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.
FILM REVIEW: TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM. WHAT IS THE holy fire that gives a documentary film, muscle? The thing that makes a doccie shimmer with the same kind of sexiness as a fictional thriller, bringing in audiences thirsty to learn and curious to understand, and rendering […]
FILM REVIEW: MOTHER TO MOTHER. WHAT DO YOU say to the woman whose daughter your son has murdered? This is the nub of Sindisiwe Magona’s fictional tale, Mother to Mother, about the murder of Amy Biehl, a young American graduate who came to South Africa, an anti-apartheid activist. […]
MANY OF US can see the flaws in our country’s leadership. Not many of us have the balls, the centrality of total focus – and maybe the naiveté – to think we can take it on and bring a happier face to a country battered by violence and […]
FILM REVIEW: BANKSY, MOST WANTED. ARE YOU, PERHAPS, Banksy in your private life? Do you slip out of context, don a workman’s overall and become invisible as you paint clever mischief through stencils or spray cans onto unsuspecting public walls? The core of sheer documentary gold is to […]
PODCAST REVIEW: MEGAN. SO, YOUR BEST friend finds herself “up the duff”. And you, who have decided that you will not have children, need to respond. This is the dilemma of Megan, played by Victoria Emslie, the sixth in the series of monologues, The End of the Line, […]
FILM REVIEW: FOR SAMA. SAY THE WORDS ‘Aleppo’ and ‘2016’ and if you have had a quarter of an ear on the news during that period, you will shiver with the memory of appalling atrocities perpetrated against Syrian civilians. In her intimate, multi-award-winning documentary, journalist Waad al-Kateab offers […]
PODCAST REVIEW: BRYONY. WHAT IS IT with the notion of idle chatter that fills up space and the woman who is serving your breakfast? What gives you the right to ponder her private parts and life choices over your scrambled eggs? This is the central theme of Bryony, […]
FILM REVIEW: CUNNINGHAM. HE REFUSED TO be known as ‘avant-garde’, but set fire to every dance cliché and rule that you can think of, in his outstanding and bold repertoire, answerable to no one. This was Merce Cunningham, celebrated in Alla Kovgan’s beautiful film, Cunningham, which features on […]
TRIBUTE TO STEPHEN ELIOVSON. TALENT IS A strange thing. Sometimes it flashes its feathers with an incendiary focus that is too wild for its environment. Jazz guitarist and master-musician Stephen Eliovson was a performer who had the talent and wisdom to harness that fire, but alas, he held […]
PODCAST REVIEW: MARY. ‘MARY’, THE FOURTH monologue in the Ink Jockey podcast series The End of the Line, seems to be older than the women we’ve heard so far. She ponders the way in which strangers feel it is their beholden right to barge into one’s life and […]
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