Programme

Kisha Imani Cameron recently held posts as Head of Content for 4th Movement and COO of Ghetto Film School. Previously, through her production company Completion Films’s longstanding relationship with Focus Features, Kisha created the Focus Features Africa First Short Film Program which ushered in a new generation of African filmmakers, including Wanuri Kahiu, Rungano Nyoni, Ekwa Msangi and Julius Onah. Kisha has an extensive background in film development, having worked at New Line Cinema and Walden Media. Her producing credits include Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Raoul Peck’s Sometimes in April for HBO. In 2014, Ms. Cameron became a Certified Professional Coach and passionately works as a speaker, career coach and trainer via the Visionary Legacy Project. Since its launch, Kisha has trained over 1 000 people in group and individual settings as well as led career development workshops for the Sundance Institute Chicken & Egg, Refinery 29, Film Independent, WESGRO and Black Public Media.

In January 2016, after showcasing women filmmakers’ shorts through several premieres and events, such as the Cannes Film Festival, Audrey Clinet opened her film company Eroïn Productions, the first French production and distribution company for women filmmakers. In April 2018, the American chapter Eroïn US was born, and Audrey became a manager for filmmakers.

Since the creation of Eroïn, Audrey distributed 70 short films in 150 countries, produced two digital campaigns, and managed the careers of three women directors. Additionally, Audrey has directed two short films and one commercial.

With Eroïn Films, Audrey manages the film sales and the festival strategy of young filmmakers who have a human message to deliver to the world, through a strong artistic vision.

Wikus du Toit is a commissioning editor at kykNET for film, drama and comedy. Before that, he was a senior lecturer in Film Music at AFDA in Johannesburg. Du Toit is an actor, writer, academic and spouse (in no particular order of importance). He holds an MA in Drama, a post-grad diploma in Tertiary Education, and a second MA in Adult Education with specific focus on the development of critical thought and creativity in film, TV and theatre. He is the executive producer of more than 15 Afrikaans films and an award-winning actor. He received a SAFTA nomination for his role in kykNET’s hit comedy series Proesstraat.

Martin Ferreira is Director of Post-Production at Fremantle Media Australia, one of the largest and most successful creators, producers and distributors of scripted and unscripted content in the world. Managing the post-production and IT infrastructure across all production sites along with maintaining budgets and schedule requirements, form the base of his strategic development role.

World-class content creation requires keystone technological advancement and facilities, something which Martin has valued as the cornerstone of his career. Being truly passionate about all aspects of the broadcast industry, he believes that providing simple and efficient technical workflows creates environments that enhance the creative team’s ability to perform at their peak.

Martin has supported a vast array of productions delivering content to most major global networks including RTL, BBC, Discovery Networks, NatGeo, ABC, Network TEN, Channel 5 and ZDFE.

Claudette Godfrey is a Senior Film Programmer at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, and is responsible for the curation of the short film slate as well as feature film programming, overseeing film submissions to the festival, and managing the organisational big picture for the event. She has been a juror at Locarno Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival, AFI Fest, Palm Springs ShortFest, Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia in Tokyo, and a panellist at TIFF, Istanbul Film Festival, Cannes and Independent Film Week.

When Dolf was placed in silver diapers directly after he was born, the world should have known: Dolf was born to make movies. With a list of skills and awards that would make any  AFDA student sit up and listen, Dolf Henning is the answer to all our stories. And now he will graciously share all his expertise in a Master Class that will give wings to your film dreams. Action, camera, lights. Are we rolling?

Amy Jephta is a screenwriter and playwright from Mitchells Plain, Cape Town.

She has three feature film credits to her name including South Africa’s official 2018 Golden Globes submission, Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story, which also screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Toronto Black Film Festival and others.

As a playwright, her work has been directed by Danny Boyle for the Royal Court and was staged in London at The Bush Theatre, Theatre 503 and the Jermyn Street Theatre, and in Sweden at the Riksteatern. She has held fellowships at the Orchard Project Episodic Lab (New York), the AfroVibes Festival (Amsterdam) and the Edinburgh International Festival.

In 2019, Amy developed an hour-long original drama pilot for The Park as part of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Impact programme. The Park is currently attached to be produced by Imagine Entertainment. Other recent work includes thriller-action series Trackers, for M-Net and Cinemax/HBO, and Catch Me a Killer, an action-drama series pilot for eOn/Fired Up Films.

Amy has been named as one of the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Top Young South Africans, is the 2017 recipient of the national Eugène Marais Prize for Drama, the 2019 recipient of one of South Africa’s highest art accolades, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre, and the 2020 recipient of the Baumi Prize for script development (presented by Pandora Film and the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Germany).

She now focuses on producing for film and television via her company, Nagvlug Films, and is completing post on her directorial feature debut, Barakat, due for theatrical release in 2021.

