How do you tell a visual story about someone losing their sight? That’s the challenge directors Amílcar Patel and Chris Kets took on in 6SENSE, a documentary about SA Gqom producer Mxshi Mo.
Growing up in the rural foothills of the Drakensberg mountains, Mxshi faced the loss of both his parents and his eyesight. But instead of letting these challenges define him, he turned to music—teaching himself how to use production software to create new music and eventually connecting with an international record label.
6SENSE brings his story to life through experimental visuals, personal re-enactments, and an intimate perspective on resilience, creativity, and the power of technology to transform lives.
Between 10and5 caught up with Kamva Collective’s directors, Patel and Kets, to talk about their creative process, the challenges of filming across continents, and how 6SENSE expands the way we think about storytelling, disability, and African narratives.
10and5: Your speciality is crafting narratives about alternative African futures. What did you aim to achieve with this film, and what wider African and cultural issues did you want to highlight?
Amilcar Patel: Employing the power of narratives and the possibilities of digital connection as a tool for conscious economic change Kamva works as an intermedium exploring popular culture and future technologies to reimagine our world. As an African I am still constantly faced with the mainstream narrative about Africa – its failures and its lack of agency. Mxshi Mo`s story is one that runs counter to that narrative. It shows just how intelligently creative we are, it shows our resilience in the face of adversity, our wealth in community, our capacity to master technology. Showing this Africa is important to me.
Chris Kets: Mxshi`s disability retinitis pigmentosa is a little-known, yet it affects roughly 2 million people worldwide. By telling Mxshi’s story, the film brings awareness of and empathy for this condition. Beyond this, we hope that the film underscores how vital community and institutional support is in mitigating physical limitations.
10and5: What motivated you to make this film?
Chris: Kamva was initially approached by London-based electronic producer DJ Mina to partner with the British Council to film a brief interview with Mxshi about his compilation album produced by UK based More Time Records. We called Mxshi for a preliminary interview – and as soon as we ended the call Amilcar and I knew a short interview wouldn’t do justice to Mxshi`s story. We started immediately fleshing out a visual script. As artists using primarily a visual medium, it was an exciting challenge to imagine the world through someone with visual impairment.
Amilcar: Mxshi grew up in the under-resourced community of Mpophomeni in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains – incidentally an area that has birthed a few South African musical icons. Mxshi lost both parents while still young, and had to contend with progressive visual impairment. Yet through his focus, willpower and creativity Mxshi honed his craft, made thousands of songs, memorised the software manuals and ultimately connected with an established record label in the UK – of course no small feat. It’s a gentle small South African story, snippets of life really – that would allow the audience the possibility of emerging with a slightly larger perspective of the world.
Watch the trailer for 6SENSE here…
10and5: As filmmakers, how do you balance fictional elements with factual ones to tell a compelling story?
Kamva: There are so many magical elements in reality that as documentary filmmakers, we simply need to pay attention.
We used some re-enactments in our film, all of which were acted by Mxshi’s own family. His Gogo was played by Mxshi`s aunt. Little Mxshi is played by Mxshi’s young nephew – who has also been diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. DJ Vutela is played by Mxshi’s cousin. The characters were simply demonstrating their own memory, and that is what made the film compelling. There was little need for us to use fiction to create narrative tension.
10and5: What was your biggest challenge in making this film?
Amilcar: One of the challenges in the film was using a visual medium to tell a story about the loss of sight. We wanted the viewer to experience the visual world as unfamiliar, much as Mxishi experiences it. To achieve this, we filmed sunlight through a shaped mottled glass, shadow dancing across a wall, and light on the surface of water. We also filmed through the thick looking glass that Mxishi used to read the newspaper. These distortions of the sight sense bring the audience into Mxishi’s inner world.
Chris: Another challenge was to direct the film across two continents and languages. Amilcar and I at Kamva specialise in directing and producing cross-continental films, having made several multi-lingual and multi-continental films. In 6SENSE most of the scenes were filmed in Mxshi’s hometown, but a few of them take place in London featuring the actual record label owners.
10and5: Can you tell us about the visual style and aesthetic choices you made, and how you overcame the challenge of translating a story about visual impairment into a visual medium?
Kamva: We learnt a lot about vision during the making of this film. We experimented with lens flares and different ways light refracts and changes. During the club scene we experimented with slow shutter techniques to create a sense of ungrounded reality and anxiety – states which mimic Mxshi’s inner world at the time. We also tried to place the audience on the same level as younger Mxshi by putting a camera in front of little Aiden, so that everything was seen at a low angle, as a child might see it. Generally we tried to make the camera an extension of Mxshi’s own eyes.
10and5: Are there smaller, more personal takeaways you hope people will get from the film?
Kamva: On a macro scale, the film is a reminder that while disability restricts access, technology can facilitate access. We hope that the film is a call to action for those in hardware or software production to collaborate with differently-abled users to create products that circumvent handicaps. Many of those users “know the software in and out”, to quote Mxshi and the questions and insights that they bring can spur innovation in ways that benefit all of us. Audiobooks, for example, began with a project that aimed to provide reading materials for veterans who were visually impaired during their service in World War I. We hope that 6SENSE highlights both the need and the benefit of collaboration with people with disabilities. It’s commercially viable to work with people who use these products differently.
The other takeaway is a lot more personal. 6SENSE is a way of reaching towards and listening to the world that goes beyond the individual. We are connected by the awe we all feel in looking at the stars and immense waterfalls. We are connected by the excitement that precedes artistic pursuits. There are many ways in which we can know the world – Mxshi’s story reminds us of that. We also wanted to leave it open to interpretation. The audience will, we hope, take with them whatever they need at that time.
Listen to Mxshi Mo here…
What’s next for 6SENSE, Kamva Collective and Mxshi Mo?
The Kamva team will be screening 6SENSE in Bristol next month is part of a set of screenings that take place monthly exploring African cinema. Mxshi Mo is also planning to head to Bristol later this year in partnership with Bristol Beacon and Sound Without Sight to do live collaborations with UK based musicians. Up until now, all collaborations have been virtual – and Mxshi has never travelled abroad. This has all resulted from momentum brought about from the film.
Link Up!
You can listen to Mxshi Mo’s music here or you can find him on Spotify. If you want to watch the full trailer go here.
Follow Kamva Collective and Mxshi Mo‘s journey on Instagram.
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