The Black Power Mixtape

Göran Olsson (Director)

Swedish born Olsson read film studies at Stockholm University and continued at the Royal University of Fine Arts. A filmmaker, cinematographer and editor, he also developed the Super-16 A-cam. He is the founder of the short documentary TV program Ikon (SVT) and is a member of the Editorial board of Ikon South Africa.

Olsson travels courtesy of the Embassy of Sweden

The Creators

Laura Gamse (Producer / Co-Director)

American born Gamse received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2009. Gamse is currently working on the invisible sessions, a series of musical meditations intended to increase international awareness of phenomenal African artists; and the Abahlali Bikes Initiative, a project dedicated to stimulating alternative transportation in South Africa.

Jacques de Villiers (Co-Director)

Cape Town born de Villiers is a film editor, music-maker, occasional film lecturer/teacher and very occasional director. He is very active as a musician, having released the album sleepsongs and the More Wind For Lonely Suburbs EP. He is currently at work on a new album and the completion of a long-term video installation project, In Memoriam: Eulogies to Lost Time.

Cup of Dreams

Julian Shaw (Director)

New Zealander Shaw’s first film, Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story, won a British Film Institute Award, an IF Independent Spirit Award and a Berlinale Panorama Audience Award. He has produced and directed two other films. Since the age of 15 he has worked as a journalist, interviewing the famous and infamous, and authored the photo novel Modern Odysseus.

David Wants to Fly

David Sieveking (Director)

German born Sieveking studied directing at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin, and also works as an editor, assistant director and actor in film and TV productions. A 2003 Berlinale Talent Campus graduate he has made award-winning shorts and documentaries that have screened all over the world. David Wants to Fly is his documentary feature début.

Sieveking travels courtesy of the Goethe-Institut

Forerunners

Simon Wood (Director)

Wood has won a Fuji award (in 1998), graduated from the University for the Creative Arts (Farnham) and worked in television in the UK and then in Southern Africa producing documentary content for networks in Europe, Asia and the US. He was the Development Executive on the feature Izulu Lami / My Secret Sky (2008). His company SaltPeter Productions has two documentary projects in development. He has lectured at UCT and the FIFA Football for Hope.

From B-Boys to Being Men

Tanswell Jansen (Director)

Cape Town born Jansen’s love of Hip Hop and its elements of art, music and dance led him to challenge the mainstream media’s negative portrayal of Hip Hop culture. He began documenting the work of Hip Hop Pioneer and Brother Emile YX? of Black Noise and competitions such as African Battle Cry, Shut Up Just Dance and the African Hip Hop Indaba. To date he has produced over 24 event based shows.

G-Spotting

Ségolène Hanotaux (Director)

A Graduate from the Sorbonne University in Paris and the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Lille, Hanotaux has since worked as a television journalist. She specialised in reporting on medicine and science for French television. She currently lives in New Delhi, India. G-Spotting is her début documentary.

Hanotaux travels courtesy of the French Embassy

Glitterboys and Ganglands

Lauren Beukes (Director)

Beukes is a novelist, scriptwriter and journalist and her novel Zoo City has recently won the Arthur C Clarke Award and the Kitschies Red Tentacle for best novel of 2010. As a TV writer, she co-wrote the pilot for the satirical political puppet show, Z-News; helped launch South Africa’s first full length animated TV show, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika, as head writer and occasional director; and has written episodes of Florrie’s Dragons for The Disney Channel. Her first comic is due out in Vertigo’s Strange Adventures anthology in May. Glitterboys and Ganglands is her documentary début.

History Uncut

Brian Tilley & Laurence Dworkin (Directors)

Brian Tilley and Laurence Dworkin were founders of Afravision, a video collective that documented the struggles that swept South Africa in the eighties. The Afravision archive is rumoured to be the most comprehensive and in depth archive of that period. Dworkin and Tilley still work in film, but only because they have few other options.

Imam and I

Khalid Shamis (Director)

Shamis trained in the UK and Middle East as a film and TV writer, director and editor. He settled in SA in 2005 and runs the production company tubafilms. He is a board member of The South African Screen Federation (SASFED), an active member of the Documentary Filmmakers’ Association (DFA), the South African Guild of Editors (SAGE) and the SA Scriptwriters’ Union (SASWU). His last film, The Killing of the Imam, won the best short documentary SAFTA 2011.

An Intersection

Karin Slater (Producer / Director / Cinematographer)

Slater, a ‘Best Student Director’ 1989 graduate of Technikon Natal, began as a wildlife filmmaker and won four Avanti Awards in 2000 for Animal Powers. Her focus has since shifted to people and her six recent films have screened all over the world with 50 Years! Of Love? taking the top awards in 2008 at both Durban IFF and Apollo. She is the recipient of the prestigious Trailblazer Award – MIPDOC Cannes 2008. She has taught Independent Documentary at Selkirk College, Canada, and is currently a head mentor at Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking in Cape Town.

King Naki

Tim Wege (Director)

Wege graduated from Rhodes University (1997) with a Journalism degree in TV and camera studies. He began working as freelance travel writer, stills photographer and lighting cameraman for various documentary and television series. As a cameraman he has worked for all the major networks, locally and internationally, and has directed numerous commercials. He has also directed episodes of the SABC Arts-doc series, Headwrap. In 2007 he made How Funky is my Chicken, which traces the Soccer for Hope project. King Naki is his debut feature documentary.

