Music News South Africa

SAFTAs nominees announced

The 2014 nominees of South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs) were announced earlier this week at a function at the VIP Supper Club, Urban Tree, Sandton, Joburg. The MC for the evening was Alan Committie, himself a former SAFTAs winner for Best Supporting Actor.

Zama Mkosi, NFVF CEO and chairman of the SAFTAs Committee, welcomed guests and highlighted South Africa's celebration of 20 Years of Democracy, saying that this theme would also be used to showcase SA's film and television heritage during the awards. "As a sign of the growing industry confidence towards the SAFTAs, we continue to see an upward trend in the number of entries. This year a total of 432 entries were received compared to 354 entries in 2013. A healthy 22% increase from last year." Zama made specific mention of leadership provided by the two overall judging chairmen, Jerry Mofokeng and Roberta Durrant.

SAFTAs nominees announced

Jerry Mofokeng echoed Zama's sentiments declaring that "It has been my resolve to maintain the integrity of these awards throughout. We believe that we've fine-tuned the nominee process and remained advocates for both the industry and the SAFTAs." He also made mention of the categories in which there were no nominations.

A full list of the nominees is available, but some of the highlights are the nominees in the Best TV Drama Category who overall received more than one nomination in recognition for their achievements: Intersexions: Season 2 received eight (8) nominations, Tempy Pushas four (4) nominations, Room 9, seven nominations, while and Rockville received five nominations.

New category introduced

This year a new category, Made for TV Movie, was introduced as a result of the number of Drama and Feature entries submitted that specialised in TV. This year the category focused on Best Writer and Best Director, the Writing Team for Inside Story and Kalumbu Kapisa for The Wall announced as nominees for Best writer while Felicia Molusi for Isithembu, Rolisizwe Nikiwe for Inside Story and Kalumbu Kapisa for The Wall were nominated for Best Director. The Best Feature Film category saw the following films nominated: Long Walk to Freedom: Videovision Entertainment, Of Good Report: Spier Films and Sleeper's Wake, produced by Bioskope Filmworks.

In the hotly contested Best Soapie Category the nominees are: Isidingo, Generations, Scandal, Villa Rosa, Isibaya, 7 de Laan, Rhythm City, The Wild and Binneland. Unfortunately, this year Muvhango was not nominated as it failed to meet some of the SAFTA entry guideline requirements (detailed here: http://nfvf.co.za/saftas).

Links:

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SAFTA Website

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