“Telling stories that have a positive impact on how Black people view themselves [is important to us]. We want to foreground positive representation of young Black people, so images of themselves succeeding, happy and in ordinary situations exist.” Xolani Nhlapho, Executive Producer at Eccentric Circus Production company Eccentric Circus has a unique founding story aided…
When 22 year old Thuli Mthembu from Nelspruit completed her studies, she could’ve never imagined that a year from then she would be directing her first feature film under the direct guidance of her idols. Through the MultiChoice Talent Factory (MTF) Academy, a new set of filmmakers are successfully integrating into the practical world of…
ARTLAB invites you to take part in the first edition of the ARTLAB mentorship programme. ARTLAB is a 3-month initiative that aims to help emerging creatives affected by the COVID-19 lockdown by providing them with tools that will develop and accelerate their professional growth. From April to June 2021, ARTLAB will be held at Durban’s…
The Kewpie Photographic Collection is a valuable resource documenting a thriving and celebrated queer culture within a community that has since been scattered, showing the value of personal archives in telling potentially lost stories. The collection reinforces historical understandings of District Six as a close-knit community where diversity was valued, while highlighting a lesser-known aspect…
“I’m not really worried about other people or their expectations. This is the first bottle I ever made, I’m never gonna forget that. Be yourself, don’t worry about anybody else — stay true.” Joshua Vides for Ballantine’s Joshua Vides is a renowned California based artists and creative known all across the world for the ways…
At worst, trans men and women are dangerous and at best, they are harmless but laughable. “Disclosure” explores how closely representation is tangled up with notions of glamour, beauty, desirability and evaluative standards as well as race and class. One of the ways this is demonstrated is through the movie “Boys Don’t Cry” – a biographical dramatisation…
2021 sees a total of eight Innovation Fund beneficiaries: Duma Collective, The Throne, Swypa Delivery, Mzansi Live, Yellowbone Entertainment, The Plug, Whoosh Innovations and Bubblegum Club, all spanning across various industries but breaking ground in their own respective ways. Innovation is one of those slippery modern terms. Difficult to define through language — perhaps because it can take…
If this country could speak, I wonder what it would say of its battle scars and singed surfaces. Of its many children it has had to weep over and those it has lost to empty stomachs that know there’s only so much sustenance to be sucked out of the desolate promises made by those who…
2020 was a wildly unexpected year with great social and institutional change gripping the world; COVID19 pandemic included. Our team has seen the year through with continually producing work to inspire growth, interrogate injustice and remind our audience of the immense creativity and ingenuity of artists around the globe. It is an honour to introduce…
I think it’s safe to say that for many of us, the full scope and breath of 2020, will take some time to process — there is so much to sift through and sit with. Because of this year, I think I can now say I know something of being inside the eye of an…
Owner of — and writer and producer for Zethu’s Tales; Mbalizethu Zulu, founded her production company with a vision of telling entertaining and educational stories that would work not only to instil hope within local communities, but she also had a vision of fleshing out on screen those stories which rang true to her own…
As Bubblegum Club continues to highlight Black young owned production companies and the dynamic individuals and talents behind them — we spent some time talking to production company; Eccentric Circus. The fates of co-founders Neo Sibiya, Xolani Nhlapho and Thabo Mashila—all graduates of other institutions—the University of Witwatersrand, AFDA and Tshwane University of Technology respectively…
