“While WOS cannot claim every achievement by women (in SA), many of them are to its credit.”
Former minister of Arts and Culture Dr. Palo Jordan
Sponsored By
Filmmakers BiographiesAMINA MAMA (producer) THE WITCHES OF GAMBAGA
BYRON HURT (director, producer) HIP HOP: BEYOND THE BEATS & RHYMES
CARMEN SANGION (writer/director) SOUTHERN CROSS
DIEUDO HAMADI (director) ZERO TOLERANCE/CONGO IN FOUR ACTS
DIVITA WA LUSALA (director): LADIES IN WAITING - CONGO IN FOUR ACTS
EKWA MSANGI-OMARI (producer/director) SUSPENSE/TAHARUKI
GINI RETICKER (director) PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL
IMAN KAMEL (writer/director/producer) NOMAD’S HOME
INGRID MARTENS: (Producer, Director, Camera, Editor) AFRICA SHAFTED
JEZZA NEUMANN (director) CHINA’S STOLEN CHILDREN
JO HIGGS (director) MEN FROM ATLANTIS
JO MENELL (director) THEMBIBorn in Johannesburg in 1938 Jo was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College Cambridge where he received a M.A. in Anthropology. From 1960-1970 he worked as a reporter, producer and director of current affairs documentaries for the BBC (Panorama) and ITV (This Week). In 1969 he produced and directed three one-hour documentaries on South Africa which resulted in his being banned by the South African government. From 1970-3, he was the deputy director-general of Chilean National TV during the Salvador Allende regime. From 1973-80, he was a freelance director of documentaries for BBC, Globo (Brazil) and P.B.S. (USA). In 1981 he directed and produced "The Life and Times of Bob Marley”, the authorized story of Marley‟s life, which was distributed world-wide and is available on DVD. In 1985 he co-produced and co-directed “Haiti- Dreams of Democracy” with Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs). From 1990-2005 he lived in San Francisco, California, where he produced and directed documentaries for P.B.S. Channel 9. In 1996 he recieved an Oscar nomination for “MANDELA”, the Authorised Biography, co-directed with Angus Gibson. In 2005 he returned to live in South Africa, and in 2006 made “SHAG” - a film that explores women‟s views on sex and AIDS in present-day Cape Town. From 2008 to date, he has directed and co-produced “STREET TALK” with Richard Mills, a weekly documentary for Cape Town TV (CTV). “THEMBI”, the story of a young AIDS activist from Khayalitsha who died in 2010 premiered in Cape Town at the Encounters Documentary Film Festival.
JUDY NAIDOO (producer) KAHĀNIKĀR (THE STORYTELLER)
KARIN SLATER (producer/director/cinematographer)
KITSO LELLIOT (director) THE TAILORED SUIT
LEENA MANIMEKALAI (director) THE DEAD SEA/SENGADAL
LUCILLA BLANKENBERG (director) A COUNTRY FOR MY DAUGHTER
KYLE O’DONOGHUE (co-director) WELL BODI BIZNESS
MIKI REDELINGHUYS (co-director) WELL BODI BIZNESSAward-winning, Redelinghuys graduated with a BA Hons degree, after which she worked in television as a researcher, editor and scriptwriter. She later became a freelance director and cameraperson. She has worked extensively on the African continent for local and international broadcasters. In 2009 her début feature documentary Keiskamma – A Story of Love won the Ousmane Sembene Films for Development Award at the 12th Zanzibar IFF.
