Notes from the Underground is live! on the @encountersdoc website - don’t forget to book your tickets early 🎟️ (link in bio)
📍 4–14 June 2026
Cape Town • Johannesburg • Pretoria CT: Labia 1 Sat 06 June 6.30pm + Q&A,
Bertha Khayelitsha Sun 07 June 2pm + Panel,
Bertha Mowbray Wed 10 June 3pm + Q&A
JHB: Ster-Kinekor Brooklyn Commercial 5 Fri 12 June 6pm,
Bioscope Sun 14 June 4pm
🎬 Tickets available now
World Premiere 🎤 Notes from the Underground
Featuring some of Cape Town’s Hip Hop talent, including Ready D, Isaac Mutant, and Mutant’s daughter, Lyrix, this powerful documentary tells the history of Cape Hip Hop, which it uses as both the medium and the message.
🎬 Screenings + Q&As/Panels:
CT — 6, 7 & 10 June
JHB — 12 & 14 June
#EncountersDoc #Encounters2026 #Isaacmutant #ReadyD #lryix
Cape Town - this one is for you…
After many years in the making, Notes from the Underground will screen publicly for the first time at @encountersdoc Festival 2026.
Join us in Cape Town on 6 June 6:00pm at The Labia Theatre for the film’s World Premiere. (Johannesburg, Khayelitsha and other dates below)
Made alongside the artists, DJs, MCs, dancers and communities who shaped Cape Town’s Hip Hop movement, this screening is more than a premiere to us, it is a moment to come together and celebrate the culture, histories and people that made the film possible.
We hope to see you there.
📍 The Labia Theatre
📅 6 June 2026
🎟 Tickets available now (link in bio)
#encountersdocfest CT: Labia 1 Sat 06 June 6.30pm + Q&A,
Bertha Khayelitsha Sun 07 June 2pm + Panel,
Bertha Mowbray Wed 10 June 3pm + Q&A
JHB: Ster-Kinekor Brooklyn Commercial 5 Fri 12 June 6pm,
Bioscope Sun 14 June 4pm
From Cape Town’s underground to the world stage. We are proud to announce Notes from the Underground has been selected to premiere internationally at @sheffdocfest 2026 on 13 June.
Notes from the Underground is an oral history of Cape Town as told by its Underground Hip Hop movement, passed on through the generations from the 1980s to the present day - Read more about the film in the slides above. More news and announcements on the project coming soon. Stay tuned 🎧🎵
7 years in the making, Notes from the Underground is finally ready for the World 🌍
This film grew out of long conversations, late nights, archives, kitchens, street corners, studios, memories, and movement. What started as a question turned into a collective journey.
We’re deeply grateful to every person who trusted us with their story and energy. This film belongs to the culture.
Trailer coming soon. Looking forward to connecting with Hip Hop communities around the world.
Big love to all the contributors ❤️
Chris' unique directorial and cinematographic style has earned him a place in the permanent display at London’s Museum of Design with his documentary short, Gqomwave, and music video, Ice Drop - charting the history of electronic dance music, while his filmwork on the art piece Amahubo (2018) was exhibited at the TATE modern and Zeitz Mocaa.
Chris' hybrid documentary approach was developed over the last decade through guerilla style experimentation and collaborative practices. His work plays at the intersection of subculture, activism and undertold histories.
He was the cinematographer and editor on award winning documentary Not In My Neighbourhood (2018), interrogating issues of spatial apartheid. Chris’ recent short documentaries include “Freedom Sounds: From Kwaito to AmaPiano” (2022) charting the history of South African music genres as expressions of freedom, and “6SENSE” (2024) a hybrid documentary premiering at Encounters Documentary festival, BFI and WOMEX. Alongside cultural thinker and long time collaborator Amílcar Patel, Chris co-curated Boiler Rooms Third Space series (2021 - 2023) a multi-disciplinary and multi-continental project that tells the story of emerging music subcultures from the Global South.
Chris directorial debut feature documentary Notes from the Underground, charts the oral histories of Cape Town underground hiphop movement from the 1980s to the present day, exploring the philosophies behind the music. @notesfromtheundergroundfilm , co-directed with Adrian Van Wyk, was selected at the prestigious Cannes Docs as a Spotlighted project - and will be released in 2026.
“Every year I see a film that makes me rethink what I imagine is possible. Last year we had “Soundtrack of a Coup D’etat”, which took a musical-archival composition approach to a largely unknown moment in African Cold War history - which is still so important today. This year the acclaimed and censored Palestinian film “No Other Land” made me remember what the power of the camera can really do. A filmmaker I often go back to is Adam Curtis. I enjoy the way he juxtaposes ideas through music and archives to reveal history-making of the modern age.”
