As some of you may know, Pieter — quite bravely, I think — asked me to be the subject of a piece he created for his postgraduate diploma in motion picture production.
In case you haven’t heard: he passed with cum laude. No small thing. Especially for a project this ambitious and sophisticated,
built — like many good things — on a shoestring and a certain amount of gaffer tape.
In the interview, I referenced a smoky mirror — and not just metaphorically. Pieter described the project early on as “’n gesprek oor kuns en kunsmatigheid… art and artifice… ’n doccie oor André die kunstenaar en denker, verweef met AI-beelde en gekontrasteer teen die natuurlike wêreld.”
He asked, “Sou ek en my kamera ‘n ‘fly on the wall’ kon wees?” He imagined a visual movement from the vastness of NASA’s cosmos into the small, intimate world of the artist — the micro within the macro.
And so the smoky mirror became literal. Pieter mounted a one-way mirror over the lens. I couldn’t look at him, or the camera — — only at myself.
But he could see me. That’s the paradox: artist and subject, reflecting and projecting, seeing and being seen. We blur. We flare.
There’s a kind of vulnerability in seeing yourself while being seen — the uncertainty of what’s actually being captured. Are you performing? Are you revealing? Or just trying to survive the next sentence?
But that’s also what makes Pieter’s work meaningful. He isn’t just documenting; he’s navigating something porous — between investigation and intuition, framing and feeling, clarity and ambiguity.
Hanlie mentioned to me something Pieter wrote — a kind of self-confession: Pieter the artist vs Pieter the detective. The dreamer pulling against the analyst.
Someone with responsibilities. ’n Man wat moes herbou ná verlies.
Covid crushed a lot of dreams. Pieter had to start over. But he didn’t just rebuild — he reimagined.
Trust Pieter to make a documentary that isn’t actually a documentary — at least not in the conventional sense.
He facilitates a re-imagining: here of how an artist might be seen, or see himself, or be asked to see himself while someone else watches through a mirror.
And this is also the bridge to his current work — his master’s degree in scriptwriting. Still navigating narrative through that same smoky lens. Knowing that every story is a construction. That reduction is deception. En tog bly ons stories vertel — want ons moet.
It is inspiring to know someone with the courage to be spinning somewhere between responsibility and reverie. A space where narratives don’t need neat endings. Where the mirror is allowed to stay smoky, and the beauty of the smokiness can have its moment.
Where you don’t have to be just one thing.
Pieter — congratulations. Not just for the cum laude — though it matters — but for staying with the work, for allowing and pursuing dreams, for keeping the flame a dancing.
For embracing ambiguity, facing necessary mundanity and banality, and still choosing to see.
For finding light, and for letting it flare.
And for inviting us, not to see just what’s clear, but to glimpse what might be possible.
Thank you!
