SOURCE: Cancel, Robert. “Nadine Gordimer Meets Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: Text into Film in ‘Oral History.’” Research in African Literatures 26, no. 3 (fall 1995): 36-48.

In the following essay, Cancel examines the cinematic adaptation of Gordimer's short story “Oral History,” contending that the film version “is remarkable in the way it takes Gordimer's understated, nuanced story and overlays it with a powerful African liberation theme.”

In 1982, seven of Nadine Gordimer's short stories were made into films for broadcast on television, six of them hour-long productions and one a half-hour in length. Each of the films exhibits evidence of the problems and compromises that characterize adaptations of literature to the screen. The film version of “Oral History” is remarkable in the way it takes Gordimer's understated, nuanced story and overlays it with a powerful African liberation theme.

The text on which the film is based has some inherently intricate and evocative...