MANDY JACOBSON (producer/director) CALLING THE GHOSTS
OMELGA MTHIYANE (director) LI XI’S SALON
OSVALDE LEWAT (director) A LOVE DURING THE WAR
PALESA SHONGWE (director) ATROPHY
RUMBI KATEDZA (director) THE TREE & THE AXE
SHELLEY BARRY (producer/director) A WHOLE TRINITY OF BEING
WANURI KAHIU (director) FOR OUR LAND (WANGARI MAATHAI)
XOLISWA SITHOLE (director) RIBBON IN THE SKY
YABA BADOE (director) WITCHES OF GAMBAGA
ZAMO MKHWANAZI (director) PHILIA
ZANELE MUHOLI (director) DIFFICULT LOVE
ZINA SARO-WIWA (director) THE DELIVERANCE OF COMFORT
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Film Festival 2011 |
A Nigerian feminist activist, researcher and scholar, who has lived and worked in Nigeria, South Africa, Britain, the Netherlands and the USA. She spent 10 years establishing the University of Cape Town‟s African Gender Institute and is founding editor of the African journal of gender studies, Feminist Africa. She authored Beyond the Masks:Race, Gender and Subjectivity (Routledge 1995), Women’s Studies and Studies of Women in Africa (CODESRIA, 1996), and co-edited Engendering African Social Sciences (CODESRIA 1997). She is currently developing a transnational activist research initiative on gender and militarism and pursuing her interest in documentary film. „The Witches of Gambaga’ is her first film. She currently lives in Berkeley and works at the University of California, Davis as Professor and Director of Women and Gender Studies.
Byron Hurt is the New Jersey-based producer of the award-winning documentary, I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America and Moving Memories: The Black Senior Video Yearbook. Hurt, is a long-time gender violence prevention educator. For more than five years, he was the associate director and founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, the leading college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for professional athletics. He is also the former associate director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps. Byron Hurt was the recipient of the prestigious echoing green public service fellowship in 1999, an award given to ambitious young activists devoted to creating social change in their communities. Over the past decade, Hurt has lectured at more than 100 college campuses and trained thousands of young men and women on issues related to gender, race, sex, violence, music and visual media
Carmen Sangion attended Newtown Film and Television School and has been working consistently as a writer/director for over 12 years. Carmen has written and directed a number of short films including a 10-minute film called My Name is Jacob which was part of the Mnet’ Edit Competition.
General Assistant Director during the filming of VIVA RIVA, a Djo
Born in Kinshasa on September 3, 1973. He worked for the Congolese state television station RTNC from 1996 to 1999 and for the private broadcaster AA 1 from 1999 to 2009. Since 2009 he has been an editor and cameraman
Ekwa has directed for some of the biggest TV shows in East Africa including The Agency (MNET) a 13-part TV series which she created, show-ran, and directed; the hit show Block-D (KBC), and most recently co-created critically acclaimed Higher Learning (NTV) along with several short films. She‟s written for TV and film, and produced several shorts. Weakness, a short film she recently produced, has screened worldwide, including New York, Durban and Brazil and was nominated for a 2010 Kalasha Award.
Gini Reticker is one of the world‟s leading documentary filmmakers putting a lens on the real-life dramatic stories of women‟s rights and international social justice issues. Reticker is currently a co-creator and executive producer of Women, War & Peace, a new 5-part series which uncovers the untold stories of women‟s strategic role in global conflict and peacemaking. Pray the Devil Back to Hell is part two of the series and she also directed the third film in the series about Afghanistan, Peace Unveiled. Reticker produced Asylum, the 2004 Academy Award®-nominated short focusing on the story of a Ghanaian woman who fled female genital mutilation to seek political asylum in the U.S.; and was the producer/co-director of 1994 Sundance Award-winning Heart of the Matter, the first full length documentary about the impact of HIV on women in the U.S. She produced and directed the 2005 Emmy Award-winning documentary Ladies First for the PBS series WIDE ANGLE, which focuses on the role of women in rebuilding post-genocide Rwanda. She also garnered an Emmy for directing and producing Out of the Darkness, focusing on women and depression. For WIDE ANGLE she has also directed The Class of 2006, which spotlights the first fifty women in Morocco to graduate from an imam academy in Rabat. Reticker is member of both the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America.
Born in Cairo, Iman studied interdisciplinary studies in art, dance and film at the Berlin School of Arts with further studies in cultural management at the bbw akademie Berlin. She is always on the move and has travelled extensively in southern African countries and in China. Her short films include “Noara” 1995, “Khadega” 1997, “Nachiket” 2004, “The Clouds Are There” 2006 and “Hologram” 2002 (which received the Euromed Short Film Award and was launched on the internet. Iman founded the Initiative Film Aktiv In School in Berlin to work creatively on projects with young people and immigrants. In 2007, Iman was invited to participate in EAVE‟s Professional Coaching for Producers workshop at Dubai International Film Festival. In 2008, she was invited back to share ongoing project BEIT SHA‟AR | NOMAD‟S HOME - her debut, long-form creative documentary. Currently, Iman is developing a new project focusing on women of the Egyptian revolution: Jeanne d‟Arc Masriya. The film has been presented as part of the Africa Produce co-production platform of the Tarifa Film Festival in Spain in June 2011.
