Clifford Bestall The Last Call

Bestall, is a cameraman and director of many award winning socio-political and wild-life documentaries, among them: Killers Don’t Cry (2001), the first film ever to win two Grierson Awards (British Guild of Producers); Apartheid’s People (co-director), Peabody Award; The Long Walk of Nelson Rolihlahla
Mandela (series), nominated for an Emmy. In 1985 he was named he Television Cameraman of the year by the Royal Photographic Society.

Belinda Blignaut & Bridget Pickering Imbokodo – The Rock

Blignaut is an all-round artist, a graphic and web designer, photographer, av artist, and in film / TV she works as a researcher and director. She is currently art directing on a local horror flick.
Pickering has produced and directed over 20 documentaries, several television dramas and feature films, including the Academy Award nominated Hotel Rwanda (South African co-producer). She is in development on a TV series based on Romeo and Juliet, U Gugu no Andil, set in South Africa’s highly explosive pre-democracy period of 1993.

Ditsi Carolino Life on the Tracks

As an NGO worker Carolino documented human rights issues in Mindanao, Phillipines with photographs and slideshows. Since 1991 she has been directing award-winning documentaries, among them Minsan which won a Gold Medal
and the Grand Award for Documentary at New York Festival 1999 and the Grand Prix Toutes Category at the Brussels Independent Film Festivals 1998. Riles / Life on the Tracks was the result of a two-year study grant at the National Film and Television School in England. Her film Bunso screened at Encounters 2005.

Nikki Comninos Do Girls Want It?

Comninos’ UCT Honours graduate film Algemeen Befokte Afrikaans was selected for the New York IFF 2005. Her editing credits include: the Schabir Shaik film for SABC3’s Unauthorised series; Vuleka Productions’ A Child is a Child (because of other people); the 4 part series, The History of Cato Manor, for the Cato Manor Museum. Currently she is directing e.tv’s Z is for Zulu, exploring the commodification of Zulu culture.

Tamsen de Beer Break Boys

Tamsen de Beer is a writer and content-maker. She is the author of African Salad: a portrait of South Africans at home. Tamsen was a TV producer, newspaper columnist and magazine editor with a special interest in popular culture. Break Boys is her first documentary film as a director.

Jihan El-Tahri Cuba: An African Odyssey

Lebanon born El-Tahri is a French and Egyptian national. She has an MA in Political Science from the American University of Cairo. Between 1984 and 1990 she worked as a news agency correspondent, TV researcher, and associate producer in Tunisia and Egypt, covering Middle East politics. In 1990 she began directing and producing documentaries for French television, and for the BBC since 1995. Her Emmy nominated film, The House of Saud, screened at Encounters in 2004.

Angèle Diabang Brener Senegalese Women and Islam, My Beautiful Smile

After studying at the audiovisual school, Media Centre of Dakar, in 2003, Diagang Brener worked as an editor. My Beautiful Smile is her first film. She formed her own production company, Karoninka, and made Senegalese Women and Islam, co-produced with the Goethe Institute Dakar. Currently she is making a 52min film about Léopold Sédar Senghor’s ‘singer’: Yandé Codou, la griotte de Senghor.

Sharon FarrLove Communism, Revolution & Rivonia – Bram Fischer’s Story

Farr, a Rhodes graduate, worked in print and television, and founded Shoot the Breeze Productions in 1995 with Lee Otten. Besides 10 documentaries they have produced the magazine show Free Spirit, and have received numerous local and international awards, including the World Award for the Best TV Documentary focusing on Antiretroviral Treatment for Msindy’s Story (Our Nation in Colour – The Feminine Strand) at the Asia Media Summit 2007.

Liz Fish Voëlvry

Fish has been a documentary, youth and community filmmaker for 24 years. At Community Video Education Trust (CVET) she trained, documented and produced films with and for the Cape Flats Community at the height of the 80’s and 90’s Anti-Apartheid Struggle, including key events such as the formation of the United Democratic Front. Her film The Long Journey of Clement Zulu screened at Encounters in 1999. Liz is a board member of CVET.

Simon Klose Sweet Memories Garden Centre

A Law graduate (Stockholm University), Klose has lived in Japan and in South Africa. Abandoning law he moved to Soweto and shot Sweet Memories. In 2005 he made Spelberoende, a documentary on the Swedish musician Timbuktu. In 2006 he recorded Promoe’s DVD Standard Bearer. Currently he is making a film on the homeless in Tokyo.

Karabo Lediga & Tamsin Andersson Black Sunday

Lediga & Andersson’s first collaborative work is Black Sunday. They have extensive plans to change the world with brilliant documentaries. Tamsin cut her teeth on the gratuitous exploitation of human emotion that is reality TV; while Karabo wrote and edited scripts of sometimes dubious, sometimes genius content. Despite their cut-throat industry beginnings, they retain a hope in the power of interesting stories.

Jack Lewis Brothers in Arms

Active in the anti-apartheid movement, Lewis completed a PhD while under banning orders (1976-81). He co-founded Idol Pictures (1993), and the Out In Africa South African Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (1994). He has directed and produced numerous documentaries and co-directed his first feature, Proteus, with Canadian John Greyson (2002). He produced Casa de la Musica, winner of the 2003 Encounters Jameson Audience Award. He produced and directed the HIV/AIDS tv talk show Siyayinqoba Beat It! (!999-2006)

Vincent Moloi A Pair of Boots and a Bicycle

Moloi worked at Soweto Community Television, completed his Media Studies at Boston Media House/RAU, then interned at the SABC. He has made a number of documentaries, including Men of Gold for the series Black on White, which won the Jameson Encounters Audience award 2006. He was nominated by Encounters as an African Trailblazer at MIPDOC 2007. Moloi produces his films through his production company Hamaloi.