6SENSE, dir. Amilcar Patel & Chris Kets (2024)
6SENSE tells the story of a groundbreaking gqom music producer whose extraordinary journey from rural South Africa to international acclaim is both inspiring and transformative. The self-narrated hybrid documentary explores Mxshi Mo’s early life in the rural foothills of the Drakensberg mountains, South Africa. The film poignantly delves into his realisation around his loss of sight and his discovery of electronic dance music as a way to connect with the outside world – shining a light on a potential path out of his personal darkness.
Watch 6SENSE and more at #WOMEX25 in Tampere, Finland. Find tickets and further details on our website.
🌐 WOMEX 25 | Tampere, FI | 22-26 Oct 2025
🔗 /programme/film
🔗 LINK IN BIO
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@kamvacollective@amilcarpatel__@thisischriskets@mxshimo@moretimerecords@filminkzn@britishcouncil
VIDEO GRAFFITI Pt.I featuring: Flowr, Mapes, Grip, Edam, Sun333, Gogga. Music: Futurisss - Anatomy Of A Hunting Scene - Animal Skin - Salaam Supreme Lullaby To The New Moon. "Cape town is a very interesting and complex city to live in. Here you see the cruel hand of apartheid still extending through time and space to keep the imbalance of race and economic status alive. It is a city carefully curated for foreign money. And the obscenely rich. If Cape Town is a tourist city and the tourists coming in have been exposed to graffiti, and further, it does not seem to disrupt or offend their delicate sensibilities. Why is the city so hellbent on erasing it? Oftentimes the local government doesn't bother to buff gang tags either. So if the argument is that it signifies gangsterism, that simply doesn't hold up. These are the questions that spin around in my mind, and I suspect that the true answer is that erasing graffiti and by extension, the voices signifying that the system is fundamentally flawed equates to putting a neat little plaster over A gangrenous gaping wound. I highly doubt that graffiti would even exist if we lived in some sort of science fiction level utopian society. Erasing graffiti is an easy win for the city. It is far more difficult and far more expensive to tackle the people living far below the poverty line, the rampant drug problem, the gang violence ravaging communities that fall in less pale, affluent areas. So the people sleeping in the dirt under a bridge can enjoy the freshly buffed slate grey cube that the buff squad has painted and think man, the people in charge really fucking care." - Mapes 2025 @___sograpes___ . Shoutout to the crew Rory Bernickow, Laila (Sun333) Remi Bernickow and Lorna Daniels
Notes From The Underground traces the inter-generational Hip Hop movement of Cape Town’s Cape Flats, spanning four decades from the 1980s to the present. The film follows MCs, breakdancers, turntablists, and graffiti artists as they navigate the social, political, and cultural landscape of the city. At the heart of the movement is Knowledge of Self, the fifth element of Hip Hop, which in Cape Town becomes a means to reclaim indigenous culture, rewrite erased histories, and forge new identities in the aftermath of colonialism and apartheid. Through personal stories from different generations and neighborhoods, the film reveals how Hip Hop has transcended music to become a powerful tool for self-discovery, activism, spiritual awareness and community empowerment.
6SENSE is a hybrid documentary short that tells the story of Mxshi Mo, a young artist from Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa who, whilst dealing with gradual decline into blindness, finds a hidden talent in Gqom music production. Giving him the ability to connect through sound with the world and shine a light out of his own personal darkness.
The film follows Mxshi’s early life, dealing with his own realization around his loss of sight, to his finding of music as an outlet. After connecting through More Time Records with artists in the UK via the internet he began to get his music heard worldwide, eventually releasing one of the first ever fully collaborative UK x SA future afro albums “Nkanyiso”. Whilst still dealing with the increasing loss of sight due to his condition “Retinitis Pigmentosa’’ Mxshi began to find a way through technology to continue to make music without sight as well as connect with the world through his other senses.
6SENSE is directed by duo @amilcarpatel__ and Chris Kets and is a KAMVA Collective production.
6SENSE is a hybrid documentary short that tells the story of Mxshi Mo, a young artist from Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa who, whilst dealing with gradual decline into blindness, finds a hidden talent in Gqom music production. Giving him the ability to connect through sound with the world and shine a light out of his own personal darkness.
The film follows Mxshi’s early life, dealing with his own realization around his loss of sight, to his finding of music as an outlet. After connecting through More Time Records with artists in the UK via the internet he began to get his music heard worldwide, eventually releasing one of the first ever fully collaborative UK x SA future afro albums “Nkanyiso”. Whilst still dealing with the increasing loss of sight due to his condition “Retinitis Pigmentosa’’ Mxshi began to find a way through technology to continue to make music without sight as well as connect with the world through his other senses.
6SENSE is directed by duo Amílcar Patel and Chris Kets and is a KAMVA Collective production.
