Jul’Hoansi

Independent Films director Jacob John Harmer showcases his filmmaking skills in this bewitching short Jul’Hoansi.  

Harmer, who started off editing shorts and promos before moving into directing spots for the likes of Nike, Microsoft, Nespresso and Vice, has teamed up with producer Kay Czuba, to create this eight-minute masterpiece exploring the spiritualism of the San bushmen of southern Africa, a tribe of hunter-gatherers thought to be the oldest population on Earth.

The film spans the lifetime of a tribesman from youth to old age, through the recollections of a village elder as he muses on the interplay between the living and the ghosts of ancestors that haunt both the land and the imaginations of the bushmen, appearing to them in dreams as animals.  

With a haunting soundscape and arresting visuals shot through with menace – a knife is held against rough skin; an arrow is dipped in poison – there is a mesmerising, mysterious quality to the film. There's also a sadness as it mournes the traditions of a people whose numbers are decreasing as globalisation encroaches on age-old ways and habitats.