Ian Kerkhof / Aryan Kaganof
b. 1964
South African independent filmmaker, Aryan Kaganof is a visual artist, novelist and poet, who explores provocative and politically charged subject matter. Born in 1964 as Ian Kerkhof, he left South Africa for the Netherlands at nineteen to avoid conscription into the South African army during Apartheid. Before enrolling in the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in 1990, he worked for the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement, while also writing for international publications and programming jazz for pirate radio stations. He won a Golden Calf (Best Feature) for Kyodi Makes the Big Time, a self-produced 16mm production shot in 14 days while still a second-year student. In 1996 he pioneered the use of digital video as a feature film medium with the transfer to 35mm of Naar De Klote! (Wasted!) and went on to direct the first Japanese film utilizing this process (Tokyo Elegy, 1999). In March 2000, following Kaganof’s return to South Africa, a retrospective of his films was held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His 2002 film Western 4.33, which tells the story of the German concentration camps on Shark Island off the coast of Luderitz, Namibia, was screened at th…
Films