Variations on a Theme

In Variations on a Theme, co-director Jason Jacobs says: “There was an old woman who once lived here in this house full of ghosts.” The old woman he describes is his grandmother, Hettie, a goat herder in the mountains of Namaqualand, South Africa. The house full of ghosts refers to Black veterans of the Second World War, including her father, who, despite their service, had to settle for a significantly smaller reward than white soldiers. Hettie is descended from a long line of women who have had to learn to fend for themselves. Still dreaming of the compensation promised to them long ago, she falls victim to a modern form of fraud. Her family struggles to understand, despite having only the best intentions for ‘Ouma’ Hettie, as she is known in Afrikaans. Their visit for her eightieth birthday disrupts the peace and routine of a life of seclusion, a life that over the years has gradually been built around waiting.

The title and structure of Variations on a Theme are drawn from a common form of composition in (classical) music, in which a musical theme is followed by a series of variations on that theme. Shot over five days, the film repeats the same image compositions each day within fixed frames. Thirty-five in total. What changes unfolds within these frames: gestures, conversations and movements. These variations, however subtle, carry meaning and trace the rhythm of Hettie’s existence. A rhythm that echoes in the ebb and flow of her village, where the film weaves real lives together with fictional characters. The music by composer Mikhaila Alyssa Smith develops subtly through its own variations, in interplay with natural elements such as the rustling of the wind.

Directors Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar are members of the South African artists’ collective KRAAL. Their feature debut, Carissa (2024), had its world premiere in Venice. With Variations on a Theme, they won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, an award established to support emerging talent. For the directors, the film’s central theme is memory and its gradual fragmentation through old age. Deliberately still and contemplative, their poetic docufiction bears witness to a sad, haunting beauty.