When did you move to the Netherlands?  What was that like? 

I left South Africa to avoid getting conscripted into the apartheid army.  Two years of conscription was compulsory for all so-called white men at the time.  I moved to the Netherlands in 1983 when I was 19 years old.  I received political asylum and worked at the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement for a few years before entering the Netherlands Film and Television Academy to study film direction and screenwriting.  The 80s was a wonderful time to live in Amsterdam.  The punk squatter movement was in its heyday, and there was a tremendously rich artistic scene.  Lots of clubs, like the Wyers, the Vrankryk, art galleries such as De Muur, pirate radio stations like Radio X.  [It was] a very stimulating environment to conceive work in. There was also a fantastic improvised music scene centered around Amsterdam’s Bimhuis club. [I spent] many great nights there watching local and international legends create and invent the future of music, live on the spot.  And, of course, there was a very strong independent filmhuis culture.  Filmhuizen were cinemas run largely by volunteers, curated by film fanatics and generally quite well-attended.  The Desmet, the Rialto, a slightly more mainstream complex called the Movies on the Haarlemmerdijk, and of course the impeccable Film Museum in the Vondelpark – I had the great privilege of discovering so much cinema in those wonderful buildings.  Parajanov, Bunuel, Larissa Shepitko, Tarkovsky, but also Herschell Gordon Lewis, Jodorowsky, Billy Woodberry, Marguerite Duras.  I could go on and on.  

What led you to getting in touch with Masami Akita [Merzbow]?

I had been listening to a lot of Japanese noise, CDs and cassettes that I would find at the wonderful Staalplaat [in Amsterdam], which was originally on the Paleisstraat and then later in the basement of the Fort van Sjakoo anarchist bookshop on the Jodenbreestraat.  Of all the various noisemakers it was Merzbow that stood out for me – a pristine, very cruel aesthetic that appealed to my sense of what would work as soundtrack for the kinds of films I wanted to make. When Masami performed in Amsterdam at De Graan Silo in 1988 it was the single most intense sonic experience I’ve ever had.  My ears were ringing for many days afterwards; I suppose it was as close to actually going deaf that one could get. 

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