South Africa Special: Lebogang Rasethaba

Filmmaker Lebogang Rasethaba has always stood out – as a relatively well-off kid in Soweto, a black copywriter in South Africa’s predominantly white ad industry, and as a South African studying for a film MA in Beijing. He combines his outsider’s insight and an eye for the cool and applies them to impactful documentaries and branded content that make a difference

At the ripe old age of 32, director and filmmaker Lebogang Rasethaba has done some phenomenal stuff. He’s released a globally acclaimed documentary. He’s co-founded Arcade, one of South Africa’s hottest new production companies. He studied for a Masters in film in Beijing and defended his degree in fluent Mandarin in front of a roomful of Chinese academics. However, he’s no match for a common-or-garden bee.

The day before our meeting, Rasethaba gets stung on the neck and winds up in hospital. Luckily for all parties (except the now-deceased bee) there’s no lasting damage, and Rasethaba is able to join shots to talk about being part of South Africa’s new creative class and his adventures in the world of branded content.

Born in Soweto township in 1983, Rasethaba came into the world during a turbulent time in South Africa’s history. His “politically disruptive” father was being investigated by the South African Special Branch and fled to the US where he spent years in exile.

It sounds like the plot of a tragic film, but Rasethaba insists his was a pretty normal background. “I would never say I was part of the ‘have-nots’,” he says firmly. “My mother was training to become an attorney. We had a car, a TV, a VCR – and a hotplate.” Of course, crime was unavoidable, and from the age of six, Rasethaba would stand guard against theft… of apricots from the tree in their front yard. 

Later, the family moved to the leafy, predominantly white suburb of Midrand, where for the first time Rasethaba “became aware of [my] blackness as something bad, or wrong, or ill-fitting in society”. The situation of being the “first black ‘something’” – and all its attendant issues – has touched his career at many points, most notably during his brief stint in the agency world.

Working as a copywriter at JWT Cape Town, Rasethaba was struck by the “tangible absence of a black creative class” – particularly in an industry communicating to a black majority. Under-representation aside, “it was really nice to be exposed to that level of talent: we’ve got the most amazing cinematographers, storytellers, designers… Everybody that does something creative ends up in advertising.”

For Rasethaba, however, it was only ever a pit-stop and, after whiling away a year “writing random shit – poems to girls I liked, stories about my friends – with no real intention of doing anything with it, just writing for the sake of writing” – he quit to do a Masters degree in film.

Given the choice of studying abroad, most aspiring filmmakers would probably head to the birthplace of the silver screen, but Rasethaba chose China instead: “All the problems in the world come from Hollywood – all those representations of race and gender and class, and I didn’t want to be part of that. Why not go to a place where they use cinema for something completely different?”

I see a different South Africa

Five years later he was still in Beijing, making short films about “the hip-hop community – skaters, misfits, people who had dropped out of school to run clothing stores – the real marginalised in Chinese society”, whom he befriended by explaining the nuances in Nas’ and Biggie’s lyrics. He became fluent in Mandarin – albeit a slang-heavy version which made his professors blanch – and even defended his thesis in the language, a surreal experience in which he “rambled on for an hour about African cinema” to a roomful of Chinese academics, while the dean of the university sat on an elevated chair, clad in a red qipao.

Experiencing original sub-cultures, a side of China most foreigners never see, was fascinating territory for a filmmaker and Rasethaba says he could happily have stayed in the Middle Kingdom – but browsing through blogs he noticed a similar creative surge back home. “I was making films about cool Chinese kids doing cool stuff in China, but there were cool kids, like I See A Different You, doing that in South Africa, too. I wanted to be a part of all the exciting things that were happening.”

Mixing the raw and the well-cooked

Rasethaba wanted to come home to make documentaries that did more than just scratch the surface. “The problem with South Africa is we often don’t realise how interesting and how valuable and how insightful our personal narratives are,” he explains. “And we often cap ourselves. We say ‘No, we’ve done enough about that [particular subject].’ And I really don’t think we have.”

In his documentary, Prisoner 46764, Rasethaba covers the much-discussed anti-apartheid struggle – but via an unsung hero of the movement, Andrew Mlangeni, who spent 26 years behind bars on Robben Island, while 2014’s Future Sound Of Mzansi explores South Africa’s underground electronic music scene in unprecedented depth and breadth.

Future Sound…, co-directed by acclaimed South African music producer Spoek Mathambo, was the film that made Rasethaba’s name; a paean to the unique sound of the cities and townships of his homeland. We’ve all heard of dubstep and deep house, but what about Durban qhum, which grew out of the city’s strong drug culture, or Shangaan electro, a musical expression of the eponymous tribe’s marginalisation?

For Rasethaba, the most interesting revelation of the film is how the internet has levelled the playing field for music-makers: “You’ve got all these different people producing these different sounds in response to their environment, and for the first time in history people have equal opportunities to share [those sounds] with consumers.” Critically acclaimed, the film has been screened around the world, including on VICE’s Thump channel.

Future Sound… was also the first time Rasethaba saw how the two worlds of “raw storytelling, with no filters or barriers to the characters” and “the highest-level production finish possible” could happily co-exist – a breakthrough realisation for his commercial work, which would ultimately lead to the formation of Arcade. Since signing to Egg Films in 2013, he’d been struggling with the transition from a lo-fi approach of shooting and editing everything himself, to “the fucking circus that is a team of 40 people who are all going to rally behind your vision.”

Recalling the first “very, very mediocre” TV commercials he made through Egg, Rasethaba can laugh, but at the time he felt “really shitty” for letting down Egg’s founder Colin Howard: “I was one of the very few black filmmakers that had been given all these chances, money and resources, and I just never really lived up to the hype.” He knew he had some talent as a director – the success of Future Sound Of Mzansi was proof of that – but it didn’t fit the rigid confines of a 30- or 60-second spot.

What allowed Rasethaba to “deliver at [my] optimum level, creatively and narratively” turned out to be branded content. Early in 2015, together with Howard and producer Will Nicholson, Rasethaba launched Arcade as a new division of Egg, devoted to commercial films combining a more minimal, guerrilla style of shooting with the backup of an established production company.  

With a growing reel of films for the likes of Ballantines x Boiler Room, Absolut, Red Bull and adidas, Rasethaba is confident that he’s found his niche: “I’m never going to make a really good advert for sugar, but what I can do is help a brand interact with a subculture in an interesting way.” And while he’ll “never claim to be some pioneer or maverick on branded content, what I have been able to do is negotiate how these two [elements] come together, because I understand both of them quite independently of the other. That’s what brands want and what content needs to be.”

He points to a recent project, Ziyabanda for Castle Lite beer, featuring a song made by sampling ice-related sounds and recorded at -2.5C (the temperature at which the beer is ‘lagered’) as an example of a local brand that’s taken a leap of faith and been rewarded. “We’re taking a chance with people that are willing to take chances with us,” is how he explains Arcade’s approach. “Maybe some stuff will fail, but if the stars align and shit comes together, it will be pretty amazing.”  

The future plans of Rasethaba

Rasethaba’s year ahead sounds pretty amazing too, with plans to grow Arcade’s roster of directors (“We need to. I’m swamped and I don’t like saying no to work.”) and two big projects slated for release – an MTV documentary on race in South Africa and the highly anticipated follow-up to Future Sound… – which look set to cement his status as one of Johannesburg’s creative luminaries. And for now, that’s exactly where he wants to be. “Sure, I guess I could go to Cape Town and be a hip young filmmaker, but I don’t want that shit. I want to be part of a class of people that are actually going to be remembered one day as having had an impact on our society.”