The Essay I Couldn’t Unread

Early 2024. My second time in South Africa, and this time I had a mission: find artists to collaborate with on a passion project (before you touch down in the southern hemisphere). The kind of project you don't get paid for and therefore can't stop thinking about.

By chance — and it's always by chance, that's how the good ones arrive — I stumbled onto Serati Maseko on Instagram. Writer. Singer. TED talker. The full stack. But it was one essay that got me: African Face, Colonial Tongue. A whole generation's reckoning with a history that did mad-scientist experiments on its own society and then asked everyone to act normal about it.

So I shot my shot. Sent a message. Hi, I'm the white guy from Germany randomly DMing you about your and your family's story.

She was interested.

And what started as a small thing snowballed into a huge thing, the way small things do when you're not paying attention.

When the storyboard came together I had this idea to bring dance into the mix — and as luck had it, I met Phoenix just before in Cape Town, on another shoot entirely. We met, we brainstormed, and the roots of the thing took hold.

Here's the part nobody warns you about: shooting an indie short with no money in or near Cape Town is exactly the same as trying it in Los Angeles. There's a zone around the city where every landowner hears "film shoot" and sees dollar signs. I learned this the hard way. Which is to say the small indie idea snowballed into a huge production, and hey — that's what I earn my advertising money for, right?

Since completion we've kept extending it. A website with the history of South Africa, because the film needed a spine. A podcast with three similar stories, because one wasn't enough.

I dare you to read about it and listen to the podcast.