Mark Sebba
Mark Sebba is a South African born linguist, film-maker and contributor to ESAT.
Contents
Biography
Born in Cape Town in 1956, but grew up in in Johannesburg.
He really wanted to do theatre studies at the University of Cape Town, but his parents insisted he should stay at home, so he went to the University of the Witwatersrand instead, starting in 1974. The idea was to major in English, but actually majored in Linguistics as well as Mathematics and Russian. He then left the country in 1978 for England where he completed a PhD in Linguistics at York University and spent about 35 years as a lecturer in Linguistics, mostly at Lancaster University in England.
He retired in 2021, and became a contributor to ESAT in 2024.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
He had a short-lived career as a freelance film maker in the 1980s, during which time he made some educational documentaries on South African issues with Ralph Mzamo, a South African exile, under the aegis of an 'invented' production company called Meridian Productions. Among them are:
Laurie Nathan: Working for a Just Peace. Interview with the national organiser of the End Conscription Campaign, Meridian Productions 1987.
South Africa 1987: The Church at the Crossroads. Interview with Chris Langeveld, parish priest of a Soweto neighbourhood. Meridian Productions
Wally Serote - South African Poet. Wally Serote in conversation with Ralph Mzamo. [Meridian Productions]] 1987
Sources
E-mail correspondence from Mark Sebba (including brief biography) (19 September, 2024)
Films by Mark Sebba and Ralph Mzamo on YouTube[1]]
Go to the ESAT Bibliography
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