Festival to empower emerging film-makers

The second instalment of the Struu Film Festival took place at the Rhoo Hlatshwayo Art Centre in Daveyton on April 8.

According to the festival’s project manager, Thoko Hlahla, it aimed to promote local talent and showcase films that tell authentic township stories.

“We saw a gap where emerging film-makers hardly grow. They become stagnant and never grew to a level where they can compete on an international platform,” said Hlahla.

She told the City Times they received 51 submissions.

Some films that were shortlisted included Owami, Kimberlite, Ungowami na? and Nomalizo.

She added the festival wanted to become a link between funding institutions like the Gauteng Film Commission (GFC) and National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) and township film-makers.

“We want to make sure that when a person has shot a film without a budget, we become a conduit to help them transition into established film-makers.

“We will have talks with different film institutions because we want to encourage the GFC, NFVF and DTI to help us develop these film-makers to shoot movies on an Oscars level.”

She said the NFVF’s tier system makes it difficult for emerging film-makers to access funding from the organisation, as most of the funding goes to established film-makers in tier one.

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“Emerging film-makers need funding from the NFVF. They are always stuck in tier three. We want them to move from being known as township film-makers to being recognised nationally.

“They have shown they have the talent and zeal for this. So we want them to move to another level and be recognised at festivals like the Durban International Film Festival.”

Hlahla said that besides the festival, they also host a workshop where they give feedback about films that did not make the shortlist to enable film-makers to improve their work.

“Many emerging film-makers need an opportunity. They lack encouragement. When we made a call-out, we realised some lacked certain skills. So building up to this festival, we have a workshop to empower emerging scriptwriters, directors and producers.

“For someone to shoot a film takes courage. When we review a film, we also give feedback about what we saw lacking for them to improve.

“From here, we will host a series of workshops focusing on different disciplines, such as directing, shooting and writing a compelling script.”

Hlahla encouraged film-makers to be creative and move away from the common crime theme that many film-makers has romanticised.

“We need to move away from that theme. We need to portray the township lifestyle well. We want to encourage all film-makers to be creative and start portraying our lifestyle more positively.”

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