Filmmaker Melany Ismail captures the beauty of the coloured experience through her lens

Walking through the Company's Garden in Cape Town has taken on a distinctly colourful and visually captivating feel, due in part to a brand new outdoor exhibition.

The beauty and tranquility of the Company's Garden offer a calming respite from the busy city, and become the perfect venue to house the "Cape Rhythm: Goema, Klopse & Memory" exhibition.

The project, which was made possible with the support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, opened on Saturday, 5 September, as part of the Cape Town Photography Festival.

The collection of photographs draws from the archive of Manenberg-born filmmaker and photographer Melany Ismail. The exhibition is curated by Heidi Erdmann and runs until 27 September.

Exhibition's origin

The project is a celebration of one of Cape Town's most enduring cultural traditions, exploring Goema and the Kaapse Klopse as living expressions of memory and identity.

Goema is one of Cape Town's most distinctive cultural expressions. Emerging through histories of enslavement, migration, and creolisation, it continues to evolve across generations while remaining deeply rooted in place and community. 

The photographs are meant to invite audiences to encounter this living heritage within one of the city's most historic public spaces, during Heritage Month.

Ismail shared that she had only been documenting the troops as a filmmaker, not really through the lens of a photographer.

She had been documenting the experience of coloured people, when someone had introduced her to Erdmann as they “thought we should know each other”.

“She (Erdmann) mentioned wanting to do something on Goema music, and then I showed her what I've done. I'm a filmmaker, so I've only been documenting the troops as a filmmaker, not as a photographer really. 

Documenting Goema beyond Tweede Nuwe Jaar

“I took her through some of my videos, and she loved what she was seeing because I've been documenting them beyond just the Tweede Nuwe Jaar and stuff. She was excited about what she saw, and she said she wanted to do this with me, and then that's how it came about.

“Since I was a kid, I've always wanted to be a filmmaker. I studied film when I came out of high school, and then I went overseas when I was 21 to work in film. It's always been something I was drawn to. I've never considered anything else,” Ismail said.

“From working in advertising, I didn't get to tell the stories that I wanted to tell, and I wanted to tell more human stories closer to home.”

Ismail said that she has “always had this nagging feeling” that the stories and experiences of coloured people was something she wanted to tell, and that it never left her even when she was doing other work. 

Throughout the interview with Ismail, we would walk past images she captured, and we came across an image she had captured during a filming of a music video.

“This music video that I did, we had very little money. I initially had a different idea of how I wanted this music video to look, but I knew I wanted to do something, 'cause the song is called ‘Goema’. So I knew I wanted to do something with the troops, and then when I got to the school where they practice, they actually inspired me to kind of stay true to the spirit. 

“Because I'm a documentary photographer, a lot of the time I'm more inspired by the people and kind of follow them,” Ismail said.

Coloured Experience through different lens

She explained that because the images she captured had been over the course of three years, they had been utilising filmmaking equipment such as an Arri Alexa camera. However because it spanned over years, “different occasions had different filmmaking”.

“Tweede Nuwe Jaar I did with my stills camera, 35mm Nikon, and then also some stuff I shot on my phone. So whatever (worked) in that moment. It wasn't something that was premeditated. It just felt right for the moment,” Ismail said.

When asked what it was about wanting to capture the coloured experience that spoke to her, she said: “I feel like it's not captured widely, and when it is, it doesn't, in my opinion, show the true experience or the truth of how it really is. My motivation is always to just show us in a way that reflects who we really are, and not put any narrative around it. Celebrate us for who we really are because there's so much to us - especially this Goema culture and how it's passed on.

“There's a lot of stuff that's overlooked that is happening in communities. I think there's a lot of other coloured filmmakers and photographers that do the same, but we all have our own stories. We should all just be telling our stories. That's what motivates me,” Ismail said.

Ismail explained that when people walk through the gardens, she hopes they take a moment to reflect and to get a little window into a part of coloured people’s lives.

Erdmann said that the first item on her wish list when she originally conceptualised the Cape Town Photography Festival was a public exhibition because she wanted the programme to be accessible.

“For the festival’s debut public exhibition, I thought that it should be connected to CapeTown’s history. I also wanted such an exhibition to form part of a broader narrative, by way of linking other institutions. The Company’s Garden and its history became the ideal site.

“The idea for 'Cape Rhythm' grew out of my research into syncretic musical genres that emerged from the mid-seventeenth century through encounters between enslaved people of diverse ancestral origins,” Erdmann said.

“My work has focused particularly on Mauritian sega and on maloya, practised on Réunion Island. Both form part of a broader Indian Ocean history of cultural exchange and continue to shape postcolonial cultural imaginaries.

“While sega and maloya have come to be recognised as intangible heritage, Goema - despite being similarly bound to the history and identity of a cultural minority in the Cape - does not have that status in South Africa,” Erdmann said.

“'Cape Rhythm: Goema, Klopse & Memory' is therefore not simply an exhibition; it is also an invitation to think about how culture survives, how memory is carried, and whose cultural histories are recognised and preserved. It is also a call to action and an urgent appeal to the authorities to recognise Goema and the Klopse as part of South Africa’s intangible cultural heritage.”

theolin.tembo@nationalmg.co.za

THE NATIONAL