While attaining her Masters Degree in Culture and Media Studies Ingrid Marten documented the beginning of Regional Television in South Africa. During the process she trained with various journalists and found a passion for telling stories in the powerful medium of film. She became a reporter/journalist in 1998 for the SABC and specialised in people-driven feature stories focusing human rights issues before she joined the SABC‟s first ever Features and Investigations Desk working on news features in countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Guinea, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Angola for clients such as CNN, BBC, SABC and e-TV. She also produced advocacy videos for organisations such as the Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations University for Peace. In 2003, Ingrid started her own company I‟M Original Productions to produce various documentaries. She has consulted for a Nigerian company called Multimesh Broadcasting Company (MBC) in the area of content and launching a DTH, pay-tv brand and lived Nigeria as an AMSCO manager (African Management Services Company), under the United Nations Development Programme, as the Head of Content at MBC. Africa Shafted: Under One Roof, was four years in the making and Ingrid worked as the producer, director, cameraperson and off-line editor on the project.
Based in London, Jezza was born in 1968. He began his television career as a runner. He trained and filmed on various pilot projects for True Vision gaining his first broadcast credit with the film “Ëyes of a Child” for BBC 1. Since then he has filmed on various international award-winning productions for Channel 4 and HBO. In 2007 he won three BAFTA awards for his China’s Stolen Children.
Jo Higgs is a passionate, compassionate and energetic filmmaker who can turn her hand to any project. A one-woman filmmaking powerhouse, she is a true storyteller, capable of capturing the intricacies of people, places and moments as they happen, and creating unforgettable films. BBC World, Reuters, Associated Press UK and Belgian news channel VTM are all organisations for which she has worked as a news editor and camera person producing international news.
Judy returned to South Africa in 2011 after spending two and a half years in the United Kingdom pursuing a Masters Degree in Producing at the National Film and Television School (NFTS). She graduated in February 2011 with a Masters Degree in Producing for Film and Television as a recipient of the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Award and the Trevor Jones/NFVF Scholarship. Whilst in the UK, Judy produced the animation short Kahānikār (The Storyteller), which has been selected for the 2011 Edinburgh International Film Festival (World Premiere). It also won Best Animation at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival (2011). By winning this award the film becomes eligible for the main Oscars in 2012. In addition the film as also won Best International Animation, Fenaco Short Film Festival Cusco, Peru; Best Children‟s Film, Animafrik; Best School Animation, Anima Cordoba; Best Student Animation, Animae Caribe. The film has also been selected for 31 other International Film Festivals this year. Judy‟s fiction short Au Revoir Monkeys has also been nominated for Best Film and Best Cinematography at the 2011 Fuji Shorts UK. Judy also produced the short film Freedom Day, which was selected for Best Film and Best Cinematography in the Fuji Shorts UK in 2010. Prior to 2009 Judy produced and directed several documentaries, short films, commercials and corporate videos under the umbrella of her company Black Heat Productions, which she founded in September 2002
Karin, was awarded with the prestigious Trailblazer Award at MIPDOC Cannes 2008. An award given to five filmmakers around the world doing creative and innovative work in documentaries. She also scooped the Best South African Documentary Award at the 2008 Durban International Film Festival and the 2008 Apollo Film Festival for her film 50 Years! Of Love? She has also shot documentaries for well-known international filmmakers and teachers Independent Documentary making at Selkirk College, Canada and was head mentor at Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking in Johannesburg.
Kitso Lelliott graduated from the Wits School of Arts in 2006 having majored in Photography. After working as a researcher on the SABC show Curious Culture she decided to pursue her love of visual storytelling and joined Blue Boy Films as an art director and photographer. She went back to Wits to pursue her Masters in film and television, the moving image becoming her medium of choice. Here she deepened her interests in telling stories from and about Africa with the aim of contributing to a tradition of filmmaking that develops more positive and productive images of a place that is continually poorly represented. “The Tailored Suit” premiered at the Tri-Continental Film Festival 2011.
