In the first of three films in the Isuzu Ikhaya Lekhaya series, musical director Charl-Johan Lingenfelder drives the latest Isuzu D-MAX from Cape Town to Villiersdorp.
If you spent any time on the Internet during 2020, you might have stumbled into musical director Charl-Johan Lingenfelder’s Cape Town apartment. You wouldn’t have seen him, however: instead, you would have watched a person made from Prestik navigate the strangeness of lockdown, in Charl’s haunting stop-motion animated film I’m Not Here.
But it’s 2022 now and Charl is here – and, so are we: two film-makers and one writer. We’re feasting on homemade soup, drinking in the magnificent view across Cape Town from Charl’s apartment, and chatting about the meaning of “home” (which, it turns out, is anything but simple). It’s the start of a four-day journey that will be the making of this video, and it will take us from Charl’s apartment (“It is absolutely a reflection of who I am,” he tells us) to Villiersdorp in the Overberg, where Charl was raised.
The trip has been prompted by the evolution of Hommelby Genesis, an album written by Charl that centres on the story of an Afrikaans boy growing up in a small town during apartheid, and it explores the hopes and aspirations of young people as they step out into the adult world. It’s likely that one of the songs will be performed by a choir from De Villiers Graaff High School, Charl’s alma mater, and he is eager to listen to the voices of the pupils.
The physical journey is superbly comfortable – we travel in a new Isuzu D-MAX, which powers effortlessly over the striking Du Toitskloof Pass and glides through the valleys of the Overberg region. Our internal journeys, however, take us beyond our comfort zones as we travel alongside Charl and explore some of the places that shaped the bold, multiple award-winning musical director he is today.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about journeys and destinations,” Charl muses as the D-Max clings to the curves of the Du Toitskloof Pass. “Both are equally important, because your journey is going to affect how you experience your destination. Going back to Villiersdorp now, after my life’s journey, I wonder how the way I see and experience the town will have changed.”
Spoiler alert: experiences and perceptions do change – but not, perhaps, in the way you expect when you set out. Why? Because going home… it’s complicated.
Follow the three journeys in the Isuzu D-MAX and Getaway Ikhaya Lekhaya campaign and you stand a chance to win a spectacular five-night holiday for four people to the Indian Ocean paradise of Seychelles. For more details and to enter, please click here. The competition closes at 15h00 on 2 December 2022.