Lisa Mini is a film and media professional with over 16 years of experience in the South African film industry. She joined Wesgro in 2015 as Film and Media Promotion Officer. Her experience ranges from production management on the first South African animated feature film, Zambezia, and various other high-profile film and television productions and film festivals, to setting up and running the Cape Town campus of the Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking. She is a certified African Film Commissioner.

Nashen Moodley started as Festival Director of Sydney Film Festival in January 2012 after stepping down from his role as Head of Programming of the Durban International Film Festival, a position he held since 2001. During his eight years at the helm, Sydney Film Festival has grown vastly. 2019, the event’s 66th year, marked the highest ever attendance at the festival, with final figures exceeding 188 000.

As a highly respected international film programmer, Nashen has worked as an industry consultant at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and as an expert at the Berlinale Talent Campus. From 2005 to 2017, he held the positions of Director of Asia and Africa Programmes and Director of Cinema of the World for the Dubai International Film Festival.

He has been a jury member at various film festivals worldwide, including the San Sebastian, Busan, Toronto, Rotterdam, El Gouna, Durban and Tokyo film festivals.

Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. He most recently directed the Emmy-nominated historical documentary Massacre at the Stadium (2019), a Netflix Original film about legendary musician Víctor Jara who was murdered during the ’73 coup in Chile. He is also known for Havana Motor Club (2016), a feature-length documentary that explores Cuba’s underground drag racing community, and Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011) about the famous fashion icon. He directed and produced Lumo (2007), a documentary about the recovery process of a young rape survivor in eastern Congo that won a Student Academy Award®.

Perlmutt’s commercial work has included directing and editing over 30 spots for Estée Lauder, Gucci, Bvlgari, Rag&Bone, Samsung, H&M, Vogue, Chloe, Tods, Jimmy Choo, Kohl’s, Carrera, San Pellegrino, Loréal, Guess, and Interview Magazine. He is a member of the Director’s Guild of America, the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s “25 New Faces of Indie Film”, and a recipient of two Sundance Institute / Sloan Foundation grants for two different projects. He’s currently a professor at Princeton University and has taught at Columbia University, William Paterson University, and across Africa for organisations including Mira Nair’s Maisha Filmlab and Peter Gabriel’s Witness.

Brazilian-born Elias Ribeiro has worked internationally since 1999. A resident in South Africa for a decade, he launched Urucu, a production company dedicated to making authentic and thought-provoking content in 2011. Urucu’s films have won awards at Sundance, Locarno, Durban, Rio and Beijing. They have sold worldwide to theatrical distributors and broadcasters such as SABC, Arte, ZDF and M-Net, and to SVOD platforms such as Netflix and HBO. His projects have attracted financing from private equity to regional and national funding bodies as well as tax incentives globally. In 2015, Ribeiro co-founded Realness African Screenwriters Residency, an incubator that has developed 30 audiovisual projects in over 16 countries in Africa to date. He served as a jury member for funds like Hubert Bals and as a mentor in multiple labs across the globe for emerging producers. His most successful film, Inxeba [The Wound], was shortlisted for an Oscar after winning 6 SAFTAS and 28 international awards. He is often a speaker at industry events and helmed the 2018 Cape Town International Film Market and Festival programme. He is an advisory board member to screenworlds.org and the Ladima Foundation and consults to various film-related businesses in Africa.

Monica Rorvik heads the film and media promotion team at Wesgro. She previously worked as assistant manager of the Durban International Film Festival and headed their industry programmes. There she developed a passion for growing talent in Africa and was seminal in the formation of Talents Durban in partnership with the Berlinale Talent programme. She has also been a film programme curator and often serves on international juries, selection panels and market expert programmes for international festivals and markets. She is a certified African Film Commissioner.

Roelof Storm is a South African producer with 10+ films and series credits to his name. His debut feature, Kanarie [Canary], directed by Christiaan Olwagen, was nominated for the Annual GLAAD Media Awards, in the category Oustanding Film, and won numerous awards at international festivals around the world, screening in over 20 cities like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Chicago, Atlanta, Hong Kong and Sydney. His second feature, Die seemeeu [The Seagull], also directed by Olwagen, premiered at the prestigious Moscow International Film Festival in Russia. Roelof was a co-founder of Marche Media, a multi-generational and truly South African media group based in Cape Town. They pride themselves in benchmark narrative content with premium delivery to both local and international audiences.

Tebogo Malebogo is a UK-born writer, director and producer currently based in South Africa. His most recent film, Mthunzi, premiered at Locarno Film Festival and The New York Film Festival in 2019. It was also awarded the Special Jury Prize at AFI Fest, and the Bronze Tanit at Carthage Film Festival. The film went on to play at more than 30 festivals around the world, including SXSW, Palm Springs International ShortFest and Chicago International Film Festival, before having its online premiere on Le Cinéma Club. Heaven Reaches Down to Earth is his sophomore short film.

