ALEXANDRA – Olive Tree hosts US Embassy's filmmaking strategies training.
Alex artists learn and listen intently.
The Olive Tree Theatre hosted a workshop for Alex’s budding artists facilitated by Americans on strategies to help them become sustainable social impact filmmakers.
This was part of a cultural exchange partnership to foster understanding and cooperation between the South African and USA governments, conducted through dialogue and debates on screened films and in master classes.
The facilitator was acclaimed film industry expert Lina Srivastava and participants who appreciated the opportunity, comprised young filmmakers, actors, actresses, directors, photographers, drama writers and schoolchildren.
Lina Srivastava in dialogue with local artists.
Srivastava is the founder of the New York-based Creative Impact and Experience Lab, which uses social innovation strategies through film and documentaries to advance social engagement and dialogue on rights-based issues. She used the strategies to produce her Oscar Award-winning documentary, Born in Brothels and Emmy nominated, The Devil Came on Horseback. She also applied the strategies on film projects she designed for United Nations’ agencies, the World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation.
“I am keen to impart to the youth, other innovative strategies on film and documentary making to help enhance their creativity, messaging, advancement, marketability, sustainability and impact on social change through films,” she said. The strategies she added also helped to position and appreciate the role of the youth in social change and developed growing economies.
Alex artists learn and listen intently.
“Their creativity ought to be encouraged through storytelling supported by the strategies that framed the stories to enhance public dialogue and debate, impact social and policy change and create audiences for sustainability.” She said storytelling in documentaries reflect human realities of poverty and inequities in power relations, human, gender, cultural and environmental rights injustices, which change through dialogue, resulting in policy changes.
Her other workshops were at the Big School of Digital Film Making, the Vaal University of Technology and the City of Joburg’s Film Resources Unit, while her companion, Carolyn Hepburn, also an Oscar and Emmy nominee, conducted others in Soweto, Bloemfontein and Cape Town.
