Kerrin Kokot, panel discussion chair.

SAGE Exec member, Head of Editing at AFDA.

Kerrin Kokot lectures offline editing at AFDA Cape Town and freelances primarily in documentary post-production. She sits on the Executive Board of the South African Guild of Editors and holds a Masters Degree in Film and New Media from UCT, where she focused on animation narratives. She has edited over 50 vastly different documentary projects. She incorporates her first love, animation, in her work as much as is appropriate and possible.

Ángela Ramírez – Director/Editor (Mama Goema)

Originally from Colombia and passionate about documentary filmmaking, Angela directed and edited her first short documentary in 2005. Welcome a Tumaco examines a controversial debate concerning the place of traditional and modern music in the community, concluding that music provides social cohesion regardless of its genre. It has been selected for festivals in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium and France; won the award for Best Documentary Film at the CineCun Festival in 2005 and New Creators category at the Cartagena Film Festival in 2006, and has been broadcast on Colombian National Television as on South African channel CTV.

Over the last six years, she has filmed and edited several educational, institutional and promotional documentaries covering diverse topics. In 2007, Celeste, an experimental short documentary won the third place for Best Documentary in the Instinto Bogotá II Competition organized by the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO).

South Africa was to be another journey but she discovered a musical landscape similar to that of Colombia, prompting the idea of a documentary about music in Cape Town. With Mama Goema, she hopes to once again, demonstrate that music can bring people together and be an agent of healing.

Parallel to this project, she’s been filming and editing short promotional videos for different South African artists and cultural events such as the Pan African Space Station. She participated also in My Town Competition, Encounters Documentary Film Festival 2010, with “The Fashion Gap”, a 3 minutes piece that won the Public Award.

She’s currently part of a 3 months International Artist Residency Program at the Greatmore Studios in Cape Town, where she’s going to be directing a series of workshops on filmmaking for young people and also developing some other projects to be exhibited at the Greatmore Gallery.

Sara Gouveia – Editor (Mama Goema)

Sara Gouveia is a Portuguese filmmaker and photographer. She has a MA Photography (International Photojournalism and Documentary Photography) from the University of Bolton (England) and Dalian University (China). Her work has been published and exhibited internationally. She has produced, filmed and edited several promotional videos for Cape Town based artists and is also part of the Cape Town-based audiovisual performance-art project Darkroom Collective.

Jacques de Villiers – Editor (The Creators)

Jacques de Villiers is a film editor, music-maker, life-long student, occasional film lecturer/teacher and very occasional director, born and based in Cape Town, South Africa. In addition to co-directing The Creators, his editing achievements include numerous music videos and short films, particularly The Tunnel, a film that screened at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. De Villiers is also 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.

Khalid Shamis – Editor (Imam and I)

Trained as a Writer, Director and Editor in the UK and the Middle East, Khalid lectured for three years in the WITS film school in Johannesburg and now runs his production company tubafilms in Cape Town, primarily although not exclusively, working in the Documentary field.

Within the craft Khalid is a strong video and motion graphics editor having worked with some of the best doccie directors in the country and is a solid director himself having completed his first feature length independent film, Imam and I.

His animated short, ‘The Killing of the Imam’ has received a great deal of critical acclaim and won the best short documentary at the 2011 South African Film and Television awards.

Ronelle Loots – Editor (King Naki)

Ronelle Loots is an accomplished film and documentary editor, having worked on more than 18 feature films, a wide variety of documentaries, as well as a number of short films and drama series. One of her recent films, Master Harold and the Boys, is currently on circuit. uCarmen Ekhayalitsha, directed by Mark Dornford-May, won the Golden Bear award in Berlin in 2005.

Most recently she has won the SAFTA Golden Horn award for editing for her work on Faith Like Potatoes (2006) and The World Unseen (2008).

Some of her other feature film credits include: Forgiveness (2003) directed by Ian Gabriel, A Boy Called Twist (2003), directed by Tim Greene, Promised Land (2001) (South African Guild of Editors Award/Burkina Faso International Award) and Critical Assignment (2002) both directed by Jason Xenopolous. Paljas (Best Editor 1996 SAFTA Award) and Die Verhaal van Klara Viljee directed by Katinka Heyns.

Two of the documentaries she has edited is showing at the Encounters Festival 2011: Robert Mugabe – What Happened?, directed by Simon Bright and King Naki, directed by Tim Wege.

The documentaries she has directed include a collaboration with the poet Antje Krog. The Unfolding Of Sky grappled with issues post the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Narrative Of Betrayal, which won several Human Rights Festival awards, looked at issues of democracy and civil society in war-torn Angola. Ochre And Water, a documentary co-directed with Craig Matthew, has won her numerous editing and sound design awards. The film chronicles the life and politics of the Himba people of Northern Namibia in the face of modern development and took nine years to complete. It has won 12 international film festival awards including the prestigious Smithsonian Institute medal.

Marshall Curry – Director/Producer/Editor/Writer (If a Tree Falls)

Won Documentary Editing Award at 2011 Sundance Film Festival

Marshall Curry got his start shooting, directing, and editing the documentary, Street Fight, which followed Cory Booker’s first run for mayor of Newark, NJ and was nominated for an Academy Award and an Emmy.

After Street Fight, Curry was the Director and Producer, as well as one of the Directors of Photography and Editors of the feature documentary, Racing Dreams.

Racing Dreams follows two boys and a girl who dream of one day racing in NASCAR, and the film won numerous awards including the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival Award for Best Documentary. Racing Dreams was called “The best movie of the year,” by Scott Feinberg (The L.A. Times – “The Envelope”) and “Absorbing… one of the rare documentaries you leave wishing it was a little longer”, by Stephen Holden (NewYork Times).

Dreamworks is currently adapting Racing Dreams for a fictional remake.

Both Street Fight and Racing Dreams are included in the top 30 of Rotten Tomatoes’ list of Best Reviewed Documentaries.

In 2005 Marshall was selected by Filmmaker Magazine as one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film”, and he was awarded the International Documentary Association (IDA) Jacqueline Donnet Filmmaker Award. In 2007 he received the International Trailblazer Award at MIPDOC in Cannes.

Matthew Hamachek – Editor/Writer

Matthew Hamachek’s work has aired on HBO, IFC, PBS, BBC and the Discovery Channel. He began his career, working on the Oscar-nominated documentary Street Fight with Marshall Curry, and went on to collaborate with Curry again on Racing Dreams which won Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival.

He has worked on a number of other projects including the non-fiction series Film School with Nanette Burstein (American Teen) and The One Percent with Jamie Johnson (BORN RICH).Hamachek recently traveled to Morocco as part of the State Department’s American Documentary Showcase to screen RACING DREAMS at universities and cinemas around the country.

He is currently editing Geeta and Ravi Patel’s movie, One In A Billion.