Their journey might have ended in 2015, but this year South Africans will be able to relive Twenty Journey’s adventure through their documentary, The Journeymen. The film will be showcased at this year’s Durban International Film Festival starting the 16 June 2016.
According to the documentary’s description, The Journeymen questions if late president Nelson Mandela’s vision for equality in a rainbow nation has been achieved. The film tries to answer this question through a kaleidoscopic set of responses from average South Africans. What they discover is disturbing, beautiful, thought provoking and, more than anything, movingly surreal. The documentary promises to show the underlying demons of South Africa’s troubled national soul, but also its deep and profound beauty.
The Journeymen is made from the footage three South African photographers accumulated on their 24 000 kilometre journey through the length and breadth of their home country in 2014 in a project they called Twenty Journey. The three photographers, Sipho Mpongo, Sean Metelerkamp and Wikus de Wet, all had different focusses from the start: Mpongo documented the “born-frees” (those born after the fall of Apartheid in South Africa); Metelerkamp sought to capture South Africa’s idiosyncrasies; and de Wet looked to discover the relationship between the land and the people who occupy it.
