#sandra laing

[loveaq]

Skin - A very well told story of Sandra Laing; a "black" child born to two "white" parents in South Africa;

you guys must see it. its on netflix

[heisaexplosiveimplosion-blog]

This film is one of the best I've seen in a while..

Skin is a British-South African 2008 biographical film directed by Anthony Fabian, about Sandra Laing, a South African woman born to white parents who was classified as "coloured" during the apartheid era. 

Description via Wikipedia.

[whb2-blog]

Sandra Laing

Sandra was born a black baby to white Afrikaner parents in 1955. The implications of this in apartheid South Africa unravelled like a bad fairy tale. When apartheid ended, she became a curiosity, a minor celebrity, a remnant of South Africa’s shame.

She is a “throwback”, or, to be precise, “of polygenic inheritance”. Her parents were pro-National Party and members of the Dutch Reformed Church. What happened to Sandra Laing is such an example of apartheid at its most cruel that her story is taught as a chapter in the history of South Africa at matriculation level, the final year of senior school. Her story has now been made into a mesmerising film, Skin, in which Sophie Okonedo, herself of mixed race, shimmers with empathy in the part of Laing.

The implications of looking dark-skinned and fuzzy-haired when your parents moved in an all-white society were huge. Questions were asked of her mother. It was illegal under the Immorality Act for a man and woman of different races to have sex, and Sannie Laing, Laing’s mother, couldn’t explain her child’s appearance.

Laing has two brothers, Leon, seven years her senior, who looks white, though sallow in complexion — his nickname at school was “Jew” — and Adriaan, 10 years her junior, who also has African features and crinkly hair, but whose skin is not quite as tawny as Laing’s. Her appearance could have been part of the reason the family moved to the middle of nowhere, in the eastern Transvaal, near the Swazi border, among fields of wheat and rolling pastures, where they had two general stores and could retreat from the world.

[dearrebecca]

Skin

Truly inspirational. Love it.

[zeyi]

Skin

I am watching Skin and I cannot understand thinking one race is better than the other. I feel so much empathy for Sandra as she tries to understand that she is viewed as Black in South Africa during the apartheid era. I cannot imagine it. I can truly say I have never experienced racism towards my husband and me. I will hate to think anyone would be this way towards our children because of our decision to love one another. I highly recommend Skin as I love movies where class and race play a huge part. 

[fritzle]

I just watched the movie Skin, based on the life of South Africa's Sandra Laing. It's such a sad, amazing story. I loved Sophie Okonedo in it (so different from her character in Secret Life of Bees). I was disappointed that Petrus turned out to be a huge jerk because I adored him at the beginning. And spoiler alert: I found it incredibly upsetting that her brothers still haven't wanted to reunite with her.

[blkorchids]

Skin.

Was so good. I've been wanting to watch it for the longest and it magically appeared on my Netflix instant cue. I cannot imagine even going through 1/10th of that Sandra Laing and her family went through. I wish this story had a happier ending (in regards to her relationship with her parents), but such is life. It's messy.  The thing that stood out to me the most in the movie beyond the racial issues and everything going on in South Africa at that time is the love that parents have for their children, especially a mothers love. Even though her parents were fighting for her to be seen as white, they fought for her. To prove to the world that even though the color of her skin didn't look like theirs she was theirs. Granted i'm sure wasn't necessarily the mindset they were thinking in. This is all of course from the perspective of the movie. This was a ramble laced with incoherent sentences and incomplete thoughts that have now ended.  

[hystericalblackness]

SKIN Trailer (Based on the story of Sandra Laing)