The Mpumalanga International Film Festival held at the Mbombela Civic Centre aims to get young aspirant film-makers in the province interested in making short stories. The week-long festival included screening and sessions with filmmakers. The first-of-its-kind event in the province aimed at promoting Siswati and Ndebele languages while exposing those interested in the film industry.
They were taught how to write and produce their content for the final production.
Mpumalanga province remains behind with film producers because only a handful of young people participate in the industry across the country. This is due to the lack of infrastructure, such as theatres, to expose these young talented producers.
The festival is part of a talent search in the province. The Mpumalanga International Film Festival is determined to revive the film industry in the province. Mpumalanga film producer, Jerome Moremi, says resources remain a challenge for film producers in the province.
“It is difficult to produce and shoot a film when you don’t have the resources. Especially, the working resources because this is one of the industries that really really demands a lot and you spend a lot of hours in this. Sometimes you find that you need to go and get content somewhere, you need to sleep there, you don’t have money for accommodation. If we can get the support from maybe our stakeholders, our government. We as the province, we as film producers we can produce and compete with the other provinces.”
A young talented content producer, Nelisiwe Mwasa, left the province for Gauteng to realise her dream in the content production industry. She is currently an independent producer, who does her content through online platforms to make a living.
“With the presence of social media, the presence of different platforms that people who have that kind of neck of creating visual that they would want share with people they can do it from their home the power is basically in their hands, they have been given this tools they can just do it from their home, they don’t have to physically to do it, I encourage anybody within Mpumalanga to start where they are, start with what you have if you have a cellphone you have a camera, you have a microphone recorder start there then you have access to Apps there are apps to edit on the phone export them push the content from the comfort of your home it beginning, it doesn’t have disturb the way of your life.”
Those who attended the festival have welcomed the opportunity.
“The Mpumalanga International Film Festival (MIFF) has committed to provide a platform where content creators in the province will be able to showcase their work. Mpumalanga is among the provinces without a television channel. Sifiso Nobela is the festival CEO.”
“We have actually started a process to set up an online streaming platform which is going to make things easy for the province. With the online platform what we’re looking to achieve is to be able to allow people to stream their services without having to use data and this is going to be the responsibility of the organization to make sure it stays available. We are looking at measures that we can use to prevent our users to spend data when they want to watch content.”
Nobela states that they also aim at putting Siswati and Ndebele languages on the map.
“So if someone wants merge in Siswati and spend more time learning the only best they work is on TV and read the news but there isn’t place where Siswati is used as a language for activities your documents paper work so it’s always been that English language is being used to accommodate everyone but who is everyone the people who are belonging to the language they are not accommodated because most of them speak the language but they not accessing the information in their own language so that’s one thing that the festival is looking to achieve, who is willing to put money into local Nguni languages, is there enough money to put the story because I know a guy in Nkomazi has been working on Siswati story for his life is not getting support is zero.”
Upcoming film-makers hope that such festivals will open more doors for them to access opportunities in future.
