Former president Nelson Mandela meets hip-hop group Prophets of Da City, as seen in the documentary film 'Notes from the Underground’.
Image: Supplied
A documentary film is not going to save the world — and that is not necessarily the intention — but it sure can elicit critical conversations.
For almost three decades, these conversations have emerged at the annual Encounters South African International Documentary Festival. The 28th edition of this festival opens this week in Cape Town and Johannesburg, where it runs until June 14.
Encounters, like many festivals globally, celebrates documentary filmmaking as an art form. It connects filmmakers with audiences at film screenings and runs workshops on requisite film industry skills.
Festival director Mandisa Zitha sets the tone: “Encounters is an opportunity to slow down and look behind the headlines to better understand our world.”
The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s activism and personal life is explored in a new film, ‘TUTU’, showing at Encounters.
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Looking is the operative word — documentary film uses a visual language to have conversations about the topics that filmmakers believe should concern us all.
This year’s line-up includes a host of South African films alongside storytelling from around the world. In total 58 films from 33 countries have been selected. A number of these films have won awards at other festivals.
‘TUTU’, a film about the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu has just won the Peace Film Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. It explores Tutu’s impact during and after apartheid, as an activist who says in the film: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
‘TUTU’ director Sam Pollard is scheduled to attend Encounters to host an editing masterclass open to the public in both festival cities.
Film director Sam Pollard’s will be attending the Encounters film festival to show his film ‘TUTU’.
Image: Henry Adobonago
Pollard has worked as a film editor with American director Spike Lee on his films 'Jungle Fever’ and the Oscar-nominated ‘4 Little Girls’.
He said in a statement: “I wanted Tutu’s voice to be the heartbeat of the story, to let his humanity, humour and moral conviction lead us through his world.”
Other award-winning films on the line-up include ‘Amilcar’, about Amílcar Cabral who “helped lead nationalist movements in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau”. It won at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, considered one of the world’s most prominent festivals.
Its Spanish director Miguel Eek is scheduled to attend Encounters and present a masterclass about his decade-long journey making this film and “discovering new materials that reshape the narrative”.
Cape Town films include 'Notes from the Underground’, a “music documentary tracing the history of Cape hip hop”; ‘Wat Was Hie?’, a “journey through Cape Town’s layered histories… asking what was here and what remains”; and ‘Bones’ which features the late local poet Diana Ferrus on her role in the repatriation of indigenous woman Sarah Baartman’s remains from France to South Africa.