Left to Right: Producer/DOP Lars Schwinges, Director Luiz DeBarros and Exec Producer/Sound Man Marc Schwinges

'I'm often asked: "Why do a documentary on toilets?!" The answer is really simple - because no one else has done one before!"

"I've always been interested in subjects that people take for granted or are somewhat taboo – the toilet was the perfect topic', says Luiz DeBarros (Metamorphosis, Death), director of the documentary 2-part television series, Flush.

Underdog Entertainment had proposed Flush to SABC 3 a number of times over the years, and they always expressed interest in commissioning it. But for a number of reasons, the project never got off the ground. It was only last year, when the proposal was once again submitted to the SABC, that Eddie Manzingana, the commissioning editor, insisted that Underdog stop sitting on the idea of a loo documentary and finally make Flush a reality.

Luiz had the idea of making a documentary about toilets over five years ago. He kept it on the backburner because he was concerned that with limited South African television production budgets he'd never be able to document all the fascinating toilets around the world. It was only when he realised that he was actually interested in “making the everyday interesting” that he decided that he needn't travel the world.

Luiz explains: ‘It occurred to me one day that the way each one of us approaches the subject of loos says so much about ourselves as individuals and the society we're in. I was also fascinated how toilets, one of the last frontiers of polite public discourse, have become an increasingly valuable space for consumer exploitation. At the end of the day, Flush was driven by my fascination with wanting to explore the things that are universal to us all, but that we prefer to hide in the closet...’

"There’s almost no aspect of our mores, traditions and cultures that isn’t reflected in the toilet."

Production on this upbeat and eclectic investigation of the water closet and environs started on the 17th of November 2003 in Cape Town and then moved on to Johannesburg. The entire documentary was shot over eight days with a very small crew, including Producer Lars Schwinges operating the camera and Executive Producer Marc Schwinges manning the sound gear.

One of the most difficult parts of making Flush was getting people to agree to talk about the subject of toilets, or give a glimpse at their behaviour in the bathroom. And a lot of related industries and companies were not too keen to be associated with the subject matter!

Due to tight budget and strict shooting schedule, many of the production team often wondered what they had gotten themselves into. As interesting as the subject matter was, it still meant spending an awful amount of time in toilets – some of them not very pleasant. And toilets can get pretty claustrophobic after a while.

Nevertheless the shoot was an eye opener for all concerened. Director of Photography Lars Schwinges comments that, 'their forms may be the result of functional constraints, but I never imagined that toilets and urinals could be so visually striking and stylistically interesting to shoot.'

It was clear that much of the success of Flush would lie in the editing process and so Ferial Dayal’s talents came into play. What made this different from other projects that the editor had worked on previously was that there was no clear narrative. ‘We had to create the narrative around themes Luiz was interested in, in the edit suite itself’, explains Ferial. ‘The challenging part was trying to give to something inanimate like toilets, life – to create some kind of emotion around the subject. Visually, Flush was for more dynamic than any other project I’d worked on before. There was a lot of freedom to experiment,’ she adds.

Luiz's biggest frustration in making Flush, was realising that there will always be something new or fascinating to explore. 'The reality is that we had to cut off areas of research and exploration because there was simply no more money or time. There’s almost no aspect of our mores, traditions and cultures that isn’t reflected in the toilet. You could create an entire series of documentaries about toilets and what they say about us', says Luiz.