Variations on a Theme: Visual Poetry of the Rural Landscape and Its People

“On 18 July 1941, Petrus Jakobus Beukes, together with twelve other men, walks for the first time out of Kharkams’s winding dirt roads, heading south.” These words are co-director Jason Jacobs’s introduction to Variations on a Theme — his version of “once upon a time” and the beginning of a story that remains relevant today and tugs at the viewer’s heart.

Variations on a Theme appears at first glance to be a documentary, but according to Jacobs it is more accurately a fictional meditation on heritage, with characters whose daily existence is inspired by their real lives. The central focus falls on the goat herder, Ouma Hettie, who celebrates her eightieth birthday over the course of the film. Jacobs and his co-director Devon Delmar also offer glimpses into the lives of four other characters. As editor, Delmar weaves together fragments from each character’s life across a period of five days.

With Jacobs and Delmar’s previous film, Carissa, the team enlisted community members to play all the roles except for the lead character and one other. The 74-year-old Ouma Wilhelmina Hesselman — with no professional background whatsoever — earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Silwerskerm Festival. With Variations on a Theme, Jacobs and Delmar saddle up a wild horse (or perhaps more fittingly, a goat or a donkey), by using only local residents, the goats, and even a cat to tell the story.