INTERVIEW WITH NTATE PHAKELA

INTERVIEW WITH NTATE PHAKELA BY PRETTY MANGENA

Portrait of Ntate Phakela

IQHAWE: Please tell us a bit more about who you are and what you do?

NTATE: My name is Ntate Phakela, I am a black child born in South Africa and I live in Vosloorus. I am a believer and I like the way things work in the industry I am in, which is one of the reasons why I went into it. I was inspired by what it is about. I tend to ask questions like what is Film? What is music? And what is its purpose? So that was my thought process when I went into film, which then opened me to photography and everything else. So, I am a multidisciplinary artist. I am everything I want to be whenever I want to be. I am whatever I need to be at that time in my life.

IQHAWE: Please walk us through the journey you have had thus far.

NTATE: I have always liked taking pictures from a very young age, but it was never a career path that I wanted to take and I have always had a deep love for movies, but I never wanted to make them. I wanted to become a psychologist. But I got to a point where I took a gap year after my matric year, and I took some time to think about what exactly I want to bring to this earth. What is my influence here, and what can I do that can be effective, especially in the way we move as a society? How can I touch people’s lives and change the way they look at themselves and the way they perceive life in a space that is creative? I have always been inclined to the creative aspect of life. After analysing everything that was in front of me, I realized film is the correct place. IQHAWE: How would you best describe your work, for someone who has not seen nor came into contact with it? Its intention and its purpose

NTATE: I try my best to make the work reflect me. It is one thing to reflect your environment or the world you live in and the society that you find yourself in, however, I think a lot of us young creatives forget the fundamental part of valuing who we are first as creatives and finding our own foundation, making sure that our identity as creatives is solid. So that for me is what I resonate with. It is building that foundation for me and making sure I identify myself as this kind of artist and I try to make my work true, authentic, and honest. Those for me are the three most important things.

IQHAWE: What aspect of what you shoot resonates with you the most?

NTATE: What resonates with me the most is just human beings in general. I genuinely love the way we are. To give an analogy, we watch wildlife because we are fascinated by how the animals live and interact with each other, and for me, that is how I look at human beings. We are such powerful beings and just us being, speaks so much volume, which is why I enjoy it because those people carry stories and memories. Essentially, for me, it is reflecting on who we are in our purest and divineness form.

IQHAWE: What is your creative process?

NTATE: It is all based on the idea for me. So, if I have something on my mind, I will do it. I am quite bad at technicalities. I learnt lighting under lockdown. I see why it

is important in storytelling, but it was never my main passion. The core of my creative process is making sure that the idea that I have in my mind is at its best.

IQHAWE: How would you best describe the medium of your art?

NTATE: It is dialogue! It is a platform we human beings use to communicate with each other. It is a cell phone, that is what our pictures are, and we can communicate through them. The images represent hope and life. They represent parts of ourselves that we might not necessarily have access to. Just like iPhone represents a wealth status, images represent a part of us we hope for or a part of us we would like to be. A part of us we have inside of us, but we do not have a way to express it in our daily lives. So, turn it into pictures and we make it into films. It is dialogue, a platform for us to share ideas and become the things we imagine ourselves as.

IQHAWE: With all the work you have done, which have been some of your favourite projects or images?

NTATE: The First has to be my first ever project. It was a passion project and my first directing project. It was my first ever anything. It became so beautiful because it was beyond everyone on set. After all, we had never done it before. It was close to my heart and I enjoyed making it.

The rest share equal sentiment to me because they represent a part of my life that I was going through or a thought that I was having at that moment in my life, and that is what I felt like I needed to create.

IQHAWE: What have been some of the most impactful moments?

So, I feel there is nothing for me to be proud of in that sense. I do not think I have one because every time I create a new project, I look back at my previous work and I think to myself what was I doing, I should have done this better or fixed that. So that drive for me to go from strength to strength makes it hard for me to reflect. But I do think my milestone is the fact that I started, I do not know where this journey is going to take me, but I am glad that I started it.

IQHAWE: Do you have creative blocks and if so, how do you deal with them?

NTATE: This is a nice question because the answer inspires me. The first time I faced a creative block, I had to question ‘why?’ Why am I facing this and what does this mean to me? It is not just a creative block; it means there is something that I am not looking into that I should be looking into. I found that in that moment, I had a creative block because I was trying to create what I knew the audience would interact with. So, I was creating for the audience and not myself, which is why my mind was blocked. And when I defended that and went around that obstacle, it has been smooth sailing ever since because every time I am required to create something, I go back to why I am creating this and the ideas flow. It is a matter of seeking progression and not perfection.

IQHAWE: How do you go about getting your work out there?

NTATE: It is quite organic, the people I have connected with are people who resonate with the work. However, there are instances where I have actively engaged people to be more specific about strategic engagement.

IQHAWE: Practical advice for aspiring artists?

for yourself in terms of what that means to you and what makes you happy. You must have a four-step attitude where you are: intentional - deliberate - decisive - committed. Those are the four steps to anything being a success in your life.

IQHAWE: The Malephepha Molefe project, please tell a bit more about that

NTATE: Malephepha was inspired by me watching a live Instagram from one of my biggest inspiration in the industry. One of them said something that sparked a fire inside of me. For about a year, I had always had the idea in my mind to do a series about characters in our society who represent our family and friends, particularly black South Africans. We wrote the script with my sister and everything else just came together. We tore down my mother’s wardrobe and found what we could work with and we just went in. We will be introducing new characters, in total there are seven characters and each character will have their own episode. The purpose of the work is to accurately represent people in our society that I have come across. I want people to fall in love with them, and what makes you fall in love with them is how much you resonate with these characters.

IQHAWE: Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

NTATE: I want to be very honest! From a very young age, I was taught to take every day as it comes and that makes it hard for me to consider and to look at my future. I do not know if I am going to be alive tomorrow! I wake up every single day and that is what I struggle with in life. That is what I think about every single morning. I have no control over whether I wake up tomorrow or not. So why am I planning for years in advance; what do I have now and what can I do with what I have now and if I do wake up tomorrow, is what I did yesterday better than the day before? So, my goal for the next five years is that I need to be 10 times better than what I am now. 53