Steven Markovitz is an award-winning producer and distributor of feature films and documentaries. He has produced in more than 20 African countries with over 120 directors. His films have sold worldwide and have been selected by major festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, Venice and Toronto. Notable awards include Toronto Festival Audience Award for Beats of the Antonov, Teddy Jury Award for Stories of Our Lives, an Oscar nomination for Inja and a GLAAD Outstanding Film Award for Rafiki. He is currently in post-production with films set in Libya, Ghana, DRC, Tanzania and South Africa.

He is a founding board member of the IPO, co-founder of Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, and co-founder of Electric South. He is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.

John Trengove’s debut feature, Inxeba [The Wound], premiered in Sundance and Berlin in 2017 and went on to win 28 international awards, including the historic Sutherland Trophy at the London Film Festival and the Grand Jury Award at Outfest. The controversial queer film was shortlisted for a foreign-language Oscar in 2018 and was briefly banned in South Africa after its release. John trained as an actor at UCT and studied film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His early work includes theatre, TV drama, short films and commercials. He has received 2 SAFTA awards for best director and an honorary award from South Africa’s Department of Arts and Science for his work in television. He lives between Johannesburg and São Paulo with his husband, Marco Dutra, also a filmmaker.

Nicola van Niekerk is the Senior Manager for Scripted Content at kykNET. She has a BA Hons in Film & Television Theory, as well as an MBA from Wits Business School. Nicola has worked across a variety of genres, including drama, soap, lifestyle and documentary shows for channels such as SABC, M-Net, Arte and Animal Planet.

She joined the kykNET team as commissioning editor in 2012. She is currently responsible for the scripted slate at the kykNET channels, but she also works on documentaries, the co-production of mini-series, and Afrikaans films.

Lauren started in the film industry 19 years ago as a runner. After freelancing for a few years, she was offered a position in post-production for South Africa’s first Oscar winner, Tsotsi (2005). She never looked back and worked as a post-production producer for The Refinery in Johannesburg from 2004 to 2015, overseeing the post from brief to execution. Since June 2016, she is the General Manager of The Refinery’s Cape Town office.

Lauren has managed the finishing post on over 60 titles during the course of her career. She is a strong technical producer with expert knowledge on various cameras, workflows and deliverables across the board. Working with the UK and US extensively, as well as some European territories, has given her a wide view of the global film industry.

After graduating from the University of Cape Town, a passion for the imagination and a need to improve the world led Petrus into storytelling. His debut producorial short, Mthunzi (2019), premiered in a competition at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival and has since been selected for over 30 international film festivals.

He just wrapped post-production on his latest short, Heaven Reaches Down to Earth, set to premiere later in 2020, and is entering production on another short and his feature debut.

Dorothee Wenner was born in 1961 and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1988 as a freelance filmmaker, writer and curator. Since 1990, she’s been working in various programming and curating positions at the Berlin Film Festival, currently as delegate for Sub-Saharan African cinema. Since its inception in 2005, she has been on the board and jury of the Lagos-based African Movie Academy Awards, and she worked as a programmer for the Dubai International Film Festival. She is currently a consultant for film and cinema at the Humboldt Forum, Berlin.

Her films include Hollywood Killed Me (1988), Star Biz (2005), Shanti Plus (2006), Peace Mission (2008), Drama.Consult (2012), Family Affairs/Living Archive (2012/13) and Kinshasa Collection (2017).

Kaye Ann Williams graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BA, specialising in Film and Media Studies. Kaye joined Penguin Films in 2008 – first as a freelance writer and later as the Head of Development. She has co-produced many television series, including Shreds and Dreams II, Saints and Sinners, Traffic, Zibondiwe, Stokvel and You Deserve It. She co-scripted and produced Ingoma, the SAFTA-winning made-for-TV movie for Mzansi Magic. Kaye also co-scripted the award-winning feature Krotoa, released in 2017.

Kaye joined kykNET channels in 2015, where she worked as a commissioning editor, successfully launching the SAFTA-nominated soap Suidooster. Since then, she joined M-Net Channels as Senior Manager for Commissioned Content. This includes movies, locally scripted and reality content. In 2019, she launched Trackers with the M-Net team which was a major co-production with HBO Cinemax and ZDFE. Kaye has also served as executive producer and supervising producer on a variety of local films. Her core strength is content development and story ideation.

Rowan Woods is an independent editorial consultant, programmer and moderator with over a decade’s experience across the UK film industry. She works at the British Film Council, where she advises all the major international festivals on UK projects, and she is also a programmer for the London Film Festival. She previously worked in journalism, distribution, exhibition and development.