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The Jozi Film Festival Awards – 12 February 2012
Three days. Two venues. Twenty seven films. Six winners.
Best Student Film Award: E-lectrity. Director: Mikles Manneke. AFDA.
Best Fiction Film Short: “Singing In Kliptown” – Eat My Dust Collective.
Best Documentary Film: My Hunter’s Heart. Directors: Craig Foster and Damon Foster.
Best Animated Film: Tengers. Director: Michael Rix.
Best Feature Film: Man On Ground. Director: Akin Omotoso.
Audience Choice Award: The First Grader. Director: Justin Chadwick.
Eat My Dust winners
Awards presenter Nthati Moshesh
The first Jozi Film Festival awards took place last night at the offbeat venue of The Kensington Club in Jo’burg’s oldest suburb. Tweeted by David Smith, The Guardian’s Africa correspondent: “At the 1st Jozi Film Festival awards. Overheard: “The Cannes film festival started in a room like this”, “Joburg is the New York of Africa”. Hosted by comedian John Vlismas and actress Nthati Moshesh, the awards were a relaxed and informal celebration of all the film talent Jozi has to offer.
Kicking off the festival last Friday at The Bioscope Independent Cinema was Akin Omotoso’s Man On Ground, a South African premiere which took home Best Feature Film of the festival last night. One of the film’s producers, Rosie Motene had this to say post the awards: “Finally a festival of our own! What a pleasure it was to have our South African premiere at the first Jozi Film Festival, then to win our first award made it even more special! Thank you to the organisers for seeing the need to showcase and celebrate South African films!”
Russell Grant, co-owner of The Bioscope: “We have done many festivals at The Bioscope, each with their own audience and charm, so we can confidently say that the Jozi Film Festival was incredibly successful. They kept it short and jam packed, with sold out screenings at 11am! Well done to the team!”
The Short Fiction Festival on Saturday 11 Feb at The Bioscope proved to be a very popular event of the JFF. Despite the event being sold out, people begged to go inside the cinema, happy to stand or sit on extra chairs brought in. Films screened at this “mini festival” were Bianca Bothma’s “Constructing Jo’burg”, Justin Sandmann’s “Ticket eSandleni”, Stephen Abbott’s “Dirty Laundry”, “Unusual Predicament” by Henco J and “Singing in Kliptown” by Eat My Dust. Eat My Dust took the prize home last night in this category amidst joyous shouts from the young Kliptown-based Collective.
Eat My Dust was formed under the tutelage of French director, Delphine De Blic and their short films are strongly influenced by the Lumiere Brothers, Pathe and Chaplin to name a few. Sandra Dorville from Eat My Dust had this to say after winning their award: “JFF LOVE cinema and we can feel it! The selection for the festival and then winning the award for “Singing In Kliptown” has given the team the energy and the confidence to continue the journey. At Eat My Dust we love cinema too, so we will be back with more movies!”
“Ticket eSandleni” director Justin Sandmann: “Just want to thank you all (at JFF) for organising such a wonderful Film Festival. John Vlismis was a brilliant MC as well. The amazing thing is that the Jozi Film Festival helped me to take myself seriously as a filmmaker in SA. You guys can expect an entry from me every year!”
Jozi Film Festival would like to thank all the filmmakers and distributors for trusting us to show your films over this 3-day event. Thanks too to those involved in running our well attended workshops and to our volunteers who gave freely of their time to ensure things ran smoothly. A final thank you to our sponsors and partners who helped get this whole thing off the ground in the first place.
Submissions for JFF 2013 will open on 31st March. Details will be found on our website - which has had over 100 000 hits in the past month!
Bianca Bothma, Lisa Henry and Anel Alexander
Eat My Dust winners
Michael Rix wins the award for Best Animated Film
Charles Hunter Ryder accepted Best Student Film on behalf of Mikles Manneke from AFDA
Rosie Motene, producer of Man On Ground
Carel Nolte from Etana, one of the sponsors of this year’s Jozi Film Festival
MC John Vlismas