Tell us about the need for a project like the Three Continents Film Festival.
In terms of film festivals — the more the merrier. About two years ago when I was making a film about Zimbabwe, My Land My Life, I approached Lawyers for Human Rights to see if they could provide any support for the work. They said, ”We can’t support you on this, but we’re very interested in running with a human rights film festival.” This was at the beginning of 2002.
Over the last few years there has been a comeback of political documentary. While much of it is dismissed as propaganda, these films can be well crafted, and they don’t necessarily have to be propagandistic. There’s been a shift to subjective filmmaking, back to auteur — driven films that give a personal take on a political situations.
I was travelling last year with My Land My Life. I went to a number of film festivals, one of which was the Three Continents Film Festival in Buenos Aires. I was inspired by the documentaries and, more importantly, by the culture they are trying to build. We have worked with them as the filmmakers organisation Sacod (Southern African Communications for Development).
For their last festival we sent in 10 films. They selected six, one of which won the festival competition — Ingrid Gavshon’s Facing Life, Facing Death. The opening night film was my film Carlos Cardosa: Independent Spirit.
Their festival was a one-off and they agreed that they didn’t have the capacity to run it every year. So we agreed we’d try to make it rotate from continent to continent.
But you’re trying to establish it locally as an annual event.
What we’re trying to do here is establish an institutional link with the festival and the festival founders in Latin America.
What we’re going to run with annually, in South Africa, is a festival on a much smaller scale. But we will continue to make the selection for Africa for the Three Continents Film Festival, which is in planning for India, on behalf of Asia, in 2004. We’re in position also to feed them some seed money.
What funding base exists for the project in South Africa?
We’ve captured the imagination of donors by arguing that good film has a mass appeal and can foster a culture of human rights. This has been assisted by the likes of the Encounters Documentary Film Festival that, over the years, has had an increasingly political profile.
The first funder to come through was the United States-based donor body the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, followed by the Foundation for Human Rights and by Atlantic Philanthropy. The festival partners are Lawyers for Human Rights, Sacod, the Gauteng Film Office and the Film Resource Unit, which will deal with outreach.
Cinema Nouveau has come in with the equivalent of R400 000 in marketing. Then there’s the Gauteng Tourism Authority. The National Film and Video Foundation has helped conceptualise a filmmakers’ forum. My company is Uhuru Productions and the Mail & Guardian, as media partner, has a long history with film festivals.
What unifies the body of work to be shown?
We have many films with wide appeal — universal themes that a Finnish housewife could relate to. These films are the product of an increasingly political, globalised world. People are looking for programming that isn’t run-of-the-mill. That’s why these films have been able to be made in the first place, and have been able to travel. They all speak to the big issues through very personal human stories.