by Thinus Ferreira
The South African documentary filmmaker and director Liza Key has died after losing a battle against brain cancer. She was 71.
The transformative producer and director died on 11 October in the Parkview home she shared with her partner of 25 years, director Janice Honeyman.
Liza Key's final on-screen credit is as the lead writer, researcher and associate producer for Netflix Africa's documentary series, The Trials of Winnie Mandela that was released on the video streaming service earlier this year.
Liz Key ran the Weekly Mail Film Festival for seven years since 1988 and started a scriptwriting programme, Scrawl.
After pivoting into documentary filmmaking herself, Liza Key produced through her production company Key Films a series of fierce investigative documentary films, ranging from A Question of Madness (1998) that profiled the life of Dmitri Tsafendas, The Man Who Knows Too Much (2002) on South Africa's "Dr Death" Wouter Basson, Karoo Kitaar Blues (2003) done in collaboration with musician David Kramer, A Sentimental Journey (2004), Bearing Witness: The Market Theatre (2007), to A Cantata for Voice, Tape, and Testimony in 2009.
In 2010, she was the director of episode 9 of the docuseries A Country Imagined that focused on KwaZulu-Natal, and in 2013 she worked on The Road to No 1, a documentary highlighting South African socio-economic realities and stories.
She pursued her higher education at Wits University in Johannesburg and in her fifties returned to university to specifically pursue her master's degree in ethnomusicology.
Her master's dissertation focused on the traditional musicians of the Northern Cape province, a subject she encountered while working on Karoo Kitaar Blues.
Liza Key was highly respected globally as an elite investigative documentary researcher, frequently hired by by international broadcasters and local production networks to unearth hidden historical footage and track down elusive interview subjects.
Liza Key entrusted an extensive archive of her life and career to UCT Libraries in Cape Town.
