Best Fiction Film, Best Documentary — even Most Courageous Film … Prizes are up for grabs in this years Short Film Competition, writes Trevor Steele-Taylor
THE annual Mail & Guardian/ Fawo Short Film Competition, which accompanies the Mail & Guardian Film Festival (now the South African International Film Festival), is entering its sixth, bumper year. Sixty-nine entries — up from last years 45 — have been received and the standard, says one of the organisers, is higher than ever before.
Past competitions have produced such emerging talents as Alex Yasbek, whose Two Cigarettes won the prize for Best Film in 1992; Fuad Adams, whose Journey Into the Heart of It All took the prize in 1993; and Guy Spiller, who won in 1991 with Entombe.
Past entrants have come from multiple disciplines and have included painter William Kentridge, whose animated films were a feature of several festivals, and artist, entrepreneur and now restaurateur Robert Weinek, whose film The Fridge blended surrealism with quirky humour.
This year the films — collectively titled Short Cuts — will be screened at an 83-seater cinema in the Mall in Rosebank, Johannesburg, and will undergo a stringent judging process.
Pre-judging and judging panels will precede judgement night, when international guests will include Trix Worrell, director of the BBCs Desmonds, producer Nadine Marsh-Edwards and filmmaker Melvin van Peebles.
They will choose winners in the categories Best Fiction Film, Best Documentary, Best Student Film, Best Animated Film, Best Overall Film and Most Courageous Film.
Prizes are donated by the Mail & Guardian, Central Film Laboratories in Zimbabwe, Panorama Sound and Agfa Motion Pictures.
An innovation this year will be the screening of the winning films on NNTV. In a gesture of commitment to independent filmmaking in South Africa, NNTV will broadcast a selection of short films from past years at 10pm on Friday September 30, and this years winning entries on Friday October 14.
Makers of short films have come up with all manner of strategies to get their films finished in time to meet the deadline.
Producer Marc Schwinges, whose Clubbing is directed by Luis Barros, financed his films production on his own credit card — and those of his associates. Market Gallery co-ordinator Stephen Hobbs used his travel scholarship from Wits University to finance his experimental production Audiovisual.
The most difficult thing about short filmmaking, says past winner Yasbek, is to develop confidence in the film you are making. That is the monster to overcome.
Savo Tufegdzic, who has a film entered in the competition as well as two longer films on the main programme, sees the monster as a lack of money on the edge of independent filmmaking. Despite this he has succeeded in bringing his three productions to fruition and speaks glowingly of the talent of independent South African actors, writers and cameramen.
The competition is a valuable showcase for the work of students. Caroline Carew, a tutor at the Newtown Film and Television School, who helps her students workshop the scripts that become their graduation productions, says: The Short Film Competition is the only public venue to exhibit South African indigenous films. It provides a chance for our student films to be seen by guest directors visiting the festival — some kind of international exposure.
Short Cuts runs from September 29 to October 9 at the Rosebank Mall. Judging by an international panel is open to the public and takes place on the evening of Sunday October 9.