Bubblegum Club

Tag: short film

  • ‘Embroidery For A Long Song’ // merging the traditional and the modern in a neon-inspired meditation on female energy

    ‘Embroidery For A Long Song’ // merging the traditional and the modern in a neon-inspired meditation on female energy

    ‘I rise, I run. I even try dancing’ – these are the first words one hears after being greeted by the music from ‘Khaleeji’ (the ten piece band of folk singers) in the opening scene of ‘Embroidery For A Long Song‘. This short film is a neon-inspired meditation on female energy, and it creates a bridge between the modern and traditional by examining the histories of the Gulf region through music, fashion and poetry.

    Filmmaker Amirah Tajdin  has always been fascinated by the connection between fashion and film. With designer Faissal El-Malak‘s concept for ‘Embroidery For A Long Song’ she was finally able to explore this. A few months before Faissal asked Amirah to get on board with the film, she had created a fashion film for his Spring/Summer 18 collection. They had been friends for a while, but while working on the fashion film they discovered a new kind of creative synergy. When Faissal was approached by the W Hotels and Mixcloud team a few months later to curate the Dubai edition of their Future Rising event he automatically thought of making a second film with Amirah.

    Faissal was given the broad brief to combine music with ideas about the future and a wonderland. These elements came together in his mind through nostalgic memories of the traditional music shows and concerts he used to watch on tv while growing up in the Gulf. “The sets of these shows were oddly futuristic; they created something very interesting visually where the tradition was respected and preserved within an ultra-modern context. It was sort of a wonderland where technology and an abundance of LED lights created a space to express one’s self fully. This was not a foreign concept to the way we live our daily life in a region that has seen exponential growth and has embraced very quickly modern and futuristic architecture as a norm, but that still hangs on very strongly to tradition, most notably in the way most people still wear traditional garments on a daily basis.”

    With these memories and his desire to further his knowledge about women who play traditional music, Faissal began to ask around about this practice. He was also influenced by the words and pseudonyms used by millennials who revived the tradition of spoken word poetry through platforms such as Flickr and MySpace. These pseudonyms – ‘Eye of the Gazelle’, ‘Daughter of the falcon’ and ‘The one with the khol lined eyes’ – are interpreted visually through the animated illustrations that appear at particular moments in the film. “The expression of traditional music is in itself a collaboration between sung poems, the traditional garments, beats and dances coming together to create a feast for the senses,” Faissal explained. The connection between poetry, fashion and music is intimately displayed in how the film unfolds.

    At the core of Faissal’s approach to fashion is his appreciation and celebration of Middle Eastern textiles and motifs, designing women’s ready-to-wear garments that offer combine the traditional and the modern. There is a parallel display of this in the film. A string of symbolic gestures echo this, such as the ironing and incensing of the main character’s hair and her dancing in the hall on her own. These traditional references are juxtaposed against the futuristic elements of the W Hotel hallways and neon lights. Trippy, distorted sonic encounters are merged with the instruments and chanting by Khaleeji. A poem is used as a device to narrate the film, inviting viewers into the mind of the main character.

    This film is a loud celebration and a quiet reflection all at once. It offers itself as a compilation of memories presented in a way that excites sight and sound.

    View the full film below.

  • Photographer and Film Maker Jarred Figgins uses imagery to see the beauty in peculiarity

    Photographer and Film Maker Jarred Figgins uses imagery to see the beauty in peculiarity

    Traditional framing broken and carefully pieced together. The cutting off of feet in a frame, blowing them up and lending them their own image – making them carry their own worth. Soft hazy, dreamlike images are painted. Jarred Figgins strikes the balance between careful contemplation and haphazard play with his photographic work. With images that often hiss oddities, it must be understood that they are thoughtfully constructed in a simple matter-of-fact way.

    The South African photographer has in recent times become increasingly involved in the art of the moving image. Spending his formative years in Johannesburg, he relocated to Cape Town at the age of 18. Theoretical knowledge in the field was built up during the years he spent studying. Reflecting on his craft and childhood, Jarred explains that his desire to create images that were non-conformist was aroused from a need to splinter conventionality.

    Questioning the label of fashion photographer that can easily be latched on to him, Jarred tells me that what sets you apart in a world of fast content consumption is the ability to approach the same subject matter in a slightly different way and a determination to stay ahead of the pack.

    Discussing his interest in film Jarred states, “I think that film really allows you to manoeuvre an idea in a specific direction that a still sometimes lacks. It’s like being able to grow an idea so much more which so quickly takes shape or exerts a feeling without much effort…” His short film pieces come across as an experimental, visual ode, keeping its refinement in its technicality and precision.

    He pinpoints his stylistic edge as something that often times takes place in post-production. “I’m not necessarily doing anything different with photography or composition, it’s just something I perhaps find fun or alarming whilst editing.”