Lenna is an Indian filmmaker, poet and actor based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. She has nine documentary films and a feature film to her credits. She has acted in several of her movies and has published three anthologies of poems. She is also a much acclaimed street theatre artist. Kanavupattarai is her publication house through which she has published 25 titles on world cinema and literature. Her production house named Touring Talkies has a stronghold in the television production in South India. She had published Thirai, an alternative monthly film journal. Her films have been screened in more than a thousand odd forums and spaces for women‟s movements, mass movements, Dalit movements, grassroot ngos , civil rights societies, educational institutions, film societies and film festivals. Her films initiate participatory dialogue and interventions and have been screened at international platforms and conferences across the United States, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, South Africa, Kenya, Finland, Venezuela, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri lanka, Belgrade amongst others. Her first feature film Sengadal completed production in 2011.
Lucilla is currently the co-director of Community Media Trust. CMT has proven to be the ideal environment for an aspiring filmmaker and over the past ten years Lucilla has gained experience on a number of television productions as well as the organisation‟s landmark Treatment Literacy Series. She is currently the series director of CMT‟s flagship Siyayinqoba Beat It! television show. Lucilla is a committed activist and feels strongly about the reduction of gender based violence in South Africa. At CMT she has also had the space to develop and direct other projects such as Black People Don’t Swim and Don’t Shoot and has worked as an editor and producer on several documentaries including Brothers in Arms and Through My Eyes: Blanche La Guma.
O‟Donoghue is both a documentary cameraman and director. His debut film Brass Boys (2007) was selected for the prestigious IDFA film festival. He has worked for Carte Blanche and has documented a wide variety of United Nations Projects around Africa. He has been on shooting expeditions to the Antarctic, Aconcagua in Argentina and the Caucasus Mountain range in Russia.
Mandy Jacobson was born and raised in South Africa. Since 1991 she has produced short films and music videos. Calling the ghosts was her first feature length documentary film
Mthiyane has directed several documentary films. She was born in Inanda on the outskirts of Durban. She received the Our People, Our Pride award from President Bingu wa Mutharika for her documentary Ikhaya. Malawi. Her films have been showcased at international festivals such as Sundance, the Berlinale, The Pusan and HotDocs among others. She is a member of Filmmaker‟s Against Racism and directed Baraka which opposes xenophobia in South Africa
After serving as journalist for several years, Osvalde LEWAT opted for documentary film making. Her first documentary titled “Upsa‟ Yimoowin or the pipe of hope” was made in Toronto. The film denounces the sidelining of the american Indians. The film that brought her fame is “Beyond the Pains” made in 2003 based on a prisonner who was sentenced to 4 years in jail for a minor crime, but ends up being imprisoned for 33 years. She won several awards around the world for the film. With “A Love During the War” her concern is on rape in the DR-Congo. In Black Business, her last film, which has won over 10 prizes at various films festivals, Osvalde Lewat addresses the question posed by Nigerian Nobel Laureate author Wole Soyinka: "They say Africans are not ready for democracy. So I wonder: have they ever been ready for dictatorship?" Osvalde Lewat graduated from Sciences-Po Paris and has certificates from Femis (France) and INIS ( Montréal).
Palesa is an emerging filmmaker living in Johannesburg. She makes films, both dramatic and documentary, about social development and human rights.
Rumbi has worked extensively in film and video in Southern Africa for over a decade. Many of her short stories about contemporary Zimbabwean life have been published, including 'Snowflakes in Winter' which is part of Weaver Press's 'Women Writing Zimbabwe' collection, 'The Corpse', published in 'Illuminations', and the award-winning 'Billboard Smile', which was one of the winners of the 2008 Anglo-Platinum Short Story Competition. From 2004 to 2006 Rumbi served as Festival Director of the Zimbabwe International Film Festival and was instrumental in expanding the festival and its outreach programmes to a wider audience. She has directed a number of music videos for some of Zimbabwe's top artists, Her film credits include 'Danai' for which she was nominated for Best Director at the National Arts Merit Awards, and the award-winning films 'Asylum', 'Tariro' and 'Big House, Small house'. Her full length feature film Playing Warriors was released in 2011.
