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Sea Point Days continues successful festival circuit
Wed, 03 Jun 2009
Sea Point Days, a feature-length documentary film directed by local Emmy-award winning filmmaker Francois Verster has been selected for the Sterling World Feature Competition at the prestigious SilverDocs Film Festival. The festival which takes place in June is hosted by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel in Washington DC.
The film has also been nominated for the festival's coveted Cinematic Vision Award, and festival programmers have described it as being "amongst the very best the documentary form has to offer".
The film, produced by Lucinda Englehart and Neil Brandt of Fireworx Media, looks at life at Cape Town’s Sea Point promenade and municipal pools. Sea Point Days not only celebrates this unusual and beautiful space, but also paints a reflective picture of old white South Africa in transition and the frictions of a society in flux. It appeared on more than one “top ten of the fest” lists at the Toronto International Film Festival last year where it had its world premiere. At Doc NZ, where it won the Best Editor prize in February, the jury described it as "a cinematic, memorable and seamless film".
Sea Point Days was also awarded a Special Jury Mention at the 6th Tarifa Festival of African Cinema at its closing function this past weekend. The festival, the only one in Spain dedicated to African film, this year hosted some of Africa's top filmmakers, including Newton Audaka, Abderrahmane Sissako and Jihan El Tahri, and is fast becoming one of the most important events on the African cinema calendar.
Other recent and future screenings, many of which are in competition, include Planete Doc Review in Warsaw, the One World Human Rights Film Festival in Prague, Cines del Sur in Granada, the Munich International Film Festival, the Guth Gafa Documentary Film Festival, the Adelaide Big Pond Film Festival, the Jerusalem International Film Festival and the Dockanema Film Festival.
Sea Point Days has thus far been sold to four international television channels. The film will have its South African premiere at the Encounters Film Festival in early July, and will also be showing at the Durban International Film Festival in late July.
The film was funded by ITVS International, the Jan Vrijman Fund, Visions Sud Est, the National Film and Video Foundation and Spier Films.
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