Robyn Sassen
A freelance arts writer since 1998, I fell in love with the theatre as a toddler, proved rubbish as a ballerina: my starring role was as Mrs Pussy in Noddy as a seven-year-old, and earned my stripes as an academic in Fine Arts and Art History, in subsequent years. I write for a range of online and print publications, including the Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian and artslink.co.za and was formerly the arts editor of the SA Jewish Report, a weekly newspaper with which I was associated for 16 years. I am currently a Research Associate at Wits University. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.
THE POWDER KEG of young men on the cusp of adulthood is the culturally messy and politically dangerous one that filmmaker John Trengove and his team grasped with both hands and many hearts in Inxeba (the Wound), which first saw light of day in 2017. It proved to […]
WHEN YOU’RE DRAWN to a person by their idiosyncrasies and their charm, rather than by what it is their underpants hold, according to society, you’re indecisive. Bisexuality comes under the loop with an angry and articulate response of ‘Dawn’ played by April Kelley, in the eleventh episode of […]
WHO WERE YOU in 1991? A film that rocked the equilibrium of women in western society was penned and first saw light of day that year. Thelma and Louise continues to be as relevant, as tight and as wise as it was 30 years ago. If you saw […]
PODCAST SERIES REVIEW: HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS can touch one’s life quite deeply. They can inspire you and make you realise the wings you have. But they can also look at you as a 14-year-old and taint you with their own bitterness and unrealised dreams. They can break your […]
SHOWMAX FILM REVIEW: OH! THE THINGS you could do if you could slip into invisibility at a whim, and redress imbalances, tracelessly slaughter your enemies and startle the ones you love – or just eavesdrop on their lives. The evocative premises of Leigh Whannell’s 2020 film The Invisible […]
AFRIKAANS RADIO THEATRE: A REVIEW. SUPPORTED BY APPROPRIATE skill and humility, bible stories can be seen as a cipher for lessons of morality. Ask any preacher who stands at the pulpit, week after week. But if you take a listen to Joey van Niekerk’s riveting work Die Kleed, […]
AFRIKAANS RADIO DRAMA REVIEW: CLASS CLASHES CAN happen in the funniest and most brittle of contexts. This is what you can expect in Pap en Kaviaar, play that broadcasts on Thursday 1 April at 8pm on Radio Sonder Grense, opening the station’s new season of radio theatre. Featuring […]
THE SKILL OF representing inner dialogue and spooky intuitions on film is a complex, almost philosophical, one. How do you, without labouring the idea, tell your viewer what you need them to understand by what you are showing them? Melding past, present and future, with future imperfect and […]
VERY RARELY, YOU might be lucky enough to have a film cross your radar that presents you with an understanding of the intrinsic value of telling stories so much that you feel the need to speak of it in whispers. It’s like a sacred entity has been brought […]
CONVENTIONALLY, YOU MAY think of the horror genre, and the images that pop into your head will derive from western culture: Of vampires and werewolves and centuries-old gothic houses that creak and grumble under old untold tales. But we’re in Africa, and the yarns that unfurl here, can […]
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