The 2026 Encounters Talks series is a free (donation-based) series masterclasses, and conversations taking place across venues in Cape Town from 5–12 June. We invite you to RSVP as soon as possible to secure your place.
If you’re interested, you can find more details here (pdf) or on our website here. See below for more details:
Friday 5 June
Iyatsiba Lab, Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), University of the Western Cape (UWC), Woodstock, Cape Town
Women as Workers and Warriors
11:00 – 12:30 SAST
African women on the forefront is not a new advent, but these positions of power have purposefully been buried, and are now slowly excavated by our storytellers. We journey with women truck drivers redefining the road in Truck Mama (Dir. Zippy Nyaru), and single mothers on the frontlines of public health in Mama-Demic (Dir. Nicole Schafer), we stand alongside poets repatriating spiritual heritage in Bones (Dir. Nomandla Vilikazi) and urgently reflect on bodies and power in Marxism & Period Pains (Dir. Mmabatho Montsho). At the same time, we remember how women throughout history have always been warriors and workers, holding positions of power and contributing significantly to their communities and nations since the dawn of time.
Filmmaking as Reparative Practice
13:30 – 15:00 SAST
Filmmaking is a powerful process of psychosocial repair. To delve into fragmented memories, confusing chronologies and unknown histories, and slowly piece it together allows us to shape a whole story and imbue it with new meaning. The lens can provide a seemingly objective witness, often helping difficult conversations unfold. In the edit, we watch and rewatch, gaining agency over our story. From confronting state violence and reckoning with personal grief in My Father and Qaddafi (Dir. Jihan), to truth-telling and emotional legacy under apartheid in My Father’s Son (Dir. Elan Gamaker), we explore how storytelling through documentary filmmaking becomes a kind of suture, drawing the edges together with care so that something whole can finally emerge.
Saturday 6 June
Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), University of the Western Cape (UWC), Woodstock, Cape Town
My Tongue Bound Stretches a Map of Sorrow: Reclaiming Culture as a Restorative Pathway
11:30 – 13:00 SAST
We reclaim culture as a restorative pathway to rectify social injustices. By reviving languages, rituals and stories that were suppressed and marginalised, we reconnect with the values, and relationships that shape us. We explore how resistance was wrought through storytelling in rhyme in Notes from the Underground (Dirs. Adrian Van Wyk and Chris Kets), how the body becomes a powerful communicator and repository of memory when speech is suppressed in WAT WAS HIE? (Dir. Luke De Kock) and how a spiritual calling and return to ritual allow for deep restoration in Eyes to see (Haneem Christians). This deliberate retrieval of cultural practices restores continuity across generations, offering a necessary sense of self-understanding and communal belonging.
Settling Spirits: The Role of the Storyteller and Museum in Repatriation and Spiritual Justice
13:45 – 15:15 SAST
The storyteller plays a vital role in cultural repatriation, translating loss, memory and meaning between affected communities and institutions. As an interpreter of oral histories ceremonial practice, they contextualise cultural objects and human remains not as inert museum or scientific artefacts, but as active carriers of ancestry, identity and spiritual lore. In Elephants & Squirrels (Dir. Gregor Brändli), the storyteller frames why return matters beyond ownership, following Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige as she retraces the colonial-era journey of two Swiss men who collected specimens and artefacts, including human remains, from the region taking them back to Europe for ‘scientific research.’ In light of global repatriation battles, we ask what role museums play in their willingness to cede control where ethically required, and explore how museums in the Majority World have led this charge.