Ari Vale is a visual storyteller navigating the space between memory and motion. Their work fuses intimate realism with stylised abstraction — often blurring the line between documentary and dream.
Location: Cape Town / Berlin
04-02-2025
Scene One, Take One
The opening scene of a film about your life.
Fade in.
A dim kitchen in the early hours — just before blue light breaks. The camera rests still for a while. A kettle hums but never boils. A window sweats with condensation.
I’m out of frame, but you can hear quiet breath and the soft drag of charcoal across paper. There’s a notebook on the table, already half-filled, but I’m sketching in the margins.
A dog barks somewhere far away. A bus passes, headlights sweeping through the room like a slow search.
The first cut is a close-up of a cracked ceramic bowl being glued back together — not quite aligned. Gold dust on the fingertips.
That’s the rhythm of the film: quiet, observational, always chasing something just outside the frame. Not a plot, maybe — just the shape of a person trying to notice their own life before it disappears.
12-03-2025
Uncut Rushes
A project that never quite made it.
21-04-2025
The Turning Point
A pivotal moment that shifted your path.
It was a Friday.
I was assisting on a commercial shoot — big crew, polished set, multiple cameras, catering, the works. Everything looked perfect. But there was this moment, just before lunch, where we were setting up a shot of a coffee cup being placed on a table — and we must’ve done twenty takes. Twenty. For a hand.
I remember standing there, thinking: This is beautiful, but it’s not why I fell in love with film.
That night I went home, took out my old Handycam, and shot my friend walking through the city in one take. No lights, no crew. Just the sound of traffic, a cold wind, and her voice reading something she’d written years ago.
That footage felt more alive than anything we’d made on set that day. It reminded me that emotion doesn’t need polish — it needs presence.
That was the shift. I stopped chasing perfection. I started chasing feeling.
06-06-2025
Yesterday / Today / Tomorrow
Three-part reflection to explore past lessons, present realities, and future direction.
14-08-2025
The Person Who…
The key people in your journey.
- The person who first made me want to hold a camera was my grandmother — not because she was a filmmaker, but because she told stories with her hands, like every detail mattered.
- The person who called me a director before I believed it myself was my best friend, on a train ride home after I shot my first doc. She said, “You see things no one else notices — that’s the job.”
- The person who taught me that failure isn’t fatal was my first DOP. After a brutal client job, he looked at me and said, “It didn’t land, but it led somewhere. That’s enough.”
- The person who reminds me why I do this is the dancer from Kintsugi. Every time we speak, she asks a question that makes me rethink the last thing I shot.
- The person I haven’t met yet, but already owe something to is the future collaborator who’ll push me into uncomfortable territory — and force something new out of me.
14-09-2025
Creative Forecast
What’s next for you creatively?
