Singing Across The Divide Launch

The film project documents the assembling of a choir from the Muizenberg and Vrygrond communities, organized by musical director and performer, Lynne Poulsen-Blamire, culminating in a final public performance. While the two communities live side by side, they also represent an uncomfortable gulf that lingers between advantaged and disadvantaged communities, often translated quite blandly as ‘inequality’, a malady and byproduct of colonial and apartheid pasts.

The choir projects brings together these communities to celebrate and explore how through music people can find, reach out, understand and transcend the divides that seemingly separate each other. The choir film, while it has a local focus, is a deeply quintessential South African story of overcoming difficult situations and aspiring for a better world.

The story arc is about the meeting of participants as they practice, culminating in the grand final performance. In the process of telling the choir story, we will follow members of the choir to understand more about their lives, views on the world and how they survive, reflecting a diversity of perspectives. The film will engage with the intersection of a range of experiences