Old family cine films and faded photographs are the documentary maker’s short cut to the emotions. And it was there that The Good Terrorist (27 August) chose to start, inviting us to mourn the young John Harris, who would go on to be hanged in 1965 after leaving a bomb in Johannesburg’s railway station.

Looking at those images with us was David Harris, just nine months old when his father was executed, the only white anti-apartheid fighter to face the rope. The film then examined the facts of John Harris’ crime, with the help of a chorus of elderly former radicals. Finally, it cranked up the emotion again and arranged a face-to-face meeting between David and a woman who, as a little girl, had been blown up and horribly burned by John Harris’ bomb. It was an absorbing film, although it left several questions unanswered.