The Creators

LAURA GAMSE

Laura Gamse is a first time filmmaker and Fulbright Fellow from Arlington, Virginia, USA. She is the founder of Invisible Sessions, a series of musical meditations intended to increase worldwide exposure to indigenous artists, and the co-founder of Cape Town’s Abahlali Bikes Initiative. She is currently completing post-production on Brigidy Bram, a documentary about the Bahamian painter Kendal Hanna, and shooting The Misfit Economy, a film exploring innovation in the underground economies of India, China and Brazil.

Selective Filmography

FAITH47

A street artist illuminating the forgotten townships haloing South Africa’s cities, Faith is a subversive activist fighting for public art and a mother painting a new world for her eleven year old son. Faith uses the 1955 ANC document The Freedom Charter to inspire murals questioning whether South Africa’s post-apartheid government kept its central goals at heart after ascending to power. Painting in townships with levels of violence surpassing all of sub-Saharan Africa, Faith infiltrates the culture on a level that allows her to merge seamlessly with the country’s impoverished majority. As an anonymous graffiti artist, the film views Faith through the eyes of her son, aka Cashril Plus: South Africa’s youngest genius.

SWEAT.X

“Spoek Mathambo is a slippery post-apartheid glam-rap prince from Soweto who is descended from distant African royalty, or Jewish, or both” (Fader Magazine). Spoek is one half of Sweat.X, a radical black/white duo from Soweto and Pretoria – arguably polar opposite locations in the world’s most polarized economy. Sweat.x exemplifies the growing population of South Africa that is tired of stale, on-the-sleeve activism. Their music leaves the didactic lectures in the past, forging the current, or maybe futuristic, South Africa. Using pump up/get down music to connect with impoverished communities in South Africa’s Karoo, Sweat.X takes reunification into their own hands, leaving overt political protest in the past in favor of a new way for a new age.

BLAQ PEARL

The younger sister of Mr. Devious, a hip hop activist killed amidst gang warfare in their hometown of Mitchell’s Plain, Blaq Pearl’s life is imbued with the struggle between a violent environment and a peaceful core. As a spoken word artist and performer, Blaq Pearl worked in a prison teaching creative writing to inmates where her brother taught before his untimely death. The same prison released her brother’s murderer just months after his incarceration. The killer now lives in the neighborhood next to Blaq Pearl’s family home. In the ten years prior to 2007, four times as many people were murdered in South Africa than Americans killed during the entire Vietnam War. In a country where violence threatens physically and psychologically, Blaq Pearl’s poetry meditates her situation at a level free from the chaos of the streets.

EMILE

As an MC, b-boy and breakdancer from the seminal hip hop group Black Noise, Emile united a generation of youth during the fall of apartheid in the tumultuous eighties and nineties. Emile participated in anti-apartheid protests and school boycotts during his youth, getting shot at by police and witnessing the death of friends fighting to overthrow South Africa’s oppressive government. Emile now practices more subversive activism in his community, creating a conscious culture through breakdancing workshops, events and b-boy competitions.

MTHETHO

Mthetho was raised by a single mother caring for him as well as dozens of his cousins. His father left behind one opera cd, which Mthetho listened to repeatedly while growing up. Soon, Mthetho discovered that he could sing Pavorrati’s arias by memory. Mthetho used his natural talent to teach his friends and support his family until his mother’s death from HIV/AIDS. He then fell into a pattern of crime, enduring multiple stabbings and a burning in gang wars and chance incidents. With a knife scar stretching the length of his cheek, Mthetho is now pulling himself out of gang life, using opera to balance his mind and support his family.