Premilla Murcott Amabele Am

When she’s not behind a camera, Murcott enjoys scribbling words onto paper. She calls these scripts, poems, ideas etc. and has big plans to make funny, exciting films. She’s gained valuable insights working on various productions such as the action-packed feature film, Jerusalem Entjha and a moving documentary about the group Freshlyground.

Tebogo Ngoma BEEing Me

A BA Arts graduate from UCT (2004), Ngoma has worked as a project coordinator (June 16 Foundation) and as a researcher on films. Interested in painting and filmmaking, she is currently studying for her Masters in Public Development and Management at the Wits School of Management.

Eva Mulvad Enemies of Happiness

Danish born Mulvad worked as a writer and journalist before entering the National Film School of Denmark, where she made numerous documentaries before graduating in 2001. In 2006 she won WIFT (Women in Film and TV) award for young film talents for the film The Golden Mermaid. He latest film, Enemies of Happiness won the Silver Wolf Award (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2006) and the World Cinema Jury Prize at Sundance 2006.

Lindiwe Nkutha Jo’burg Rising

Nkutha is an all-round storyteller. She has written and self-published a novella, her short stories and poetry have been published in a number of journals and anthologies, and she has written articles for popular magazines;
exhibited her photographs; and made a short film that has traveled the world. Currently she is completing her first novel and developing her next documentary film.

Miki Redelinghuys Keiskamma – a love story

Redelinghuys, documentary filmmaker, cameraperson and reluctant producer, dabbles in pet rock painting and homemade biscuit production, but friends and family advise she stick to filmmaking. A storyteller, she sees life as a series of shots in films, yet to be made. Her approach is visual, she prefers to be behind the camera, allowing life to gradually reveal itself. She’s been doing this since 1994ish, and plans to do it for a lot longer. She hopes to never find a day job. With co-producer, Lauren Groenewald, she runs Plexus Films, in Cape Town.

Leonard Retel Helmrich Promised Paradise

Retel Helmrich studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy (1986) and made his first feature film The Phoenix Mystery in 1990. A cinematographer and director, he has won many international film awards and has lectured widely on his renowned ‘single shot cinema’. His film The Shape of the Moon (2004), won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, Sundance 2005, and the Joris Ivens Best Documentary Award, IDFA 2004.

Lomin Saayman & Lloyd Ross Light on a Hill: A Tour of the Constitutional Court with Justice Albie Sachs.

Saayman & Ross first worked together on developing video material for the official website of the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002, and since have collaborated on several documentary projects for the SABC, Curious Pictures, Sunday Times and the Constitutional Court. Most of these form part of larger multimedia productions for the Internet or on DVD. They are currently making short films about artists represented in the Constitutional Court’s art collection.

Julian Shaw Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story

NZ-born Julian Shaw, 21, has a career in both filmmaking and film criticism. An Australian Film Institute Award winner, he is the writer/director of a short film, Intercourse Pennsylvania, starring Colin Friels, and the author/photographer of a photonovel Modern Odysseus, also featuring Friels. Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story is his début documentary feature and has been well received in Australia.

Dylan Valley Lost Prophets

Valley, a UCT Honours graduate (Film & Media), began listening to hip hop and performing at cultural events while still at school. Hip hop and art became a means for him to understand the world he lived in, and led to an appearance, on didgereedoo, on Black Noise’s album Getcha on the Floor. Lost Prophets is his honours thesis project in partnership with co-producer and collaborator Sean Drummond.

Thomas Wallner Writer – Beethoven’s Hair

Wallner is an Emmy award winning producer and writer with a 20 year history in interactive media, documentary film and television production. Currently, among other things, Thomas is directing an HD feature
documentary on the Tropicana Cabaret in Havana, commissioned by the Sundance Channel, ARTE France and the Canadian Documentary Channel. He is also the recipient of five Gemini nominations and two Gemini awards.

Carla GarapedianScreamers

Garapedian's strong academic background - she holds a PhD in international relations - has transpired the work she has been conducting as a producer, director and correspondent based in Britain. She has exposed the brutal treatment of women in Afghanistan in Lifting the Veil, Russian war crimes in Chechnya in Dying of a President and the links between Mark Thatcher, mercenary Simon Mann and the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea. Her quest for truth has also led her to Zimbabwe (clandestinely), North Korea and Iran. Screamers won the coveted Audience Award at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles in November 2006.

Yunus Vally The Glow of White Women

After spending some time in Namibia, Yunus returned to South Africa and moved from hand drawn work to digital media and joined a small TV group 'Times Media TV'. The company became very successful and for seven years he designed opening sequences, logos and TV proposals. Yunus decided to venture into a project of his own and responded to a call from the SABC, inviting black documentary filmmakers to make films about white people. Yunus studied Fine Art at University of Durban (Westville.) in 1985/86. Although he failed to complete his tertiary studies, his art and painting background led him to paint banners for various political organizations. He subsequently became involved in NGO work for Adult Literacy and the South African Council for Higher Education. 'The Glow of White Women is his first film.