We are proud to announce Sondes Jelassi as our third Anti- Apartheid, Now commissioned artist.
Sondes Jelassi was born in Milan and is an Italian-Tunisian Illustration and Animation student at London Metropolitan University.
Her influences range from Japanese and American artists, animators, and filmmakers, exponents of the 1980s, to Italian fumetto and noir aesthetic from the 1960s-1970s, as well as earlier tales’ illustrations of the same time.
She attributes growing up in the 1990s and the strong influence of western pop culture during that time as a big influence on her “style” of working.
In a conversation we had with Sondes, we first asked what it was that drew her to the commission with The Liliesleaf Trust.
She replied,
‘During academic practice I enjoyed the process of constructing a visual story and creating a Zine for the Liliesleaf Trust, using the online archive ‘Forward to Freedom’ as my aid. Here I invested myself into the historical pictures as a reference to my project. – different stories about the Anti-apartheid movement. The purpose of this project was to better engage the young adult audience and to emphasize this sensitive topic through the specific visual communication practice, by also the usage of Monoprinting.’
THE FRIEND WHO HAS BEEN BITTEN: “this guy is the narrator’s friend who has been bitten by the police dog. The Deco aesthetic is a choice that I made for all the faces featuring into the animation, but also here to link the friend and the mother to the same path: expressing suffering through two different but equal emotions.” (Jelassi)
She went on to say that she enjoyed the process of building a visual story for the first time, with the help of the trust’s archive,
‘I saw interesting historical pictures to refer to, short stories about the Anti-apartheid movements, which I also investigated by watching some suggested movies such as Cry Freedom, directed by Richard Attenborough in 1987, reading historical notes and listening to podcasts which were all about the historical period from the 1950s to the 1990s in the UK and South Africa.’
With all of this new knowledge, she decided to produce a piece of animation that highlights specifically Steve Biko’s story and timeline, with a length between 1.30 to 2.00 minutes.
The artwork will include story sequences made by a mix of analog and digital illustrations, with a pre-planned Story Board with chronological accuracy. She will then produce a stop motion animation, made by multiple photography shots of the drawn sketches, all refined digitally on the Procreate app, edited to create the final animation piece with the help of Premiere Pro. She consulted her university lecturers for feedback to make sure that she was on the right path to start to deliver and shape the draft of her idea for this project.
She says she chose to portray Steve Biko’s life, because she wanted ‘to communicate to the youngest adults the value and the power of real friendship, in this case within the black activist Steve Biko and the white South African journalist Donald Woods, and how they reshaped part of history from racial discrimination and injustice into activism.’
PROTEST IN THE STREET: “This scene opens the story with the stop motions. It is the Nelson Mandela reproduction on the wall with the raised fist and is in contrast to the police machine in the street. Considering the presence of the narrator/character, the composition gives a sense of reality but also it works as a dreamy, iconic image. Whilst this kind of street art would not have been found in apartheid South Africa, I wanted to draw the viewer in through an aesthetic and colours which reminded me of Saturday morning educational cartoons of the 1970’s.” (Jelassi)ANIMATIC
"this gif is an animation draft about the emotional impact I want to give to particular moments inside the animation. In this case the flashback of the mother with the zoom in, meanwhile she turn herself to show her face, it catch attention." (Jelassi)
We look forward to releasing Sondes’s finished piece to coincide with the celebration of Steve Biko’s birthday on 18 December 2022.
Anti- Apartheid, Now is a Liliesleaf Trust UK led project, funded by Arts Council England with support from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust and London Borough of Islington’s Local Initiative Fund.
Written by Matthew Hahn, Anti-Apartheid Now! Project Producer, September 2022
