By Mamelodi Marakalala
“Thaba ye, thaba ye, ba re e nale meno. Thaba ye, thaba ye, ba re e boloka bangwe ba phela.” These are the lyrics in the opening song of Thaba Ye animated short film. The words are Sepedi for “This mountain, this mountain, they say it has teeth. This mountain, this mountain, they say it keeps the souls of the living.”
This song is played over the dream sequence at the beginning of Thaba Ye to shed light on the main character’s world; particularly her perceptions of it, her psychological state, and the journey she is about to undertake. Thaba Ye is a short animation film that follows the story of Thato and her sick younger brother Thušo. It is about Thato facing her fears and bravely journeying into the depths of a mysterious mountain, where legends of the local Bapedi of South Africa’s Limpopo province say that those who go never come back, to save Thušo’s life.
Thaba Ye was directed by the class of 2022 at the GOBELINS Paris School of image-related fields such as animation, motion design, photography, videography, and virtual reality. Leroy Le Roux is a director and computer graphics artist from South Africa whose skillset is mainly on animation, lighting and colour development. Merel Hamers is a director from the Netherlands whose key skills are character animation, compositing, writing, and storyboarding. Hannah Judd is an Australian animator and interdisciplinary artist. Mogau Kekana is a South African animator, illustrator, storyboard artist and concept artist. Preetam Dhar is an animator and visual development artist from India. Finally, Daria Batueva is a comic book creator and character designer from Russia.
The story told through Thaba Ye is about a significant human condition that affects us all (which is death) and touches on the emotions that surround it (fear and loss, or specifically the grief process and coming to terms with the fear and loss). The film takes on the resonance of a time in international history that has altered the trajectory of people’s lives as well as political, social and economic life in this generation; because it was produced during COVID-19. It is simply set in a place and culture that brings a new perspective to the ailments and troubles that come with being human.
“Thaba Ye is about accepting that things, people, and situations don’t last forever, whether they be good or bad. Using child characters feeds into the helplessness of the situation because that’s the emotion that we usually feel when things don’t go as we expect,” says one of the directors, Mogau Kekana.
“I think the decision to go with Sepedi was due to the location where the story takes place. We, as a team, also wanted to tell a story that stuck out from the rest. When I got to Gobelins, I saw that there was freedom in the use of language; and a lot of people picked from either English, French, Spanish or an Asian language. I had not seen or heard of a film from the institution that was made in an African language. We all saw an opportunity to be the first film to bridge this gap. I wouldn’t say we touch too much on the identity of Pedi people but maybe some of the folktales and region from which the people reside,” Kekana adds.
Although this is the case, the filmmakers paid attention and respect to the Bapedi and their culture in telling this story contextualised by an African folktale. Thaba Ye holds up in reflecting some of the particularities of the Pedi culture and heritage. It presents itself as an opportunity for Bapedi South Africans to see themselves reflected in new media storytelling and for diverse animation film audiences to engage in these themes from a different perspective.
The first being, of course, language – the film is entirely in Sepedi. Thato was voiced by Obakeng Nku, Thušo by Ditheto Makwea, and the film’s song was performed by Makwena Manamela, with a dedicated team of language contributors behind them. As Kekana notes, there is indeed a disparity in the animation industry when it comes to non-English films. African languages are heard in what feels like once in a lifetime. When an African language does end up being used, it’s usually Swahili, isiZulu, isiXhosa, or sometimes Sesotho (i.e., Southern Sotho). Hence the use of Sepedi, a lesser-known South African language, from the very beginning to the end of the Thaba Ye film is particularly noteworthy.
Bapedi cultural representation, particularly in the context of an international creative school, is significant and means more people globally have the opportunity to learn about this cultural group. Because the film is set in a Pedi region and references a Pedi folktale, there is an added layer to the story of the dialogue having a greater emotional impact because it holds an indigenous lexicon and the viewer is more immersed in where Thato and Thušo come from.
The second particular element in Thaba Ye is heritage – throughout the film, we hear Thato telling her brother, “Hema jwale ka tlou”. This translates to, “Take deep breaths like an elephant”. The elephant also appears multiple times in the film. Tlou, or an elephant, is one of the totem animals in the Bapedi culture connected to some families, to the Batlou families. Kone (finch) – Bakone; Kwena (crocodile) – Bakwena; Noko (porcupine) – Banoko, and others are some of the totem animals that different Pedi families have made cultural and spiritual allegiance to.
Referred to as “moano” (singular), Thato and Thušo’s family totem appears to be the elephant. It is through the elephant that they connect to their ancestors and the gods and it is the elephant that guides them in their journey to the afterlife. The most common Batlou surnames are Kekana and Mokhonoana, amongst many others, and they are mostly located in Modimolle and other southern regions in the province. This significant detail further enhances the story by giving the characters a family to which they belong and making them seem more real. It also highlights how connected to their heritage and ancestry Africans are, down to their dreams and worries.
Finally, the spirituality carried in the story of Thaba Ye is another element that reflects Bapedi’s belief systems and the legends these have created. Mountains have a significant role as both a symbol and a site of spiritual practices. As a symbol, the mountain can be seen as a path between the earth and the heavens. It certainly reflects thoughts and fears around death. It also represents death as a firm and enormous inevitability towering over the living. As a site, a mountain is where battles take place amongst the living, between the living and spirits, or between good and evil.
When elaborating further on the significance of the mountain in the story of Thaba Ye, Kekana says, “The film was inspired by one of the stories that I used to hear about a mountain in Modimolle, which is a small town close to Polokwane, in Limpopo. The Modimolle mountain has a dark story of people venturing into it and disappearing, never returning. This includes the people who tried to go find and rescue the people who had been lost at the mountain.” He continues, “Production for our film happened during COVID-19 and there was a lot of fear around death at the time and a lot of people had lost their loved ones, myself included. We wanted to create a film that spoke about loss and acceptance of death, so we used the mountain as a metaphor for the afterlife, as a place people journey to when their time has come.”
The filmmakers’ depiction of the story and its themes with these different cultural details in mind deserves praise. In its seven-minute runtime, this heartfelt and compelling film properly portrays the Limpopo landscapes, the heritage from which the lore was funded, the maladies and troubles that the young characters face in the story, and encapsulates their ethnicity and humanity. It is refreshing to see a story based on an African group that is usually never picked up for the global mainstream.
Thaba Ye was submitted as a graduate project so the team could obtain their master’s degrees in Character Animation and Animated Filmmaking. In 2023, it won a Yugo BAFTA Student Award in the animation category, which brands the film as an excellent contribution to the international film industry under the entries for the next generation of animation filmmakers. The film can be watched on YouTube.
