Children's festival on Cape agenda in November

About 150 children - drawn from all South Africa's nine provinces with an emphasis on children from the Western Cape - will attend this year's CBFA-Sithengi Children's Festival where they will be participating in a series of film and media-related workshops that include Animation, TV Production, Radio Production and Arts and Culture Workshops.

The objective of this programme is to encourage the participation of children in the production of both television and radio programmes across a wide range of genres such as drama, comedy, animation and magazine programmes.

Among the highlights of the festival is a workshop based on the CIFEJ 'Kids for Kids' model in which children will learn how to produce their own one-minute film. Trinity College - Dublin will also present a workshop on 'digital narratives' with a focus on the use of mobile telephones in the production of the stories.

There will also be a special children's pitching session. The 10 best ideas from the one-minute film workshop will be pitched to a select panel of judges on 15 November, hosted by SABC in partnership with CBFA. The kids will be work-shopped in pitch presentation and winning stories will eventually be produced with an experienced filmmaker as mentor.

The children will also conduct their own 'International Think Tank' (ITT), the aim of which will be to facilitate discussions and presentations that will be used to help set the agenda for the 5th World Summit on Media and Children which is to be hosted by the CBFA in Johannesburg in March 2007 - the first time ever that this global event will be held in South Africa.