Wits School of Arts (ETDs)

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Browsing Wits School of Arts (ETDs) by Department "Department of Film and Television"

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    Africanfuturism, placing Africa in the future: an analysis of Pumzi (2009) and Afronauts (2014)
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Shirinde, Karabelo
    Taking into consideration Africa’s long historical relationship with colonialism, alienation and currently neo-colonialism, ‘africanfuturism’ a sub-genre of science fiction and the focus of this study, brings forward the necessity of rooting African science fiction films in the continent of Africa, created by Black people of African descent and ensuring that narratives are driven by the histories, daily social-political and cultural experiences of the people within the continent. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate how the African science fiction films Pumzi (2009) directed by Wanuri Kahiu, and Afronauts (2014) directed by Nuotama Frances Bodumo portray africanfuturism. This study used a developed africanfuturist framework inspired by the description of africanfuturism by author Nnedi Okorafor (2019) and Masego Mashigo (2018). The chosen case study films were analysed according to africanfuturist components, namely: iconography, ideology, geopolitical and socio-cultural background, semiotics and symbolism, and the filmmaker’s profile to determine the extent to which they portray africanfuturism. Further research objectives of this study included the discussion on how Western science fiction films present colonial conventions and the difference between afrofuturism and africanfuturism within the literature review. With the application of the developed africanfuturist framework, this study concludes that both Pumzi (2009) and Afronauts (2014) successfully portray africanfuturism in the capacity of their geological settings, ideological viewpoints, socio-economic and political representations and local cultural symbolisms within the continent. Finally, both films present a nuanced understanding and portrayal of science and technology as it relates to the African continent, and further dismantles preconceived notions about the African continent as described by the West. These representations essentially redefine the relationship between Africa and the science fiction genre by clearly demonstrating, transforming and representing the continent within an imaginative and realist space, coupled with scientific, technological and globalist expressions.
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    Black Writings: The Modal Mixtape Sampling and Remixing the Ethos of South African Poor Theatre with the Film Medium
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-03) Sono, Sipho Alex; Jansen van Veuren, Mocke
    Let’s imagine I’m standing in a record store aisle, with all these nostalgic “records” of film and theatre that I’m too young and perhaps too black to be drawn to, but still somehow feel connected to. Not only that, but I can’t shake the feeling that these records have informed me as a South African and could form new work in a strong way. I'm trying to make a “song”, a cohesive language for my practice as a filmmaker, with an underpinning interest, ethos and an understanding of South African Poor Theatre. In my hand I have a Grotowski “record”, called Towards Poor Theatre (1976), that is the main sample for my track. I’m also “digging through crates”, looking at the Theatre of the Oppressed by Augasto Boal (1974) and other theories of theatre in film, to mix together to make the song. I’ve been listening to tracks by Athol Fugard and Barney Simon, as sources of inspiration. As Pharrell Williams describes chords as “coordinates pointing us to emotion” (2019) , I have begun to think that maybe plays such Woza Albert (1971) and Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972 ) and their recordings for BBC (1982 and 1983) can serve as chords and indicators to the direction for my filmic practice. Although you might not find a section entitled “methodology” in this paper, what you will find is that it is underpinned by practice based research methodologies, in the interest of Walter Mignolo’s epistemology disobedience. In this paper, I employ DJ Lyneé Denise’s concept of The DJ Scholarship (2013) as a research methodology, which sees the paralleling between the roles of the research to those of a DJ, borrowing ideas and recontextualising them . I sample theatre concepts, ideas and theories to mix and remix them and eventually form my own knowledge around my filmic practice. This notion of deejaying also exists in the research question itself, as it seeks to attempt a blending of two artistic disciplines. It is further carried in the way I approach film and storytelling, through the editing process, cutting, scratching, loop and rewinding for further indentation. This research further makes use of auto-ethnographic methods for meaning making and epistemic disobedience. These methods are employed through personal anecdotes and reflexivity as additive interrogators and informers to the research exploration. This research project also makes use of the personal, in the research film as a means to explore therapeutic processes for film as well as an exploration of the personal as a political enquiry. Auto-Ethnography functions in the crux of this research, it is an inquiry of the self, as a black “born free” South African and my relationship with Poor and Protest Theatre as an inherited artistic voice. As I stand in the middle of this record-store of theoretical frameworks and literature, I am also analysing the “records” which pick and sample. I am studying them and thinking about what they represent and what they indicate about me and the ethos of my filmmaking practice in a traumatised, post-apartheid South Africa . So let’s get to mixing.
