Sophiatown tells the story of the lost golden age of African music. In the 1950s there was a suburb of Johannesburg called Sophiatown, in which, much as they do in parts of Johannesburg now, bohemians of all colour could live and perform together.

This is where talents such as Miriam Makeba and Abdullah Ibrahim began their careers. Sophiatown was also home to exotically dressed gangsters, and Nelson Mandela, who was the local lawyer.

Pascale Lamche's film lovingly chronicles the flowering of jazz genius. But it also tells how, in what appears to be an act ideological spite, the apartheid regime bulldozed Sophiatown, sending the uprooted musicians off to exile and resettling black families in a township called Meadowlands. The white suburb built instead of Sophiatown was called, appropriately enough, Triumph.