    About his process and tendency to work on set, Jarred tells me that careful planning does not always play out the way it is anticipated on set. He emphasises that for him a fine balance needs to be struck between playing by the rule book and letting the shoot take its natural course.

    A great deal of his work for a shoot happens in pre and post production. The pre-production work could be seen as the most taxing, perhaps, as Jarred frequently builds his own sets and regards his curated playlists for shoots to be an integral part of his creative process. His photographic work is seen by him as a vehicle that allows him to express what he wants to the world.

    Jarred’s work both moving and still are trademarked by his stylistic choices that sets him apart. His play with lighting and colour that results in dreamlike painterly images elevates the concepts of his work. His unusual way of piecing together various images and fragments of images into wholly different layouts creates peculiarity and beauty – the beauty in peculiarity.

  • Butan shares their latest collection in ‘Aluta Continua’ lookbook and short film

    Butan shares their latest collection in ‘Aluta Continua’ lookbook and short film

    Since its inception in 2006, the label Butan has become a part of South Africa’s streetwear landscape. The name Butan came from re-arranging the word ‘bantu’. This can be viewed as symbolic of how the label takes pride in bringing an African perspective to streetwear. “We pride ourselves in being an African label with a strong African narrative, and a look and feel that aims to express who we are as young Africans living on the continent today. This ideology carries through from design to marketing and even governs the way we run our company. Certainly we can’t deny the western influences in streetwear, yet we have come to create a unique look and feel for our brand and continue on this very exciting journey.”

    Butan’s objective is to reflect the local youth and street culture that the brand is embedded within. Julian Kubel, the founder of Butan, made reference to this in his statement that the brand “was never created as an entity that exists outside of street culture, trying to penetrate a certain market segment. The brand grew organically from within the culture and has been intertwined with it ever since.”

    Their latest collection ‘Hidden Panthers’ taps into this directly. Referencing the slogan ‘Aluta Continua’ which translates to ‘the struggle continues’, Butan has plugged into broader political conversations. This is a phrase which holds relevance for people of colour in South Africa beyond its origins as a slogan in Mozambique’s struggle against colonialism. The erasure of other forms of personifying, animating and giving meaning to beauty and style is being fought against from multiple fronts. The idolatry of western beauty standards by the cosmetic and fashion industry is being hacked away through critique. This involves subverting and rejecting violent, colonial frameworks that have attached negative connotations to people of colour. It also involves celebrating black hair, black adornment, black styles, black histories and black cultures.

    “By incorporating a powerful struggle slogan into our clothes I by no means pretend that we are immediately having a powerful impact on people and their political awareness yet it does make people curious and ask questions and dig a little deeper. There are many elements in our clothes that express a strong Pan African philosophy calling for African unity and proclaiming African pride. A lot of our themes and stories tie back to that agenda. Even if we can just create awareness of these stories and get people to engage with African history and get a deeper understanding of the rich cultural heritage of our country and continent, I think we have done our part.”Julian expressed that communicating this through various media is an important way to reach different kinds of audiences. In addition to their ‘Aluta Continua‘ lookbook created in collaboration with Bubblegum Club, Butan decided on a short film. This incorporates the significance of ‘Aluta Continua’ with conversations between hair stylist Mimi Duma and makeup artist Shirley Molatlhegi. In between shots displaying the collection in the streets of Kliptown, Mimi and Shirley share how they encourage people of colour to be proud of their skin and their hair. This connects to the foundational concepts for the collection, and the Butan philosophy.“We are witnessing a revolution in thought and an emancipation that is allowing people to rid themselves of these social shackles and to celebrate their ethnicity and culture. Such movements of awareness have previously been witnessed in the 60s for instance in the US, where they were spear headed by institutions such as the Black Panther Party.  Our current range, the Butan ‘Hidden Panthers’ collection, pays homage to that particular movement and its philosophy.”

    Check out the Butan x Bubblegum Club short film below:

     

    Lookbook credits:

    Photography & Styling: Jamal Nxedlana

    Hair: Mimi Duma

    Makeup: Shirley Molatlhegi

    Photography & Styling assistant: Lebogang Ramfate

    Models: Mimi Duma, Shirley Molatlhegi, Sindy Chikunda, Sechaba TheBakersman, Thulasizwe Nkosi

  • Dismantling imaginative monopolies; Sheetal Magan and the radical new generation of South African filmmakers

    Sheetal Magan is part of a new generation of South African filmmakers, immersed in a young context that is already reinventing itself through its own complex honesty and the rejection of a stoic condescension towards emerging voices. These pioneers of the industry are subverting hierarchical and patriarchal monopolies on the imagination, as well as one-dimensional cultural confessionals, seizing their own permission to be genuinely aspirational in terms of thinking outside the limitations and refusing to let those lines-of-sight settle. As an up-and-coming filmmaker, Magan’s repertoire already speaks to an immense and unhindered curiosity, willing to boldly submerse itself in the subconscious grit of multifarious worlds, in refracted layers of consciousness and evocative atmospheres moving well-beyond the zones of complacent satisfaction.

