This is my graduate film, inspired both by personal experience of growing up in political exile and the evidence that emerged the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; it was heavily influenced by some of the theoretical approaches we were introduced to in our final year, and also served as an exploration of the medium of animation itself. The making of the film was an attempt to understand, through a series of stream-of-consciousness sequential drawings, how apartheid and other systems of oppression can become embodied by those who live under them; I tried to make the process as immediate and unedited as the medium of animation allowed. The film explores the affects of oppression through the ambivalent and iconic African image of the Baobab tree - at once both nurturing and ominous - that continues to grow and harbour life despite its deformed, unbalanced appearance.
