as the children's, giving insight into life in a country that has gone through momentous change.
Katlego
The series follows the twists and turns of the children's lives from 1992, two years after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. By the time they were 14, he had become their president and apartheid had been consigned to history. Chosen from separate communities, the six characters have had starkly differing life experiences. They are black, white, rich and poor and every seven years they have taken viewers into their lives. Luyanda and Andiswa are from a notorious township outside Cape Town, Katlego's life is among the hipsters of Johannesburg, Lizette lives in coal-mining town Witbank while Olwethu tries to makes the best of the rural area her husband has taken her to live in. Meanwhile, farm boy Willem (Alberts) has become a household name, playing rugby for his country.
In the first film, 7UP, apartheid still defined the country's social divisions, said Gibson, who also directed the breakthrough South African TV series Yizo Yizo. The children only understood life from the perspective of their own segregated part of society, So one child in an affluent suburb of Cape Town could know nothing of another child's life in Soweto. Seven years later, when the film crew returned, they were teenagers in a new South Africa. At 21, the political struggle had given them chances their parents were denied but the biggest battle was the war against AIDS - and not all of them survived. Now at 28 they have entered the adult world and one of them has even become a Springbok rugby player.
Al Jazeera English has also acquired all previous South Africa: UP programmes and has created an eight-episode series following the group from their seventh year through to the present, three-episode 28UP production. This retrospective includes never-seen-before footage from the earlier shoots and is currently being screened on Al Jazeera.
Watch the programme on ITV Player here: https://www.itv.com/itvplayer/7-28-up-south-africa/series-4/episode-1-28-up-south-africa
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21 years ago, for ITV's award-winning TV series 7UP South Africa, acclaimed director Angus Gibson filmed a cross-section of the country's seven-year-old children and asked them about their lives, hopes and dreams. He's filmed the children every seven years since: first for 14UP, then 21UP, and now, as adults, for 28UP, to be screened on ITV tonight at 10.35pm.
