{"id":4033,"date":"2020-06-25T23:47:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T22:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4033"},"modified":"2020-06-25T23:47:46","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T22:47:46","slug":"ukuhlolwa-kwephupha-some-dreams-are-never-realised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4033","title":{"rendered":"Ukuhlolwa KwePhupha: Some Dreams Are Never Realised"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Some dreams are not dreams, but echoes from distant callings. In <em><a href=\"https:\/\/nationalartsfestival.co.za\/show\/ukuhlolwa-kwephupha\/\">Ukuhlolwa KwePhupha<\/a><\/em>, Hlumela Matika is a womxn who wakes from her bed without an awakening at all; because her dreams continue to go un-analysed. Moving nonchalantly in her colonial home she sits threading red cotton through her floral embroidery whilst her mirrors come to life with messages from the past. The ocean crashes in the background of her mirror. She splits into three. When she looks around she does not see the other versions of herself. She does not see the version, still in bed, fading away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nshort, silent film reverberates with the failures of its protagonist\u2019s\nperception. Akaboni! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\nthe analysis of dreams, water can be foreboding; particularly, when it crashes\nviolently in the landscape. Forceful oceanic waves signal: the dreamer is lost.\nThey do not know themselves nor do they know where they should be going. If\nthere is a decision to be made, the dreamer of water is being warned not to make\nthe wrong decision. But, in <em>Ukuhlolwa KwePhupha<\/em> the womxn is oblivious\nto any decision she may be making. Her sheer ease while all her mirrors turn\ninto surrealist signposts creates a simple case for the hopelessness of the\ncalls to her awakening. She does not see the collage of eyes in her mirror. The\nblinking eyes collect into one big eye looking at her from the object of her\nreflection. \u201cSee\u201d, they silently say. But, she sees only the functional mirror.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The camera plays tricks on us as she reaches for her vibrating cellphone, only for the call to shapeshift into an African artefact. A mask, which upturns and reveals a dark pool of water. In it she wears a mask of two-faces and then we drop into an image of her at the shore of the beach which had \u00a0called to her. When we cut back to her single image in bed, she is on her cellphone ignorant of the journey we\u2019ve taken. We, become as sangomas, seeing other realms beyond the perception of the dreamer themselves. Matika\u2019s meditative style makes <em>Ukuhlolwa KwePhupha<\/em> a softly frustrating journey where all is left unsaid, as the meanings of dreams can often go unknown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Artists &amp; Director<\/strong>: Hlumela Matika<br><strong>Assistant Director<\/strong>: Nomzamo Kula<br><strong>Videographer &amp; Editor<\/strong>: Jean Du Toit <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some dreams are not dreams, but echoes from distant callings. In Ukuhlolwa KwePhupha, Hlumela Matika is a womxn who wakes from her bed without an awakening at all; because her &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=4033\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[981,10],"tags":[1011,1010,1002],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4036,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4033\/revisions\/4036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}