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De Voortrekkers is a 1916 silent film recognized as the first epic in South Africa's motion-picture history and also that nation's oldest surviving feature film. Produced by African Film Productions and directed by Harold M. Shaw, it portrays the Boers' "Great Trek" of the 1830s, concluding with a hegemonic recreation of the Battle of Blood River that occurred on 16 December 1838, when a few hundred armed Afrikaners defeated several thousand Zulus. Descendants of the Dutch-speaking voortrekkers or "pioneers" who participated in the Great Trek revered the film and used it to commemorate the event, which forms part of a highly contentious period in South Africa's history. Afrikaners presented it in school classrooms for decades and screened it annually at social events marking the battle's anniversary.