Hazel Friedman
THE ground-breaking local television series, Ghetto Diaries, has won two awards at a prestigious international media festival. Held in Geneva this week, the Rencontres Media Nord-Sud Festival (North- South Media Encounter) is an annual festival focusing on development documentaries, which alsoaims to encourage North-South relations in film and television.
Out of 36 finalists in the television category, competing for five prizes, it awarded SABC1 and Mail & Guardian Television Ff5 000 francs for Ghetto Diaries: Across the Divide – the second series of the documentary, which teaches ordinary South Africans to make films about their lives. In the episode that won the award, goldminer Lucky Mnceke and his wife Nombasa, who lives in the Transkei, were trained to record their separate lives. This episode was produced by Dingaan Thomas Kapa.
Ghetto Diaries: Across the Divide won the Prix Sud-Nord for the best submisson from the South. It also won the Pierre Alain Donner prize, from Swiss-French television. This is the third award won by Ghetto Diaries. Its first award was for best documentary at the 1996 Southern Africa Film Festival held in Harare.