914.1
Film Screening 1: Jeppe on a Friday (2012) + Discussion: Contradictions in the Cracks: Filming with Johannesburg
DIRECTED BY SHANNON WALSH & ARYA LALLOO
Film synopsis: A city can be seen in news reports, crime statistics or Hollywood blockbusters. It can be explored through guided tours, from behind car windows or through history. “Jeppe on a Friday” explores a different city; the Johannesburg that exists through the men who occupy it.
Discussion: All visual meaning-making consists of choices: what we see and what we don’t see. In our documentary project on Johannesburg Jeppe on a Friday, layers form upon layers of what is seen and what is hidden. Part of this were conscious choices made for the stories we wanted to tell and the images that would reflect the city we saw in front of us. But part of the layers and visibilities were also about the way in which the city, and the neighbourhood, chose to reveals itself to us. The tensions between these various ways of seeing are present in film, and often emerge in the discussions that followed as we presented the films to different audiences. Of course all filmmaking always consists of making choices, but not all choices are always allowed. The city, then, becomes a protagonist and a storyteller. Jeppestown is one more collaborator in the team of filmmakers creating this imagined, and real, portrait. What can we learn by digging up these visible and invisible traces left in the film? What can we see about our own practice as image-makers through looking more closely at what remains?