Extending Leoni Smit’s acclaimed Masculus – The Male Domain, Tussen Mure is a contemplative kykNET series exploring South Africa’s design language.
Tussen Mure emerges from the world first shaped in Masculus – The Male Domain, the celebrated seven-kilogram coffee-table publication created by photographic director and author Leoni Smit as a meditation on interiors, masculinity and psychological space. Smit’s vision is completed through the lens of photographer Yvette Jordaan and the graphic-design mastery of Sirette Hare – together crafting a visual exploration that is exacting, contemplative and deeply symbolic.
While Masculus is anchored in stillness, Tussen Mure shifts the lens into motion. The new television series explores the human dimension behind designed environments — revealing men not as archetypes, but as expressive, living subjects within rooms that shape and reflect their internal worlds.
Directed by Elmi De Pauw, the series captures spontaneous moments: a shift in posture, a private smile, the emotional texture between a man and the environment he inhabits. Elmi’s intuitive directing turns interiors into intimate stages, where character and space engage in a quiet, unforced dialogue.
Co-presenter Eugene Coetzee, founder of Eugene Coetzee Décor & Design Consultants, brings his own interpretive eye to the relationship between objects, mood, personality and identity. A devoted collector of books, he views each publication as a living character. “When I first encountered Masculus, I immediately imagined its energy in movement. Books have personalities — colours, moods, identities. Film becomes their movement.”
Smit echoes this sentiment through her own long-held philosophy. “Coffee table books are meant to be seen,” she says. “They live openly — bold, large, unapologetic. Film doesn’t replace the book; it breathes alongside it.”
She deepens this further with her conceptual understanding of the collaboration: “André Blazin remarked that literature is conceptual and interpretive, whereas film is ontological, rooted in physical reality. I write the voice-overs for the series, and the imagery that accompanies the words shows what the words suggest. Photography and film are complementary — a synthesis of each other.”
Produced by Walla Films with the support of iFX Brokers, Tussen Mure is an exploration of South Africa’s design language through story, personality, mood, and place. The thirteen-part Series runs from October 2025 to January 2026 on kykNET (DStv 144), with episodes also available on DStv Stream and Catch Up.
Ultimately, Tussen Mure studies the lives carried within walls — the laughter, the stillness, and the human honesty that remains long after a room falls silent.
