Toekoms Spoke

Toekoms Spoke (Future ghosts)
Film
2023

In the context of the last phases of the so-called Border War in South Africa in the 1980s, Toekoms Spoke expresses the memory and anticipation of a conscripted young man, on the train on his way to joining the army.
In a format similar to a classic three-act play, this project explores the notion of subjective time through a video triptych that expresses memory, attention and anticipation through montage. Montage creates a sense of conflated time through a linear unpacking. The first chapter (chapter one) explores the past through memory and possibly a recollecting dream. Chapter two concerns the present, which is expressed as a conflated instance in time influenced by the past and the future. Lastly, chapter three suggests a dream that anticipates possible future states.

This project explores subjective time in cinematography as the concepts of memory or recollection and anticipation or expectation, and links this to the concept of liminality in cinema. Memory and anticipation are aspects of subjective time that influence the present. The young man in the filmic montage waits on the train, remembering the time his father was conscripted. Through this recollection of the past and his current state (also conscripted now), he anticipates his future, all the while finding himself in a liminal state.
William Harmon (2000:291) defines liminality as a “state of being on a threshold in space or time”. In stories, the notion of liminality is salient when characters reflect (learning about themselves and their world), change or mentally grow. One might think of liminality using the analogy of the threshold; however, this description regards liminality as somehow static. Instead, as an illustration of liminality, Harmon (2000:291) offers the impression of the sea and seashore. The sea stretches from the shore into the distance, forming a barrier between land and sky. Thus, setting forth into the sea is to disappear eventually beyond the horizon.

In Toekoms Spoke, the train (both the journey and the cabin) constitutes such a liminal threshold; it could be seen as a lieu de mémoire (Pierre Nora’s [1989] term) and also a time-space of transition and uncertainty.

Credits: Toekoms Spoke
Written, directed and produced by Héniel Fourie
Cinematography by Armand Aucamp
Art direction by Paula Kruger