A film inspired by a Stellenbosch University-driven project, to capture the forgotten history of the EOAN opera group, has been selected as the only documentary from Africa to compete for an international award at the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) in Amsterdam this year.
IDFA is one of the world's leading documentary film festivals and is dedicated to the exhibition and promotion of groundbreaking creative documentaries .
An Inconsolable Memory, produced by filmmaker Aryan Kaganof, will compete with a number of other international documentaries for the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. It will also be the first time that the documentary is screened internationally.
I am absolutely delighted to get the opportunity to showcase this documentary to an international audience, said Kaganof.
The filmmaker has also been chosen, along with two others from Africa to participate in the World Documentary Exchange (WDE). The WDE is a marketing programme that aims to support filmmakers in search for distribution channels for their film as well as deepen their knowledge of the documentary market . With this opportunity, the filmmaker will amongst others have the chance to engage with sales agents and TV buyers from the European markets.
The EOAN group was established in 1933 and functioned as a cultural organisation for so-called coloured persons from District Six. The organisation presented opera, drama and ballet productions and became particularly famous between the 1950's and 1970's for the opera shows it staged in South African and overseas. Today the group is based at the Joseph Stone Theatre in Athlone.
The EOAN group was South Africa's first grassroots opera company. It played a leading role in the development and performance of opera in South Africa and Cape Town in particular. The book about their history, Eoan - Our Story, is the first to tell the group's history, and this film not only complements the written history, but gives a unique perspective on the stories collected for the book, says Dr Hilde Roos and Mr Wayne Muller, co-editors of the book, which was released in January by Fourthwall Books.
The film presenter was Ms Ruth Fourie, the widow of Eoan baritone Lionel Fourie, and the production manager was Roos, a post-doctoral fellow from the Music Department at SU.
The University's connection to the Eoan group was established in 2008 when it took ownership of more than 105 document containers and 705 folders pertaining to Eoan via a permanent lending agreement reached by the Eoan Board and the institution. Ms Santie de Jongh, an archivist at the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS), was then tasked with sifting through the materials and establishing an Eoan Archive that is today housed in the DOMUS. Roos, who was still a PhD student focusing on opera history at that time, decided to create a chronological reconstruction of the history of the group in order to investigate whether it would be possible to compile a book.
About 45 interviews were conducted with Eoan members and families over a period of five years and transcribed.
A committee, which consisted of members from SU and Eoan, was responsible for working through all the information and providing guidance to arrive at the end product. The members were Roos, Muller, Fourie, De Jongh, Prof Stephanus Muller, a professor in the Music Department at SU and the head of the DOMUS; prof Christine Lucia, an eminent music scholar and Extraordinary Professor in music at SU; Mr Ronnie Samaai, the brother of the Eoan tenor Gerald Samaai; and Eoan bass Phillip Swales.
The EOAN project constitutes a first in South African music studies: the oral history methodology, the community-centred decision making that informs the book, the collaborative research and the creative reflection on that process through documentary film, said Muller.
The book itself is unique with chapters divided according to themes and the spoken language of respondents kept as is. It also touches on the often controversial history of the group which led to it making political compromises during the apartheid years in order to continue operating. These included separate performances for white and non-white audiences as well as the use of funds received from the Department of Coloured Affairs.
At the time that the book was released, Eoan opera singer, Martin Johnson (73) said: I am really excited that this book, which focuses on the Eoan group's history, is being published. I am over the moon to tell you the truth.
Most people do not realise the worth of works produced by great artists when the artists are still alive and often they have died poor as a result of this. We were the first opera group on the African continent. It's like I tell my grandchildren, one day you are going to hear about us, how we were the first opera singers on the African continent.
According to Kaganof, he let the filmed material from members like Johnson lead him in the final creation process.
The material that was collected during the filming of interviews with the elderly members of the Eoan group was what drove the direction of the documentary in the end. I wanted to tell the story of the Eoan group via the memories of the members that were shared with us on camera. However, as we know, memories are not always coherent, are often ambiguous, at times inconsequential, and contradictory. I tried to capture that feeling via the different types of film material I used (for instance cell phone footage), explained Kaganof.
The film also used the story of the Eoan group to try to understand what it means to be classified coloured, the compromises that people that were categorised in this way had to make to maintain their humanity during apartheid and in Eoan's case, the compromises that they had t
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
A film inspired by a Stellenbosch University-driven project, to capture the forgotten history of the EOAN opera group, has been selected as the only documentary from Africa to compete for an international award at the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) in Amsterdam this year. 
