AFROVIBES FESTIVAL 2025

Film screening: Kassaram (2020) / The word Kassaram is derived from an old Malay word meaning 'great chaos' or 'things that are out of place'. Thania Petersen's animated film explores the artistic strategies used by European colonisers in the past to delineate hierarchies between different communities in South Africa.

Film screening: Jawap (2025)/Jawap means ‘invitation to sing and praise together’. Petersen writes: 'My journey to liberation began by following the migration of Sufi music – sound as memory, sound as freedom. I was drawn to this music as a living archive, a force that transcends boundaries, where time disappears and community becomes the only compass. After five years of intense listening and travelling, I realised that this music is not bound to linear time. We attach enormous value to the past in order to liberate ourselves and ask our ancestors to carry us. But what if the technologies that guided them did not come from the past, but from what is yet to come? My film asks the question: what should we remember? In its repetition and resonance lies not only memory, but also a future waiting to be heard. For me, this is the essence of sonic liberation.