Yasmin Hed
TFI Support
About
Yasmin is a Dutch / American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. IPI is her debut feature documentary.
A graduate of Tisch School of the Arts, she met fellow alumnus producers Jeremy Stulberg and Eric Juhola while in New York at film school. She currently works as a decorator and producer in Los Angeles while creating her own content. Her previous work includes her short documentary Children of Bahia (premiered at the Havana film festival and SXSW) and Unmarked Guide, a finalist in the AT&T New Filmmakers competition that screened on all worldwide Virgin airline flights and their in-flight channel Virgin Produced.
Ipi
When filmmaker Yasmin Hed discovers 16mm footage of the forgotten Apartheid-era South African musical Ipi N’Tombi, filmed by her late father in the 1970’s, she searches for meaning in the film he never finished.
Traveling to Johannesburg, she meets Todd Twala, an original dancer in the musical. Twala recounts working alongside Bertha Egnos, the white South African playwright who adapted this story about a Zulu warrior leaving his village to work in the treacherous Johannesburg goldmines.
Through Twala, Yasmin learns the musical’s controversial history: beloved by some, loathed by others. Twala reveals that she still carries scars from the period after the Soweto riots, when the musical traveled to Broadway, becoming the focal point of rage about Apartheid.
Together, Yasmin and Twala reconstruct the musical with a new generation of dancers, finishing the film Yasmin’s father never did - exploring identity, history and their connections to this universal story.