Lights, camera, action!

AFDA, the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance, is set to present its annual showcase of graduate student short films and tele-novella productions. We spoke to Garth Holmes, chairman and co-founder of AFDA, to find out more.

By Eugene Yiga

18 Nov 2013

Eugene Yiga: Could you tell us about the history of the showcase? How did it get started?

Garth Holmes: The AFDA Film Festival originated in 1995 at our Johannesburg campus. This will be the 10th time that it's been held in Cape Town. The festival is primarily utilised as an exam for graduating students as well as to reward and recognise student work.

What are some of your top success stories?

We have had a number of films that have gone on to win multiple awards, but, more importantly, it has produced some of the top practitioners in the South African film industry today, such as Robert Malpage, Dean Blumberg, Adze Ugah, Norman Maake, Henk Pretorius, Danie Bester, Kyle Lewis, Tristan von Bergh, and Jozua Malherbe, to mention but a few.

And what can we expect to see this year?

The Cape Town film festival will showcase horror, comedy, drama and animation while the TV festival will showcase two tele-novellas and eight documentaries.

[The festival presents a total of 46 new titles that include third- and fourth-year titles from the Cape Town and Johannesburg campuses, as well as the award-winning documentary, Crumbs. The festival includes the live broadcast of third-year graduate tele-novella to a potentially vast Cape Town TV audience. This year's critic's panel include filmmakers Revel Fox, Peter Goldsmid, Malcolm Kohll, Dave Barkham, Roy Zetisky, Kyle Lewis and Jozua Malherbe.]

The festival films are presented on 23 and 24 November from 11.45am to 11pm daily. For ticket information email az.oc.adfa@eilsel or call +27 (0)21 448 7600. For more information, go to http://afdafestival.com.

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Eugene Yiga

About Eugene Yiga

Eugene graduated from the University of Cape Town with distinctions in financial accounting and classical piano. He then spent over two-and-half years working in branding and communications at two of South Africa's top market research companies. Eugene also spent over three-and-a-half years at an eLearning start-up, all while building his business as an award-winning writer. Visit www.eugeneyiga.com, follow @eugeneyiga on Twitter, or email moc.agiyenegue@olleh to say, um, hello.