VIFF Review: Abdullah Ibrahim - A Struggle for Love

Abdullah Ibrahim - A Struggle for Love [ABDUL] is a short 60 minute film about the great South African jazz pianist. We meet him at his house in Cape Town where he makes his home. He playfully shows us the acoustically designed features of his music studio including acoustic curtains and adjustable window shutters which tune the room sound. After years of exile, his joy in being able to live again in his beloved hometown in freedom is palpable.

We visit a school with a music room named after him. The teacher introduces Ibrahim to her students. One adorable little girl plays a composition she wrote for him. After the visit Ibrahim comments on how far post-apartheid South Africa has come but also how much it has to go. The little girl risks her life each day coming to school in the crossfire of gang violence in her poor neighbourhood.

Ibrahim tells us of the risks of his childhood. He did not really know his natural father because he was murdered when Ibrahim was four years old. He did not get along with step father and left home at age 17. As a young man he had to leave again--this time the country--to escape the repressive apartheid regime. Music clubs were closed down, and once he was forced at gunpoint to stop playing.

He wound up in exile in Zurich, Switzerland where he played with his trio at the Africana Club. There he meets his wife Sathima Bea Benjamin and his life takes a big turn. Benjamin manages to make her way backstage to Duke Ellington's dressing room and convinces him to see Ibrahim and his trio at the club. Ellington is impressed and invites them to Paris to recording with him.

Ibrahim's international career is launched and he moves again to New York. While Sathima is happy there, he is not. He reveals his struggles with drugs and alcohol. Converting to Islam gave him the tools to reconcile with himself, his family, and his country. He could now move on to handle the creative struggles and come into his own musically.