    In God Dank vir Klank (2011), Magan was already experimenting with genre through documentary-fiction, interrogating conversational currents around Zef culture and issues of appropriation, and incorporating visible failure as a strategy towards demystification. Magan is emerging as a tenacious risk-taker, immediately destabilising stereotypical confines through her lack of fear for navigating foreign landscapes. Despite a low-budget, in City of Ashes (2014), Magan took-on dystopian speculative-fiction, channelling current South African anxieties through the vision of ground-zero Johannesburg in the year 2024, disordering secular structure and invoking the phantasmagoric layers of history and experience that resonate within the city. The Fall of Ganesh (2015), which premiered at the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF), coalesced from a palpable personal encounter, that for Magan, really exploded illusions of ‘social-cohesion’ in South Africa and stuck in her body as an involuntary shake, well-after a mob riled against her family during a particular Diwali celebration. Can a sense of disorienting displacement seep through the grounding of rituals? Who defines our rites of passage and what relationships are we allowed to articulate?

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    The Fall of Ganesh is a tactile reflection of Magan’s ability to subtly weave together multiple threads that resonate with the intricacies of non-linear emotion and the mysteries of human experience. Her work is beginning to reflect a powerful, untold undercurrent and it’s being recognised through her inclusion in prestigious platforms such as DIFF’s Talents Durban Doc Station, Urucu Media’s Realness South African screenwriters’ residency, and the Cannes South African Film Factory, through which the short film Paraya (2016) was created. Paraya premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is also set to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival and the upcoming Jozi Film Festival. Magan’s first feature film, The Day and Night of Brahma is currently in development and she is also currently working on an eight part mini- series entitled the Acts of Man. 

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    When I spoke to Magan about her navigations within Indian culture, I couldn’t help but think of Marji in Persepolis donning her ‘punk is not ded’ jacket and it made me incredibly excited for the potential of South African cinema- I imagined, through the perspectives that Magan related, a South African Asghar Farhadi and Hindu metaphysical intuition bleeding through the aesthetic of Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color. Could there be a kind of South African Tarkovskian texture, infused with honey and ghee, merging with contemporary, digitally-diasporic dispersions? Magan is throwing punches at being boxed-in and the strength of her unique visual language, before even releasing her first feature film, stretches the imagination towards the realisation of such radically new possibilities.

  • The unsettling of JHB’s necropolitical reflections in Zandile Tisani’s Highlands

    A police van veers around a corner, a loaf of bread is placed inside a box, leaves crackle and turn in the ambiguity of words; “In my third life, I learnt about mortality”. Zandile Tisani’s Highlands is a kind of forensic infrastructure, unfixing and unhinging the masculinity and certainty of Johannesburg’s necropolitical reflections through the opening and closing of pores, architectures of light that pull in- and out-of-focus, and the slow movements of water carving rock.

    Sun-dizzied camera shots sweep and descend to give Highlands an alien quality of defamiliarisation while the ubiquity of water stands strange and sputnik in its Yeoville towers. Is the ‘clean air’ up there supposed to descend in the same way water does? Are there ways that we can structure our own sermons, self-designate the sacred? And what could that mean in relation to the way a reef is formed, the way boreholes now honeycomb beneath the surface of the city?

    Tisani beautifully unsettles what constitutes ‘the documentary’ in a layered interrogation that blurs just where the edges might be. There’s a kind of quiet delirium in obscured hyperrealism, sedition in the spatial rendering of the mysterious narrator who stands somehow beyond the trinity of spirituality, commerce and survival. Dialogues form between soil and skin as the ground moves to meet those who traverse it, those who would both regard and disregard it in the instant of lifetimes.

    The experimental format that Highlands engages reclaims the physical space in which it is shot from the violent patina of Hollywood glitz, from the blunt force of linear narrative and the designation of ‘history’; opening up breathing-room for questions that speak incredibly intimately to the complexities of existence within, and to the side-of, JHB as a ‘post-colonial, post-apartheid, modern, African, metropolis’.

    Tisani’s Highlands is a co-production between GoodCop Productions and the Encounters Documentary Lab and even if I wasn’t writing about it, I couldn’t only watch it once. Check out the South African kick-back against stasis below. #MbokoLead

  • Riky Rick releases Exodus, the final piece of his Family Matters project

    Riky Rick’s Exodus is out online; the short film dropped on the rapper’s website today. It provides the finale for Family Values, visually exploring a story of struggle and redemption with intricate production and a stirring score. The film is 9 minutes, and takes the viewer on an emotional journey through reflecting historic rap themes of loss and rebellion, Tupac and the oft treacherous path into young manhood.

    The film was directed by Kyle Lewis, watch it below.