CONTAINER

By Meghna Singh & Simon Wood

 Background
Within spitting distance of Clifton beach, a
playground to the privileged white South
Africans, lie the remains of the Sao Jose
paquette de Africa, a working Portuguese
slave ship that sank with 212 slaves onboard
in 1794, their hands and legs shackled as
they drowned. A few kilometres from where
the wreck lies cargo ships enter and leave
Cape Town’s busy port laden with thousands
of shipping containers, their contents invisible,
rarely discussed.

Playing on the theme of the ‘invisible’ our

project Container uses the hidden world of
goods crisscrossing the globe in anonymous
shipping containers to highlight the lives of
the invisible millions that continue to be
enslaved in new forms of modern day slavery.
The shipwreck, those invisible containers and
contemporary economic servitude is what
drives us from South Africa to tell this story to
the world.

Overview
Positioned at the intersection of virtual reality and
installation art, the project invites people into a
surreal world of containers, where they witness
the truth behind the ‘invisiblized’. Our journey
begins at Clifton beach that hides the secret of the
drowned slaves. The experience is about
unraveling this secret. The viewer is taken on a
cyclic journey that ends where it once started. A
mix of documentary and constructed reality we
show people trapped in an endless historical cycle
of servitude. As a part of the cyclic process the
viewer is taken us on an unknown journey into the
world of products and people.

The ocean cannot speak but has ways in which it

reminds us of those who were chained, those who
drowned, those immersed in new forms of
economic servitude and those made invisible. It is
not only the outsourcing of the production of
commodities to the developing world that seeks
cheap labour; world major cities are lled with
invisible people forced into economic and
domestic servitude. People have become
commodities, which is the very de nition of
slavery: people as products.

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 Treatment
Container is a VR180 3D lm with characters in close
proximity to the viewer, enabling a hyperreal tactility
and viscerality of the constructed environments. By
disrupting the comfort of one’s personal space we
aim to facilitate an emotional engagement with the
human condition that moves the audience.
Opposing the 180 degrees of light, 180 degrees
darkness follows the audience through the
experience, symbolising the continuous darkness that
the system of slavery has brought to our society.

In addition, we use match-cuts within a non linear

narrative to morph time, space and characters into
one another. To remind the viewer of the continuous
and wide spread nature of this evil across human
history.

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 User Experience
Container, a VR180 3D experience, invites
viewers into the physical installation of a
shipping container, simulated with an open roof
and back wall. Up to six audience members are
guided inside the container, tightly packed with
a variety of goods, by an actor dressed as a
dockworker, wearing a neon jacket. Opening the
door, he instructs the participants to sit amongst
the cargo and wear their VR headsets to watch
the lm. The dockworker/actor stays inside
throughout the experience if any assistance is
required.

Once they have nished viewing the VR 180

lm, he shouts instructions for the viewers to
make their way out of the container amidst the
noise of cranes moving and forklifts beeping.
They leave the container from the opposite side
to which they entered: an endless view of the
sea greets them.

* If it is not possible to set it up as an installation

experience, Container can be viewed on a
headset as a stand-alone experience either
online or in a VR Cinema.
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 EMERGENCE
The camera follows chains to the waters edge where a shipping Container emerges, the doors burst open, we enter the darkness. Going
underwater we dive into the depths of the ocean in search of the ancestors, search for the missing that haven’t been laid to rest yet.
 The master’s HOUSE
A colonial house maid trapped in servitude polishes the masters portrait and prepares for afternoon tea after unrolling a beautiful red carpet over an
enslaved man’s body.
 SUGAR
We nd ourselves surrounded by sugarcane, a heavily wounded Mozambican slave falls through the plantation. A man from Northern
Mozambique, he was forcefully enslaved and sent across the Atlantic to work in a sugarcane plantation in Brazil.
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 MASSAGE
A Korean massage parlour becomes the scene of an uncomfortable situation as a European sailor arrives. The young timid masseur tries to
escape her reality by gazing at a scenic picture reminding her of home.
 SWEATSHOP
A child labourer is woken up by the supervisor in cramped sweatshop in Bangladesh, the site for young children working
long hours with little sleep as they stitch sportswear for global brands.
 DROWNING
A woman resists as a container is engulfed by the ocean and sinks to the ocean bed.
 CONTAINER depot
In a busy container depot, shipping containers are being packed with products to be exported while dockworkers unpack goods that arrive in
the country. The circulation of these goods around the world to feed a consumerist society is enabled by the millions who came before and are
still trapped in servitude.

 RESURECTION
A man and a woman emerge from the ocean, dragging century old rusted chains onto an exclusive South
African beach, a privileged white family huddle together in fear.

 TEAM CONTAINER
MEGHNA SINGH-CO-DIRECTOR
Hailing from New Delhi, Meghna Singh is a visual artist and a researcher with a PhD in Visual Anthropology from the
University of Cape Town, South Africa. Working with mediums of video and installation, blurring boundaries between
documentary and ction, she creates immersive environments highlighting issues of ‘humanism’. She is a post
doctorate fellow on the Horizon 2020 European Union project titled ECHOES (European Colonial Heritage Modalites
in Entangled Cities). She is an associate fellow at the African Centre for migration and Society, WITS University,
Johannesburg and was an International fellow at the Institute of Creative Arts, University of Cape Town for 2016-2017.

