FILM: Hazel Friedman
THE ground-breaking local television series, Ghetto Diaries, won the award for best documentary at the 1996 Southern Africa Film Festival, held recently in Harare.
The brainchild of filmmaker Teboho Mahlatsi and M&G Television Productions, the series provided a refreshingly gritty visual diary of township life and the aspirations of its residents.
What makes Ghetto Diaries unique is the fact that the stories were told by “film-makers” who had never held a video camera before. Inspired in part by Channel Four’s Video Diaries and screened on SABC1 in March this year (Ghetto Diaries II is due to be screened on SABC1 in February 1997), the series represents a radical departure from the traditions of conventional documentary television.
After putting the trainees through an intensive three-week training course Mahlatsi commissioned an ex-gangster, an unmarried mother, a student, her unemployed father, a policeman, an ex- prisoner, a taxi driver and a matric pupil to record their own lives.
l In last week’s Mail & Guardian review it was incorrectly reported that Marc Radomsky won the best documentary director award for his Ghetto Flowers.