The Sending of the Crows

At the Leiden Essay Film Festival, The Sending of the Crows by Judith Westerveld, supported by Amarte, will be screened. Inspired by the legends of brother and sister Dia!kwain and !kweiten ta ||ken from the South African San language |xam, the film tells the story of three crows sent out by |xam women to search for their missing husbands. They discover that the men have been killed by Dutch colonial settlers. Set against the backdrop of South Africa’s history of colonial violence, the film combines poetic animation with immersive soundscapes and spoken word to explore themes of memory, loss, and cultural survival. It reflects on the legacy of Dutch colonialism and the resilience of the |xam community and their descendants, through an artistic act of resistance against the past. Together with a spoken word performance by South African singer and poet Janine Overmeyer (Blaq Pearl), The Sending of the Crows becomes a poignant elegy of resistance, honouring the ceremonial power of storytelling that carries the grief and memory of a silenced past.

About Judith Westerveld
Judith Westerveld grew up in South Africa and the Netherlands. She studied Fine Art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and graduated cum laude from the Master Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam. Her work investigates which voices and stories in a postcolonial world are heard and remembered, and which are erased. She focuses particularly on the colonial history that binds South Africa and the Netherlands. Grounded in extensive research, her practice encompasses film, audiovisual installations and performances, often in collaboration with storytellers, heritage activists and musicians. In addition to presenting her work at exhibitions and festivals, she also works with academic and cultural institutions on themes such as oral history, archives, language, and memory. Westerveld is based in Amsterdam, represented by Lumen Travo Gallery, and her films are part of the collections of LI-MA (Amsterdam) and ARGOS (Brussels). Her work is supported by the Amarte Fonds, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and the Mondriaan Fund.