She has been awarded numerous research and work grants: National Geographic Explorers Grant for Visual
Storytelling, Welcome Trust U.K, Oriental Foundation Lisbon, Pro-Helvetica Johannesburg, African Center for Cities,
University of Cape Town and the British Council. Meghna has exhibited widely around the world, published essays,
presented papers and given talks on the theme of visual methodologies to explore migration. Some of the places
include: Kashi art gallery Kochi, Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto Italy, Hangar Lisbon, LIVE ART Festival Cape Town,
Speilart festival Munich, Kerkennah#1 Tunisia.

SIMON WOOD CO-DIRECTOR

Director Simon Wood was the recipient of the 2020 World Press Photo ‘Online Video of Year’ award for his latest
lm ‘Scenes from a Dry City’. In August 2020 Wood received an Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Short
Documentary category.  ‘Scenes from a Dry City’ was produced by Academy Award Winner Laura Poitras and
Charlotte Cooke at Field of Vision.
Wood's next lm ‘Untamed’ currently in post production was selected for the Final Cut at the Venice International
Film Festival. The lm was also selected for IFP’s Spotlight on Documentaries for Independent Film Week in New
York City.
His previous lm ‘The Silent Form’ won four awards at the 2017 SAFTAS (South African Film and Television Awards).
This capped a successful year for the lm which had its world premiere in Toronto at Hot Docs. This was the second
year running that Wood had a lm selected for Hot Docs following his 2015 lm ‘Orbis’ which would later be
awarded ‘The Golden Ribbon’ for best international documentary by CICTV in Beijing. His previous documentary
‘Forerunners’ was selected for IDFA in 2011 after winning awards in Europe and North America.
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ELECTRIC SOUTH - PRODUCTION COMPANY

Electric South is a non-pro t company based in Cape Town, South Africa. It collaborates with artists across Africa in emerging storytelling by providing mentorship,
production services, funding to explore their worlds through immersive, interactive stories including virtual and augmented reality,

and other digital media. Electric South is supported by the Ford Foundation, the Bertha Foundation, the Goethe Institut, Blue Ice Docs, Hivos Digital Earth and Big
World Cinema. Their inaugural slate of four VR lms have screened at over 60 international festivals and exhibits, including the Berlinale, Tribeca, Seattle International
Film Festival and Shef eld Doc/Fest.

INGRID KOPP - PRODUCER

Ingrid Kopp is a co-founder of Electric South, a non-pro t initiative to develop virtual reality and emerging storytelling projects across Africa. She curates the Tribeca
Storyscapes programme for interactive and immersive work at the Tribeca Film Festival. Along with MIT’s Open DocLab and Dot Connector Studio, she produces
Immerse, a publication for Medium on emerging storytelling. Until the end of 2017, Ingrid was a Senior Consultant in the Interactive Department at the Tribeca Film
Institute. She was director of the department from 2011 to 2015, creating and running programmes like the TFI New Media Fund, Tribeca Hacks and TFI Interactive.
Ingrid has executive produced four VR lms: Nairobi Berries, Spirit Robot, The Other Dakar and Let This Be A Warning. These lms were rst shown at the Berlinale in
2017 and went on to screen at over 60 festivals and exhibits worldwide.

STEVEN MARKOVITZ - PRODUCER

Steven Markovitz is a South African lm and television producer. He has produced, co-produced and executive- produced features, documentaries and short lms.
Since 2007, he has worked all over Africa producing documentary series and ction. Markovitz co-founded: the production company Big World Cinema in Cape
Town in 1994, “Encounters” -the South African International Documentary Film Festival, the “Independent Producers Organisation” of South Africa, and the African
new media non-pro t, Electric South. His ction work includes executive-producing Stories of Our Lives (Toronto and Berlin), which won Berlinale’s Teddy Special
Jury award in 2015; producing the award-winning South African feature lm Love The One You Love (Durban, Busan, Goteborg); co-producing Viva Riva! (Toronto
and Berlin), the winner of MTV Movie Award for Best African Movie, 2011. He also executive-produced the feature lm Boy Called Twist (Cannes 2005) by Tim
Greene; and the South African/Canadian feature lm, Proteus (Berlin, Toronto, Sydney, Rio, Hamptons). He produced the feature lm Visa/Vie (Durban, Sao Paulo); the
short Inja (nominated for an Oscar® 2003); and Husk, which premiered In Of cial Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Steven has produced and executive
produced over 50 documentaries that have sold to over 40 countries including Beats of the Antonov (Toronto, IDFA, Dubai, FESPACO), winner of the TIFF People’s
Choice Documentary award; Congo in Four Acts ( Berlin, Hotdocs, IDFA), Behind the Rainbow (London International Film Festival, Rio, Tri Continental, FESPACO).
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