A melancholic poetry film in black and white with sand and silhouettes. About the loss of a mother and a flawed relationship between daughter and child. Inspired by Jeanne Goosen’s eponymous poem, recited by the well-known South-African actress Elize Cawood, to the aria O mia babbino caro from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicci, in a legendary performance by Maria Callas (1955).
My Mamma Is Bossies / My Mum’s Bonkers
A film by
Naomi van Niekerk
Biography
Naomi van Niekerk is a contemporary artist with a background in theater studies (Wits University, Johannesburg), visual arts and puppeteering (Ecole Nationale Supérièure des Arts de la Marionnette, France). She enjoys combining these techniques of storytelling in live performance and often collaborates with musicians and dancers to create eclectic theatre pieces and installations that inlcude her interest in shadow puppetry, drawing and bringing inanimate objects to life. While continuing to tour with different multi-media performance pieces, she is also making animation films, focusing on stop-motion animation and Sand Animation in particular. Between 2015 and 2017 she directed and independently produced three animated short films that were extensively shown at many international film festivals: ‘n Gewone blou Maandagoggend (An ordinary blue Monday), By alle skone dinge (To all things beautiful) and most recently My mamma is bossies (My mum’s bonkers). She won the ‘Jean-Luc Xiberras award’ for the ‘Best First Film’ at the ‘Annecy International Film Festival’ (2016) for her short film An ordinary blue Monday.
Fimography
- 2015/2016: ‘n Gewone blou Maandagoggend / An ordinary blue Monday (3:24)
- 2015/2016: By alle skone dinge / To all things beautiful (3:01)
- 2015/2016: The Impermanence Museum (Mixed media installation) (14:02)
- 2016: Heal the Burns (Commissioned film) (3:11)
- 2017: My mum’s bonkers (3:21)
