Simon

The Call for Entry for the fourth edition of the PPC Imaginarium Awards has officially opened and the competition is inviting entries for its 2018 round. The 2017 awards received an unprecedented total of 869 entries, from which 55 finalists were selected. On the back of this success, the PPC Imaginarium is encouraging emerging creatives to enter the country’s richest art and design competition, which offers R500 000 in prizes.

The winner of each of the six categories will receive a cash prize of R50 000, with runners-up walking away with R15 000 each. The overall winner will receive the grand prize of R100 000 – that’s in addition to having won their respective category prize.

The PPC Imaginarium Awards were established by PPC Ltd as a means to give emerging designers and artists the opportunity to showcase their talent and creative thinking by using Portland cement-based concrete as a primary base or material across the competition’s six disciplines, namely, Architecture, Fashion, Film, Industrial design, Jewellery and Sculpture. The competition is the most supportive of its kind in the country and has seen many of its past entrants and finalists go on to become recognised in the art and business community.

The awards are open to South African citizens, resident holders as well as foreign students with study permits, who are not professionally established in their respective fields. Artists and designers may enter multiple categories, with an original artwork for each category, and may enter over again if they entered in previous years. Entry registrations must be submitted online via the official website.

Entries for the Sculpture, Industrial Design, Fashion and Jewellery categories close on Friday, 1 December 2017. Architecture entries close on Friday, 22 December 2017, and Film entries close on 31 October 2017. National judging and the 2018 winners announcement will take place in April 2018. The winner and runner-up in the Architecture category will be announced in May 2018.

For information on each category and to find out more about the competition, visit the official website and click on the “categories’ tab.

The 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP) will bring a wild weekend of filmmaking fun to Cape Town from 1 to 3 September 2017. On this weekend, our local film scene will explode with filmmakers making films in just 48 hours.

Armed with a genre, character, prop and line of dialogue, our fearless filmmakers will make their way through the cinematic jungle and emerge with a creative masterpiece.

This year’s filmmaking will kick off on 1 September. The winner of Best Film will go on to represent Cape Town as it vies for Best Film of the World against more than 130 other city winners.

Reasons to register early
• A chance to network with our amazing Cape Town film community and maybe even find new people to join your team
• Get the lowest registration rates
• No fear of getting stuck on the waiting list

Sign up today.

Strike a Rock, the ground-breaking feature that follows the stories of a group of often forgotten women fighting for justice after the massacre at Marikana has won the Audience Award for best local film at this years Encounters South African International Documentary Festival which ended on 11 June 2017. The film is directed by young up-and-coming Johannesburg director Aliki Saragas.

The loss of brothers, husbands, fathers and friends at the hands of the South African police in August 2012 shattered not only their hope of a living wage but brought about a brutal realisation that the ANC “murdered its own people’.
Leader of Marikana’s Wonderkop community and recently elected EFF member of parliament, Primrose Sonti together with her ally and best friend, Thumeka Magwanquana’s shared struggle for social justice, say nothing has changed in the community since before the strike and massacre.

Sonti and Magwanquana unite the women and organise the delivery of a petition to Lonmin to register their demands.
Since then, Sonti has moved to Cape Town and is pictured in parliament fighting for justice while wearing a red domestic workers’ uniform and gum boots, as she represents the forgotten voices of Marikana – the women whom she left behind.

Despite their attempts to engage, Lonmin did not listen to the women of Marikana’s demands for decent homes, running water and basic healthcare. By 2012 Lonmin was supposed to have built 5 500 homes under its 2006 Social and Labour Plan, but instead only built three showhouses.

The women believe that the state’s indifference to their plight and its lack of leadership in bringing about any meaningful socio-economic transformation since the massacre has led to militant activism with strong local women at the forefront – united as the social justice advocacy group, Sikhale Sonke. Now the women hope that their united voices will at last be heard all the way from the koppies of Marikana across South Africa and beyond.

