Mphile Shabalala, CSI Manager For Content Programmes At MultiChoice, Addressing Joburg Film Festival Audience

Entertainment is a given – but film also needs to inspire, educate, provoke and criticise.

The Joburg Film Festival (JFF), which ran from Tuesday, 31 January until Sunday, 5 February at various locations across the city, offered a provocative and challenging slate of films from around the world that explored various social issues and offered a snapshot of a particular time in history.

“Apart from entertaining, film also has an important role: education – particularly about social challenges. Film must be able to expand our understanding or to offer a different perspective which may change the viewer’s own,” says Mphile Shabalala, CSI Manager for Content Programmes at MultiChoice. “By continuing to explore, confront and challenge social issues, film raises awareness of individual and collective challenges with powerful storytelling”.

The Key to Understanding

Even if the focus of a film isn’t the exploration of a social issue, any script or portrayal will, at the very least, demonstrate a view of the world that may complement or challenge the viewer’s own. “Media literacy – which builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills like inquiry and self-expression - has become an increasingly important skill in a world of ‘fake news’, providing a framework to access, analyse, evaluate and create messages across media platforms,” says Shabalala.

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Film for Debate

Going beyond passive viewing, a film can also be used as a starting point to debate issues between diverse groups. The two sides can use the film’s portrayal of an issue as the starting point for tackling it, rather than trying to get one to agree with the other’s point of view. Shabalala says that film can therefore be used to spark discussions about issues – racism, fascism or homophobia, for example - that can be difficult to tackle.

Five Social Issues films that made an impact at JFF 2023

In Feathers, an authoritarian father turns into a chicken when a magic trick goes awry at a children's birthday party. This forces the family’s mother to the fore and, in moving heaven and earth to bring her husband back and secure their survival, she goes through a total transformation. Feathers won Best Film, at the Film Festival Awards evening held on Saturday, 4 February.

Inspired by the legend that khat, a stimulant leaf, was found by Sufi Imams in search of eternity, Faya Dayi is a spiritual journey into the rituals of Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crop. Through the prism of the khat trade, Faya Dayi weaves a tapestry of intimate stories of people caught between violent government repression, khat-induced fantasies and treacherous journeys beyond their borders.

While We Watched is a turbulent newsroom drama which intimately chronicles the life of broadcast journalist Ravish Kumar as he navigates a spiralling world of truth and disinformation.

On an impulse to reconnect with her origins, Freddie returns to Seoul for the first time since she was adopted and raised in France. In Return to Seoul, the headstrong young woman starts looking for her biological parents in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

In 1960, the discovery of the remains of an apartheid-era policeman 60 years after he went missing forces a retired singer to revisit her past to help with the investigation. But how much does she know, and what is she holding back?

Virtual Reality Offers A Huge Opportunity For African Filmmakers

Africa has a habit of leapfrogging technological hurdles and coming out ahead of countries considered more developed – look at our adoption of mobile phone payments, mobile payments and internet connectivity solutions. We lead in proptech, we’re drawing massive investment in fintech and medtech solutions developed on the continent are being rolled out across the world.

Virtual Tech, Real Applications

While Virtual Reality (VR) is still a novelty technology in much of the rest of the world, it is flourishing in Africa in the gaming, healthcare, mining, advertising and property industries and is being explored as a tool in education. The expansion of the tech will create its own value chain, which will help filmmakers transition more easily into VR production – giving our own storytellers the opportunity to innovate, dream, think and push boundaries on their own terms.

Africa has the opportunity to combine it with our own compelling stories and storytelling methods to position ourselves as leaders in its use. VR offers filmmakers the opportunity to make films in new ways, since immersion is a given. Harnessing the tech effectively will help develop the African storytelling narrative, giving our filmmakers ownership over both production and consumption and ensuring that our stories are told, our way.

Removing Cost Barriers

The rapid decline in cost of VR technology – both to produce and view films – gives African filmmakers an incredible opportunity too. As it becomes cheaper for consumers to adopt VR tech, it opens up immersive content consumption opportunities for anyone who has a headset and a compatible mobile phone – reducing filmmakers’ reliance on expensive cinema set-ups and the cost of encoding films to operate on the tech. Indeed, with piracy a rampant problem across the continent, delivering films directly to users without an intermediary has huge positive financial implications for filmmakers and producers.

The ability to use the same platforms and distribution methods levels the international filmmaking playing field, going some way toward levelling financial obstacles and giving the heart of filmmaking – the power of the story – a chance to shine. Since storytelling has been at the heart of African culture since the continent birthed the human race, we have a chance to lead by combining the available tech and our skills as storytellers.

VR at this year’s JFF

Four VR films are being showcased at JFF this year – two from South Africa and one each from the US and Taiwan – as part of the Exploring VR Experience.

Azibuye – The Occupation (South Africa) is a VR / 360 degree which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2020. Container makes visible the ‘invisiblised’ bodies enabling our consumer society, confronting slavery through an ever-transforming shipping container, the past becomes the present, the invisible become visible. Meta’s The Soloist is a ground-breaking two part series following mountaineer Alex Honnold’s soloing adventures through the US and into the Alps. The Man Who Couldn't Leave integrates the stories of numerous political victims of Taiwan’s ‘White Terror’, told through the form of an undelivered family letter.

The Joburg Film Festival (JFF) kicks off across Jo’burg on 31 January, showcasing some of the finest films from over 35 countries across the globe, including 20 African premieres and 27 South African premieres, until 5 February.

Five Unmissable Films Coming To The Joburg Film Festival

The Joburg Film Festival (JFF) kicks off across Jo’burg on 31 January, showcasing some of the finest films from over 35 countries across the globe, including 20 African premieres and 27 South African premieres, until 5 February. Here are just five highlights from the JFF schedule.

Utama

In Utama, an elderly Quechua couple live a tranquil life in the arid Bolivian highlands. While Virginio takes their small herd of llamas out to graze, Sisa keeps house and walks for miles to fetch precious water. When an uncommonly long drought threatens everything they know, they must decide whether to stay and maintain their traditional way of life or admit defeat and move in with family members in the city.

Silence in the Dust

After being diagnosed with advanced staged pneumoconiosis from working in a quartz powder factory in Guangdong, Dazhang returns to his hometown and shares the suffering with his entire family.

2022 Special Jury Prize & Taiwan International Documentary Festival Visionary Award-winning Silence in the Dust is directed by Li Wei.

Shimoni

Shimoni examines the life of a teacher who is sent back to the village where he was raised after being releasde from prison. He’s forced to re-jig his life in a community that he left behind, doing manual jobs that are alien to him.

Music is my Life

Music is My Life provides an engaging account of the life of Joseph Shabalala and his rise to international fame with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, including the group’s contributions to Paul Simon’s Graceland, which, despite breaking defying the cultural boycott, went on to become one of South Africa’s most-loved albums.

The Cloud & The Man

Shot in soulful black and white, The Cloud and the Man explores Manik’s uneventful life. His father passes away one day and he is served a month’s notice to vacate the rented house. Just when the world around him starts to fall apart, Manik meets someone that would change his life for good – a cloud. A unique love story unfolds, propelling Manik on a rollercoaster journey of faith, betrayal, belief & warmth.