Once more the Oscar race is upon us. This year the big parade is led by THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING with eleven nominations and MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD with ten. I bet the boys who made SEABISCUIT are kicking themselves in the butt right now for not naming their flick SEABISCUIT: THE LITTLE HORSE WHO COULD.

As for predicting the winners, I won't go there. Long ago I lost the ability to distinguish one slick, phony piece of Hollywood product from another slick, phony piece of Hollywood product. It's sort of like being colorblind, I guess.

What I will do instead is reveal that the Aandahlusian Academy's choice for best movie of the year has a two-part title, just like the two Oscar-nomination leaders, although in this case the two parts of the title are separated by an exclamation mark rather than a colon.

AMANDLA! A REVOLUTION IN FOUR-PART HARMONY is a brilliantly illuminating history of apartheid. The movie shows how the South African government created the official policy of apartheid in 1948 to bring about the forced relocation of millions of native Africans. Bulldozers leveled the brick homes and shops of relatively prosperous black communities such as Sophiatown, and the citizens were shipped off to live in low-cost government barracks in the middle of a barren desert. The government referred to these new locations as The Homelands and gave specific communities sadistically inappropriate names such as Meadowlands.  

If you had been forced to leave your home in Johannesburg and relocate in Meadowlands, the only way to earn a living was to commute by train back into Johannesburg. Men and women had to stay for a week in the city, working at menial, underpaid jobs sixteen hours a day, sleeping at night crammed together in shared slum apartments. Then they could take the train back to Meadowlands to visit briefly with their families and give them a little money before returning to the city for another week of work. Additionally, blacks were required to carry an ID passbook with them at all times. If the police stopped you and you didn't have a passbook, they would beat you and imprison you.

In 1960, when several hundred people gathered peacefully to protest the ID law by burning their passbooks, a convoy of government tanks approached them, and the troops on top of the tanks opened fire, killing 65 unarmed protesters and wounding 176 others.  Nearly all of the victims were shot in the back. This slaughter is known as the Sharpeville Massacre. 

AMANDLA! takes us through each stage in the 46-year struggle to end apartheid, a struggle that culminated in 1994 with the landslide election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa. What makes AMANDLA! unique is that we get to learn this history not only through the recollections of the intellectuals and activists who led the resistance but also through the voices of the singers, instrumentalists, and poets who created the freedom music that inspired a whole people to join the resistance and gave them the spirit and solidarity to make it work. Director Lee Hirsch has blended newsreel footage, interviews, and concert footage into a seamlessly smooth presentation that conveys an astonishing idea. Sometimes the single strongest weapon in the war against oppression is not violence but song.

This is an inspirational and profoundly humanistic message, and it's not just wishful thinking, not just some silly sentimental fantasy. In the case of apartheid, it's the truth.  As the fame of the freedom musicians grew, they were invited to give concerts in England and the USA. Some of the songs they sang at those concerts became well known around the world, and thus these nonviolent artists succeeded not only in unifying their own people in the fight to end apartheid but also in generating a groundswell of popular support from within many of the most powerful countries of the world. The word "amandla" means "power," and this is precisely what the freedom music concerts bestowed upon the resistance movement in South Africa.

AMANDLA! is an exceptionally well made film. The technical aspects, particularly the editing and the pacing, have all the slickness of a Hollywood production with none of the phoniness. The music itself is emotionally moving and esthetically ravishing. Some of the people Hirsch chose to interview are geniuses, and when they analyze the psychology of oppression and assert their belief that music has the power to alter that psychology, their words show deep insight and have much intellectual appeal. The many shots of ordinary people dancing and singing – especially the shots of the children – are so beautiful they made me cry. AMANDLA! grips both the brain and the heart with equal strength. Don't miss it