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    Constructing the Afrocyborg in VR 360 Cinema: A Critical Investigation into how Two African Women Filmmakers Collaborate to Construct Prosocial African Science Fiction in Virtual Reality Filmmaking
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-10) Passchier, Shmerah; Koba, Yolo; Sakota, Tanja
    The Afrocyborg semiotic construct is a neologism inspired by cyborg scholarship, beginning with Donna Haraway’s 1985, A Cyborg Manifesto, which materialised at the zenith of the Third Industrial Revolution (3IR), and the appearance of the domestic personal computer (PC) in the late twentieth century. This contribution to cyborg discourse re-focuses the Western science/fiction gaze of “cyborgology” by foregrounding African cyborg realities at the centre of the new zeitgeist of 4IR-driven XR technologies, specifically the VR HMD as an immersive computing device, which is a cyborg prosthetic extension of human ocular abilities (Gray 1995: 1). Moratiwa Molema and I formed the Afrocyborg VR Collective as an Afro-technofeminist coalition, and solidarity support group for collective womanist filmmaking. This methodology foregrounds the technological empowerment of women in relation to VR as a medium while focusing on prosocial subject matter in the domains of eco-justice and racial-gender-justice (Ogunyemi 2006: 21). For this reason, the Afrocyborg VR Collective make Prosocial VR films in the genre of African Science Fiction, which is a counter-hegemonic narrative lens through which to generate “cyborg consciousness” about “oppositional consciousness” (Sandoval 2020: 408; hooks 1992: 264). Cyborg oppositional consciousness is expressed as “Fourth VR” (Wallis & Ross 2020: 1). An Afro-technofeminist, technopolitical framework advances filmmaking discourse and praxis by autodidactic online learning of how to operate VR equipment, thereby overcoming our tech-inferiority complex with a thought experiment we call the “Dora Milaje mind trick” (Coogler 2018). As we learn, we also teach VR skills to our students and communities of youth to share knowledge of 4IR tools, specifically with women, to empower them with 4IR STEAM skills as a technopolitical, educational and future-proofing empowerment strategy. The Afrocyborg Collective has made two VR films in the genre of Prosocial VR as part of the creative praxis of Quantum Botho/Ubuntu in the making of The Cosmic Egg, which is a call to elevated environmental consciousness, and The Eye of Rre Mutwa, which confronts “white fragility” about the technological developments of the 4IR (DiAngelo 2018). By experimenting with new gaze regimes offered by the exponential medium of VR, with its multiple lenses that create 360-degree spherical story worlds, we demonstrate how the “medium is the muthi” when used in the mode of Prosocial VR. Therefore, the construction of an expanded prosocial gaze in VR, in the genre of African futurism, contributes to the decolonial undoing of oppressive power structures by generating representations of Africa that seek to apprehend the stereotypes of Hegelian racial prejudice and “poverty porn” that persist in global media representations (Kahiu 2017).
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    Lil_ith- A love story for South Africa’s queer, misfit youth
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) de Jager, Robin Claude; Wessels, Christopher
    This project takes the form of an explorative filmic investigation into and reflection on the archetype of the queer misfit in South African cinema. The film and research take the standpoint of the South African misfit archetype being a post-queer-theory subject in relation to the country’s historical, socio-economic, sexual, traditional and technological landscape. I will compare the appearance of the queer misfit through the arrival of the neon and caustic characters of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s to South Africa’s contemporary emergence of this archetype, positioning Queer Theory and the New Queer Cinema movement of the early as the primary emergence of a ‘true’ queer voice. I will engage with the influence of socio-economic, political and technological stimuli as well as the emergence of post-Queer Theory in the West and South Africa and its contribution to the evolution of the queer and misfit in post-colonial South African cinema. Through a practice-led, autoethnographic approach I combined these findings with core theoretical frameworks on post-modern sexuality by Queen and Schimel to inform and fuel the development of the film Lil_ith. The film stands as a creative execution expanding on the South African Misfit archetype in relation to the global history of Queer Misfit representation as well as its relationship with South Africa as a nation in the process of de-lonialisation within a digitised and globalised world.