SA award-winning filmmaker Godisamang Khunou walked away with an award in the fifth edition of Digital Lab Africa (DLA) for using virtual reality (VR) to tell a story.
Khunou was among the seven leading African digital arts innovators who won a DLA award last month. The seven winners were able to use mediums such as animation, extended reality, which is part of VR, and video gaming to tell stories about Africa. Khunou used virtual reality in telling her story, Black Women and Sex.
Khunou, who was born in Rustenburg, North West, fell in love with the digital technology while attending different film festivals, believing that the world was heading towards the virtual reality experience.
“I was attracted to it through the international festivals and conferences I attended. As soon as I understood how it worked, I wanted to try it. When I started the subject of the politics of sex, people asked why I was not using VR to explore the subject matter. At first I was intimidated by it but I decided to explore it.
“I wanted to interact with the new medium. I have started and I want to get better with it. I love the fact that it allows you to explore your creativity. Winning this award gives us a chance to be more creative and explore. I love that there are more women exploring these mediums.”
Part of Khunou’s prize is a residence at Electric South Labs in Cape Town where VR junkies meet and learn more about digital entertainment. The 30-year-old, who is pushing boundaries when it comes to storytelling, says the material for the virtual reality experience is shot differently with its own camera equipment and edited specifically for the experience. The virtual piece features three women who are in different water spaces – river, ocean and waterfall.
“Through the voices of three females from different parts of Africa (Nigeria, Zambia and SA) with different sexual identities, I touch on issues that we as the society seldom talk about and show how the politics of sex connect in different contexts. I chose water because these women are naked and I have used water as a medium to express their feeling and motions around sex,” Khunou says.
“One of these women speaks about how religion limits black women from expressing their sexuality. There is a transgender [person] who speaks about representation of trans women, which happens a lot in porn. She also speaks about the rejection and violence directed at them. We explore spirituality of sex under water.”
Khunou says the VR technology has existed for a while but is only now being embraced all over the world. She believes the future of VR entertainment is bright. Having studied filmmaking at Afda, the SA School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance in Johannesburg, she has also worked for MultiChoice and as a film critic for an online magazine.
DLA programme manager Eduardo Cachucho says: “The Digital Lab Africa remains one of the most exciting opportunities for digital creatives all across Africa. The emerging digital arts talents have been offered a foundation to fast-track their project development and are supported by the DLA creative industries ecosystems in the countries of Africa and the world.
“We are grateful for our sponsors and partners for making this a possibility over the years and we are also looking forward to sharing more about our DLA 2022 opportunities, which will launch in February 2022.”
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