Unwritten brings the anthology of a man to life

By Kristy Hesom

At University, Toefy was a penniless student in Cape Town, who became a cab driver to pay back his student loans. Toefy says; “Driving a cab is like travelling the world”, the people you meet and the stories they tell take you on a unique journey. At night, he drove hotel staff workers home after long shifts, which taught him a lot about hard work and hard life.

After a university lecturer told him; “if you want to be an Olympic thinker – keep a journal”, and based on his experiences, Toefy was inspired to start journaling his thoughts.

Toefy co-founded The Fort in 2006 with Amr Singh, and many of their ideas, both good and bad, came from ideas in their journals. The Rainmaker’s Journal is a concept derived from Toefy’s experiences, and Unwritten is how they visualised the idea of a journal into a short film. Unwritten takes the viewer on Toefy’s journey through Nepal as he hopes to unlock a world of old knowledge. Toefy, Singh, and a small film crew travelled to Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, where they met with artisans, musicians, spiritualists, scholars, and survivors of a bygone era.

After getting in touch with a few contacts in Nepal, the team was introduced to high-ranking individuals, but had to emphasise that they were there to meet normal people, and hear real-life stories. As entrepreneurs, Toefy and Singh draw inspiration from interacting with ordinary people, and gain a more meaningful experience this way.

Their journey is captured on film, all the while Toefy is putting ink to paper and journaling about his experience. Toefy comments that for him, the experience came full circle, as he writes in his journal it is beautifully personal, which they tried to bring across in the film, but that experiences are most beautiful when they are just in your journal.

When talking about making the film, Singh says that they did not have a script, and that they went there and filmed for 10 days. He says writing the script was challenging as they tried to create a linear experience with the visuals.

Unwrittenwas filmed before the devastating earthquake hit Nepal earlier this year, and some of their visuals are the last images of parts of Kathmandu. Toefy does admit that it was challenging to have an authentic experience with a camera in the room, and Singh backs this sentiment by saying; “Ultimately, it is a movie, it’s a film. It stands testimony to some of the real experiences we’ve had that are similar, but Unwritten is a creation, a representation of the type of experience you could potentially have, but it’s not the experience itself.”

“Buying a ticket to a spiritual place does not buy you the right to enlightenment,” says Toefy, but the journey did teach him that there is beauty in normal life and in working hard. Toefy also left some of the audience thinking when he said that many of us are so focused on conquering Everest that we forget the wonder that's at the base of the mountain.

For more information www.thefort.co.za. Alternatively, connect with Rainmaker's Journal on Twitter using the #UnwrittenMovie hashtag.