Li-Xia's Salon

Omelga Mthiyane (Director)

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.

Mama Goema

Ángela Ramirez, Sara Gouveia, Calum McNaughton (Directors)

Angela Ramirez (Colombia) is an audiovisual communicator and director of the short documentary Welcome a Tumaco, which won Best Documentary Film at CineCun Festival (2005) and a New Creator Award at the Cartagena Film Festival (2006). She is currently an artist in residence at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town.

Photographer and videographer Sara Gouveia (Portugal) has a MA in photography from the University of Bolton (England) and Dalian University (China). Her work has been published and exhibited internationally. She is part of the Cape Town-based audiovisual performance-art project Darkroom Collective.

Calum MacNaughton (South Africa) studied Literature and Film Theory at the University of Cape Town and has a MA in World Literature from the University of Madrid (Spain) and St. Louis University (USA). He is a creative writer and works as a new media strategist and content producer.

Mining For Change

Eric Miyeni (Producer / Co-Director)

Eric Miyeni is perhaps best known as a performer and satirist. He has had numerous film roles – Cry the Beloved Country opposite James Earl Jones, Bopha opposite Danny Glover, Dangerous Ground opposite Liz Hurley and Ice Cube, and Waati directed by Souleymanne Cisse. He has directed a number of commercials and the short film The Final Embrace.

Navan Chetty (Co-Director)

Chetty, a Fine Art and Photography graduate, first worked as set/costume designer at the Asoka Theatre (UNDW), then as an artist in residence at The Printmaking Workshop in New York. Back in SA he was an on-air presenter (SABC) and shot and directed a range of programmes in the lifestyle, travel and youth genres. In the past five years he has travelled the African continent, shooting and directing the lifestyle/travel programme Studio 53 on DSTV.

Once Upon a Day: Brenda Fassie

Eddie Edwards (Director)

Edwards shot his first film, King for a Knight (1991), in Cape Town on a borrowed cam-corder. This led him into the world of documentary filmmaking, and he has won numerous awards for his films The Black and The Fight. For television he was the Creative Director for the inaugural series of Big Brother Africa. He also directed Zola 7 in Africa. Edwards is the Series Director for the ZAIN telecommunications’ CSR Project in Zambia, Niger, and Ghana.

Porselynnkas Dokiementêr

Matthew Kalil (Director)

South African born Kalil graduated with an MA in Screenwriting from The Northern Film School (Leeds). He has lectured at UCT, AFDA and Tisch (NYU). He writes and directs and his projects have been exhibited, screened and broadcast in Denmark, Canada, France, New Zealand, America, Thailand, Sweden, Morocco and South Africa. In 2005 he spearheaded the creation of the Amarabella Township Film Festival, screening and making films in Cape Town’s informal settlements. He is currently writing his 4th feature film script in collaboration with Stefan Blank and funded by the NFVF.

Scars

Tiny Laubscher

Laubscher has worked in film and television for the past 34 years as a director and editor in numerous genres including corporate, marketing and instructional videos (Sun International, SAB, Standard Bank, Simba, Dairybelle); social documentary and wildlife films for National Geographic, Discovery Channel, BBC and SABC; and television dramas for MNET, kykNET and SABC. He has also edited feature films for Heinrich Dahms, Leon Schuster and Gray Hofmeyr.

Chris Schutte

Chris started in the film and television industry 36 years ago. Together with Laubscher, Schutte learned his craft in the late 70s and early 80s at Independent Film Centre under the doyen of documentary film making Raymond Hancock. Schutte is now a DOP and has shot films for both Leon Schuster and Gray Hofmeyr.

Wellbodi Biznes

Kyle O’Donoghue (Co-Director)

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. In the past six months he has been on shooting expeditions to the Antarctic, Aconcagua in Argentina and the Caucasus Mountain range in Russia.

Miki Redelinghuys (Co-Director)

Award-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.

Wembley to Soweto

Kagiso Sesoko (Director)

Seseko matriculated in 2003. He took many courses in computers and business management and in 2006, with four other partners, set up Paperpush Productions and makes corporate videos. Recently he took a course in scriptwriting at the Newtown Film School. Wembley to Soweto is his début documentary.

Whatever Happened to Robert Mugabe

Simon Bright (Director)

Zimbabwean Bright began his career with the Ministry of Agriculture. In the 80s he co-founded Zimmedia that, primarily, made films to combat the political and military Apartheid regime. He also covered the conflicts in Mozambique and Angola, and broke the news of the Angolan victory at Cuito Cuanvale. His pan-African drama series, Mama Africa, celebrates the talents of Africa’s women writer/directors. He has produced two fiction films, Flame and Bintou, that were selected for the Cannes Film Festival.

Where We Planted Trees

Shelley Barry (Director)

A Ford Foundation scholarship took Barry to the US and in 2006 she graduated from Temple University, Philadelphia, with her Masters in Fine Arts in Film. She has won multiple awards, including the Audre Lorde Award for Media, for her short films. Following a shooting during the Cape taxi wars of 1996 Barry is now a wheelchair user. As an activist she has worked as the Media Manager in the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons in the Presidency. Her film career includes stints at e.tv and Cape Town TV. Most recently she shot Place of Grace with funding from the Gordon Institute (UCT). Her company is twospinningwheels productions.