National Arts Festival Image Gallery

In 2018 then cricket captain, 26 year old Steve Smith was at the center of a ball tampering scandal that shook international cricket. When he arrived back in Sydney after the debacle (which reached it’s Zenith at Cape Town’s Newlands stadium), he had to face a room full of journalists and apologise. At the press conference Smith valiantly stumbles through a prepared statement and then he falls apart . It’s the perfect performance of arrogance chopped off at the knees. These four minutes of footage have been recreated by Jemma Kahn, with an astounding mimicry of the withered Smith by De Klerk Oelofse. Together they have created a loving and mocking portrait, in the style made ubiquitous by TikTok and Drag Race – the lip sync. Jemma Kahn has always enjoyed a lo-fi aesthetic and her film making continues in this tradition – shot on an iPhone 4 with prestik as a tripod and edited herself – she takes a simple technology and then pushes it, creating something scruffy, charming and utterly original.

Film by Jemma Kahn
Starring De Klerk Oelofse
Featuring Albert Pretorius
Art & lighting by Jemma Kahn and Rocco Pool

In a project titled Ponte Maputo Durban, pianist Sibusiso Mash Mashiloane from Durban and multi-instrumentalist Matchume Zango from Maputo have reinterpreted each other’s works. The music journeys through an improvised language of a lifetime learned sonic therapy, which takes the listener along every note towards a form of healing.  South Africa and Mozambique are sovereign neighbours who historically share an umbilical cord, which breaths from the beat of the same rhythmic pulse. This music pulls worlds once parted by colonial separations together when these maestros construct Ponte Maputo Durban sonically. This project is a significant musical and cultural experience in the form of a collaboration. The potential for any listener to reap the benefits of connecting to something so boundless as musicianship, is almost like removing physical borders in the global map of sound.

Sibusiso Mash Mashiloane – Musician and Composer
Matchume Zango – Musician and Composer
Simanga Zondo – Photography
Mandisa Buthelezi: Editing Director
Mduduzi Nxele: Editor
Marlyn Ntsele – Executive producer

Mamela Nyamza is a dance artist and activist who is hell-bent on exposing the sordid underbelly of the bureaucratic aspects of arts and culture in her native country South Africa. Her numerous acts of protests for transformation and equality in the art sector has meant experiencing and being exposed to untoward practices as both an arts practitioner as well as a former employee of a public art institution. Ms Nyamza’s new work “PEST CONTROL” aims to expose the real state of the art in South Africa – a sordid environment where cronyism and nepotism are rife and arts practitioners at odds with this malignant system, are screwed. A miscarriage. An injustice. “PEST CONTROL” addresses these mutually beneficial ‘friendships’, where kowtowing artists are advanced at the expense of the arts sector.

Performed by: Mamela Nyamza
Featured Artist (Musician): Aza Mphago
Lighting & Set Designer: Wilhelm Disbergen
Camera & Graphic Designer: Ntombazana Shabangu
Digital Media Creative: Katty Vandenberghe

Using the novel “The Ones With Purpose” by Cynthia Jele as the starting point to inspire writers, Twist Projects invites writers from across Africa to a week-long writer’s workshop, where they receive mentoring and feedback from  other writers, directors and actors as they hone their craft. The result is six finely-tuned short scripts that explore issues of love, loss, family and responsibility from the perspectives of six very different writers. Join us for the recorded readings of these scripts and a facilitated discussion with the writers.

Script mentor:  Kobus Moolman
Directors: Roel Twijnstra, Daniel Maposa and Emma Durden
Writers: Gabriella Pinto, Gideon Wabvuta, Mbasa Tsetsana, Ncumisa Ndimeni, Tammany Barton and Tosin Tume

Composer, Neo Muyanga reconsiders the dark and obscured past of ‘Amazing Grace’ – a beloved hymn often sung to express solidarity with protesters calling for social justice and comradeship across the black diaspora. This new subversion, entitled, ‘aMaking Grace’, features new music and animations by Muyanga, who conducts the Khayelistha-based mezzo soprano, Tina Mene, and the popular São Paolo protest theatre troupe, Legítima Defesa.

Composer/Director – Neo Muyanga
Soprano – Tina Mene
Chorus of We the People – Legítima Defesa
Video and Animations – Neo Muyanga & Bianca Turner

Opera like you have never experienced it. Verdi’s MACBETH – based on Shakespeare’s drama of ambition, treachery and terror – performed by an all-South African cast and a Balkan orchestra, and set amongst the wars and ruthless exploitation that have ravaged the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa for decades. Within a milieu of multinational double-dealings, ethnic conflict, brutal militia, ‘blood minerals’ and glittering Chinese imports, a Congolese warlord and his ambitious wife murder their leader and unleash atrocities on the crumbling African province that they seize. This visually explosive work, with zappy street-wise surtitles, toured 31 cities on 6 continents between 2014 and 2017.  It was produced by Third World Bunfight, directed and designed by Brett Bailey, and the music adapted by Belgium’s Fabrizio Cassol. Serbian Premil Petrovic conducts his No Borders Orchestra along with two South African percussionists. Lady Macbeth is sung by soprano Nobulumko Mngxekeza, Macbeth by Owen Metsileng, and Banquo by Otto Maidi.
“There can be no denying the power and originality of this astonishing appropriation of Verdi’s Macbeth” 5 stars – THE TELEGRAPH, LONDON