Strike a Rock won the Encounters Audience Awards for Best South African Film, while the film The Eagle Huntress was named the Best International Film.

Encounters ran from 1 to 11 June 2017 in two cities – Cape Town and Johannesburg. The line-up consisted of over 70 films plus special events for film lovers and filmmakers which ran throughout the Festival, these included Virtual Encounters – a virtual reality and interactive documentary exhibition curated by Electric South’s Ingrid Kopp, the Swiss Focus, American Film Showcase, Al Jazeera Pitching Forum, workshops and master classes.

This year’s festival proved that there’s an audience hungry for quality documentary films,’ says festival director Darryl Els. “We saw strong audience responses to a wide variety of films, including Strike a Rock, The Eagle Huntress, The Fall, Deep Blue Middle C, Whose Streets, Winnie, Dragans’s Lair, Last Men in Aleppo, I Am Not Your Negro and Goldblatt.

Wesgro Film and Media was a partner in Encounters’ extensive industry programme of master classes and business to business events. Yaw Peprah, the chief business officer says: “It is great to see emerging and established industry use this platform’s extensive opportunities to grow their global footprint.” He continues: “the selection of films was first class.”

Wesgro’s head of Film and Media Promotion, Monica Rorvik also shares: “It was great to take part in the extensive industry programme, and hear great exchanges throughout the pitches and master class panel sessions which should support the growth of projects and companies.”

Encounters, in partnership with Ster-Kinekor, has announced the winners of the first Youth Jury EYE Award for best South African short films (less than 20 minutes):

– 1st prize of R10 000 goes to Nanlaban directed by Shaun Swingler

– 2nd prize of R5 000 goes to Can I please go to the bathroom? directed by Jessie Zinn

– Special mention for cinematography goes to Invasion directed by Simon Gush

The jurors feedback:

Nanlaban
“It was a brave and thought provoking story, which was seamlessly put together. The fact that the filmmaker went all the way to the Philippines, found this story and then committed to telling it, is really admirable. It was beautifully composed, had great quality camera work, which was complemented by a good grade. We were blown away by this film, and hope to emulate, and keep up this quality of work in South Africa.”

Can I Please Go to the Bathroom?
“The animation was amazing; it added depth to the narrative, and didn’t feel like it was just there for the sake of it. The camera work, sound design and music all suited the rawness and strength of the topic, while also not taking away from the vulnerability the girls must have felt talking openly about their bodies. Even with the short duration of the film, it was enough to fulfil the viewer, while also leaving them wanting more, and looking forward to the potential of there being a longer piece.’

At an event hosted by La Fabrique Cinema de l’Institut Français, one of the first supporters of the programme, the selection of this year’s Realness Screenwriter’s Residency was announced at the Cannes Film Festival by Realness co-founder Cait Pansegrouw.

Realness, which was established in 2016, aims to provide scriptwriting talent on the continent with the space, time and support needed to create and develop their vision. This year, over a hundred applications were received from twenty-one African countries. The international panel of industry experts with a stake in African Cinema, evaluated the submissions over three months, arriving at the five chosen residents in early May.

“The Realness initiative continues to unearth some of the rarest talent from the continent,’ said Thandeka Zwana from the National Film and Video Foundation, one of the volunteer readers on the selection panel. “The most impressive part of reading the submissions was getting insights into the applicants’ previous work and seeing real African cinema in terms of the aesthetic and storytelling. Some evoked memories of the old African greats and some spoke to a wave of new voices.”

Marie Dubas, French producer of The Wound by John Trengove and one of the team that founded Realness said; “Selecting projects for Realness is a blessing and a huge responsibility. The projects are of a high quality, proving how rich the multiple African cultures are in nurturing unique stories. We know that for the scriptwriters behind these stories, Realness could be a life changing experience. We try to listen to the desires of these stories, and to allow the ones whose hearts beat the loudest to lead our choices.’