Shelley was awarded a full scholarship from the Ford Foundation to study towards her Master of Fine Arts in Film in the United States and graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia in 2006. Her films have screened at major festivals and events around the world and been acquired by television, including MTV, DUTV and WYBE in the U.S and SABC in South Africa. Awards include an Audre Lorde award for media, Distinguished Graduate Student Award from the Pennsylvania Association of Graduate schools and Best film awards at international festivals in NYC, Canada, Moscow, San Francisco, Philadelphia and New Jersey for her first film, the experimental documentary titled “Whole- A Trinity of Being” The work-in-progress version of her thesis film, “Where we planted trees” was awarded “Best Documentary” at the Diamond Screen film festival in Philadelphia. Her film “Inclinations” executive produced by Cheryl Dunye was acquired by MTV and made the top ten best click list on their online site. Born and raised in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, Shelley completed graduate studies in English and Drama at the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape. She has worked extensively as a disability rights activist, following a shooting in the Cape taxi wars of 1996 that resulted in her being a wheelchair user. She has held positions as the Media Manager in the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons in the Presidency and as the National Parliamentary Policy Co-ordinator for Disabled People South Africa.
Wanuri Kahiu is a Kenyan film director. She has received several awards and nominations for the films which she directed, including the awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Picture at the African Movie Academy Awards in 2009.
Xoliswa is a producer / director who makes films mainly about women and children focusing on justice, human rights, poverty. She started out her film career as an actress in anti apartheid films like Cry Freedom and Mandela and then moved into production as a receptionist for the BBC Cecil John Rhodes. Xoliswa then moved on to work as a researcher for companies like CNN and BBC in South Africa. In 2001 she produced her first full length documentary called Shouting Silent which explored the vulnerabilities of young girls who had lost their mothers to HIV aids, having lost her own mother to HIV aids herself. Xoliswa was then employed to work with True Vision as an Associate producer on „Orphans of Inkandla’ which then won her a BAFTA award and an Emmy nomination. Her other credits include: South African producer on the „Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy‟ film; “A ribbon in the sky” about the effects of poverty on women with disabilities, „projek mandela’ released in April 2010. Her last documentaries for True Vision films included; „South Africa’s Lost Girls‟ for Channel 4; and Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children’ which was shot entirely undercover, and won her a Peabody winner and a second BAFTA. For the last six years, Xoliswa has been working on project titled „ Return to Zimbabwe‟. The film will be released 2012.
A Ghanaian-British documentary filmmaker and writer, and a graduate of King‟s College Cambridge, she worked as a civil servant in Ghana before becoming a General Trainee with the BBC. She has taught in Spain and Jamaica and has worked as a producer and director making documentaries for the main terrestrial channels in Britain. Her short stories have been published in Critical Quarterly and in African Love Stories: an anthology edited by Ama Ata Aidoo. In 2009, her first novel, True Murder was published by Jonathan Cape. Her TV credits include: Black and White, a ground-breaking investigation into race and racism in Bristol, using hidden video cameras for BBC1; I Want Your Sex, for Channel 4 and a six-part series, VSO, for ITV. African Love Stories is now available in Swedish from Tranan publishers under the title Kärlek x 21.
Zamo graduated from the University of Cape Town and entered television as a writer on the multi-award winning South African daily drama Isidingo. Philia is her first short film.
Zanele was born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972. She completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown and held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. She has worked as a community relations officer for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng, and as a photographer and reporter for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on lesbian and gay issues in Africa. Her work represents the black female body in a frank yet intimate way that challenges the history of the portrayal of black women's bodies in documentary photography. Her solo exhibition Only half the picture, which showed at Michael Stevenson in March 2006, travelled to the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and the Afrovibes Festival in Amsterdam. In 2008 she had a solo show at Le Case d'Arte, Milan, and in 2009 she exhibited alongside Lucy Azubuike at the CCA Lagos, Nigeria. She was the recipient of the 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the first BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship in 2006, and was the 2009 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Zina is a Nigerian born film-maker and video artist. She is the founder of AfricaLab, a production company dedicated to re-imagining Africa through visual media, principally film and art.