Magnificent Failure (2009)

Harold Rubin, an artist, Jazz musician and architect, left South Africa in 1963, after being charged with blasphemy for one of his paintings. He left behind Johannesburg, where he was born, raised and worked, and moved to Tel Aviv Israel, where he still lives today. "Magnificent Failure" follows Rubin's journey back to Johannesburg 44 years after his hasty departure. In Johannesburg of the 1950's Rubin was a leading artist, with a clear political agenda against the rule of apartheid, which he expressed in his art and music. Despite the prohibition of those days, he played Jazz with top black musicians like Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Mesakela, and Jonas Ngwangwa. The blasphemy charge, with a pending imprisonment sentence, cut short his diverse and promising career. In Tel Aviv he has continued, for the past four decades, to paint and make music, this time aiming his arrows at mainstream Israeli society, but his audience eludes him. When his 75th birthday approached, his step daughter, the director Jasmine Kainy, began documenting his life in Tel Aviv and his journey back to Johannesburg. The film follows a year in the artist's life and documents his work, his family and his return to Johannesburg 2007, where he meets his past once again.