The selected residents for 2017 are Lemohang Mosese from Lesotho, Mario Fradique Bastos from Angola, Rama Thiaw from Senegal, Samantha Nell from South Africa and writer-director team Gloria Huwiler from Zambia and Jahmil XT Quebeka from South Africa.

Mario Fradique is an emerging voice in Angolan Cinema. His short films travelled to several festivals, winning awards along the way, while his first feature documentary, Independence, won Angola’s National Culture Prize in 2015. He joins us at Realness with his debut fiction feature, The Kingdom of Casuarinas, based on the novel by Jose Luis Mendonça.

Gloria Huwiler is an actress and writer seeking to give a cinematic voice to her unique experience as a first generation mixed-race Zambian through Victoria Falls. Gloria has teamed up with acclaimed South African writer/director Jahmil Quebka, best known for his second feature film, Of Good Report.’

Lemohang Moses hails from Lesotho, a country which has not produced many films. He is a self-taught, award-winning filmmaker and artist, with short film work that has travelled to over 100 festivals, winning top honours in Moscow and Milan last year. His debut feature is This Is Not A Burial It’s A Resurrection is the selected project.

Rama Thiaw is a strong voice from Senegal that we have heard from before. Her two feature length documentaries have garnered much success and awards, most notably the FIRPRESCI Prize at the Berlinale in 2016 for The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. She joins the residency with Life In A Spiral, her fiction debut.

South African Samantha Nell whose short film The Beast premiered in Cannes last year brings her debut feature, Miles From Nowhere. Set in Johannesburg, the film is an absurdist dark comedy that takes place in an old age home following four of its residents. The project is also supported by the NFVF for development.

Realness 2017 begins on 3 June when the participants begin their residency at the Nirox Foundation in the Cradle of Humankind. They will be mentored by script consultant Nadja Dumouchel for their first week and will then enjoy 4 weeks of solid writing. In July they will attend the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) where they will present their projects to the industry under the mentorship of Selina Ukwuoma at the Durban FilmMart.

“We are grateful to DFM and DIFF for supporting the initiative and making this possible,’ says founder and Creative Director Elias Ribeiro. “The screenwriters’ producers will also be invited to attend the finance forum at DFM this year.’

Following this, the screenwriters will submit their work for awards consideration. Their projects stand the chance to be selected to participate at La Fabrique Cinema de l’Institut Français, EAVE Producer’s Workshop, Torino Film Lab Meeting Event, Locarno Filmmakers Academy and Midpoint Feature Launch.

“One of the biggest challenges for us has been to find operational funding and have operated with in-kind contributions, with the entire team behind this programme having worked on a volunteer basis for the past two years,’ explains Ribeiro. “We are pleased that more recently we have received grants from the Goethe Institute of South Africa and the CNC, the French national Film Fund, which has been a welcome support for the progarmme.’

“The CNC, in the framework of our policy of targeted support to the new wave of African talents, has decided to support this emerging writing residency, which offers young promising filmmakers from the continent a wide range of high-level international expertise. We are looking forward to the results of this second edition’, affirmed Michel Plazanet, Deputy Director of International Affairs

Fairbridges Wertheim Becker Attorneys have appointed Nosiphiwo Qwabi to help establish Realness as a NPO trust and qualify for PBO status. “The benefits of a PBO are that the trust would be able to issue a tax certificate or receipt, allowing for donations by donors to be tax deductible”, commented Andrew Hewitt, Fairbridges Head of Entertainment Law.

Realness is an initiative founded and curated by Urucu Media, under the mentorship of Berlinale Talents and in partnership with the Nirox Foundation, Durban FilmMart, The Durban International Film Festival, Durban Talents, The French Institute of South Africa and Institute Français, Torino Film Lab, EAVE Producer’s Workshop, Midpoint Feature Launch, Locarno Filmmaker’s Academy, Produire Au Sud, Fairbridges Wertheim Becker, the Goethe Institute and Le Centre National du Cinema et de L’image Animee (CNC).