Stellenbosch Triennale

‘Concepts of Freedom’ – The Film Meditation

11th Feb – 12th Feb | 182h March – 21st March

In Their Finest Robes, the Children Shall Return (2020)

Country: Kenya | Sao Tome

Synopsis: The film from the independent Kenyan fashion curator and creative director

stages a fashion performance with high symbolic value: 56 fashion designs, one from

every country of the African continent bearing witness to a healing ritual on the cold

shores of São Tomé.

Director: Sunny Dolat

Sunny Dolat

Country of origin: Kenya

Artist biography: Sunny Dolat is a Kenyan fashion stylist, creative director and production

designer. In 2012, he co-founded The Nest Collective, a multidisciplinary Kenyan squad

working with film, fashion, visual arts and music. The Nest started out as a gathering place

for young and emerging creators in Nairobi who were interested in the intersections

between poetry, feminism and queer theory, design and technology.

For their Stories of Our Lives project the collective members travelled around Kenya to

interview over 250 Kenyans who identified as queer. The result of the project was the

critically-acclaimed feature film Stories of Our Lives, as well as a book of the same name.

The film was screened in over 80 countries and won numerous awards, but was banned in

Kenya. Subsequent works include ‘Tuko Macho’, an interactive crime web series widely

considered to be one of the best African TV series, and ‘Let This Be A Warning’ a virtual

reality short film set in a distant African future. Most recently The Nest published a fashion

book entitled ‘Not African Enough’. The book asserts the rights of African designers and

artists to step out of the narrow confines of what the world considers to be African.

Gods Of Azania – A Retrospective of Video Works by Athi-Patra Ruga

Country of Origin: South Africa

Synopsis: A compilation of video works by the phenomenal, world renowned, South

African artist Athi-Parta Ruga. The selected works weave a profound and intriguing

pattern that pushes us to begin framing the shape in which ‘freedom’ is expected to take

in an imagined future.

Compiled By: Silas Miami

Athi-Patra Ruga

Country of origin: South Africa

Artist biography: Athi-Patra Ruga is one of the few artists working in South Africa today

whose work has adopted the trope of myth as a contemporary response to the post -

apartheid era. Ruga creates alternative identities and uses these avatars as a way to

parody and critique the existing political and social status quo. Ruga’s artistic approach of

creating myths and alternate realities is in some way an attempt to view the traumas of the

last 200 years of colonial history from a place of detachment – at a farsighted distance

where wounds can be contemplated outside of personalized grief and subjective

defensiveness.

The philosophical allure and allegorical value of utopia has been central to Ruga’s

practice. His construction of a mythical metaverse populated by characters which he has

created and depicted in his work have allowed Ruga to create an interesting space of self

reflexivity in which political, cultural and social systems can be critiqued and parodied.

Ruga has used his utopia as a lens to process the fraught history of a colonial past, to

critique the present and propose a possible humanist vision for the future.

The Film Festival

Featured Films

Fiela Se Kind - (2019)

Country: South Africa

Synopsis: A coloured woman living in the arid Karoo takes in a lost white child and raises

him as her own. Nine years later, the boy is removed and forced to live in the Knysna

Forest with a family of woodcutters who claim that he is theirs.

Director: Brett Michael Innes

Writers: Brett Michael Innes/Dalene Matthee (novel)

Producers: Danie Bester and Brett Michael Innes

Rafiki - (2018)

Country: Kenya

Synopsis: "Good Kenyan girls become good Kenyan wives," but Kena and Ziki long for

something more. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to

choose between happiness and safety.

Director: Wanuri Kahiu

Writers: Wanuri Kahiu, Jenna Cato Bass, and Monica Arac De Nyeko (novel)

Producer: Steven Markovitz

The Ghost And The House Of Truth - (2019)

Country: Nigeria

Synopsis: Bola Ogun (Susan Wokoma) is a dedicated counsellor, who facilitates

reconciliation sessions between convicts and the victims of their crimes. When her own

daughter goes missing, her belief in forgiveness is tested.

Director: Akin Omotoso

Writers: Roger Smith, Brian Tilley, and Tracy A. Whitaker

Producers: Kemi Lala Akindoju and Akin Omotoso

The Lost Okoroshi - (2019)

Country: Nigeria

Synopsis: Haunted by dreams of an ancestral Okoroshi masquerade, a disillusioned

security guard wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a mute, purple

spirit, in Abba Makama's surrealist romp through the sprawling city of Lagos.

Director: Abba Makama

Writers: Abba Makama and Africa Ukoh

Producer: Abba Makama

Salvation - (2019)

Country: South Africa

Synopsis: A young man on the run from the law goes in search of his estranged sister, a

hopeless stripper discovers the son she never knew, and a priest suffering a crisis of faith

reconnects with his spirituality.

Director: Carmen Sangion

Writer: Carmen Sangion

Producers: Kim Sangion and Carmen Sangion

This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (2019)

[DO NOT SHARE!!!– This is a secret screening]

Country of Origin: Lesotho.

Synopsis: When her village is threatened with forced resettlement due to reservoir

construction, an 80-year-old widow finds a new will to live and ignites the spirit of

resilience within her community.

Director: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese

Writer: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese

Producers: Cait Pansegrouw, Daniel Caleb, James Matthes