SOUTH AFRICAN filmmakers have yet to make optimal use of the revolutionary power of social media and crowd funding to finance their films. The power of hundreds or thousands of supporters contributing micro-financing to a project via trusted platforms such as Indiegogo is changing the way independent producers finance films and build their audiences.

Should you wish to take part in this campaign, and support our final push to have the film released by October 2012, please go to http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Dream-of-Shahrazad

THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD looks at the legacy of the THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS in context of huge political changes currently sweeping the Maghreb and Middle East. To learn more about the film please go to http://dreamofshahrazad.com/

“ONE LAST LOOK”, a taut psychological-thriller starring Neil Sandilands and Stephanie Schildknecht, will be shot entirely in South Africa at Aloe Ridge Game Reserve, 40 kms from Johannesburg.  Principal photography commences on February 13th, 2012.

Lance Gewer (Director of Photography) and Megan Gil (Editor), part of the team who helped TSOTSI to win an Academy Award, have signed on, as well as award winning Costume Designer Ruy Phillipe, and seasoned Production Designer, Chantel Carter.

“We’re very excited to be working with Lightning Entertainment Group and Indigenous and I’m confident ONE LAST LOOK will make a big splash at Cannes where our sales campaign kicks off”, said writer/director Philip Roberts.

The main investors are the IDC, NFVF, Fireworx Media and Timeframe Films.

About “ONE LAST LOOK

After a pumping Steam-punk trance party deep in the African bush, Yasmin wakes to find her sister Angie missing. Faced with a choice to get back on the departing overland truck or be left on her own, Yasmin accepts the help of dark African loner Jules, in trying to track Angie down. The trail leads to a remote farmhouse where Angie is held captive by Frank, a charismatic sculptor turned serial killer. Drugged and tortured, Angie’s only hope of escape is Yasmin. But when Frank’s psychopathic guard-dog knocks Yasmin and Jules off his ancient motorbike and Jules is killed by Frank, Yasmin’s life hangs on a thread. Only by confronting her deepest fears and entering the dark recesses of Frank’s unhinged mind is Yasmin able to understand how to save herself and Angie – but not without more blood …

Issued by One Last Look Productions
30/01/12
For further information contact Bobo Mokgoro on +27 72 2567207

For more info visit www.dearmandela.com

In East Africa ten times more people have albinism than in North America and Europe. In Tanzania and other parts of East Africa corrupt healers traffic in the body parts of persons with albinism. They sell them for magical potions and amulets to anyone who will dare to use them by preying upon deep-seated and long-standing prejudices and superstitions about Albinism. Vicky Netema, former BBC Tanzania Bureau Chief, investigates the murders of people with Albinism sweeping the country. She takes us into the lives of those terrorized bythis scourge and we experience through their own eyes their fear and their courage.

Winner, Sundance Film Festival 2011, EXCELLENCE IN CINEMATOGRAPHY – DOCUMENTARY

Joshua Milton Blahyi – aka General Butt Naked – was a ruthless and feared warlord during Liberia’s 14-year civil war. Today, he has renounced his violent past and reinvented himself as a Christian evangelist on a journey of self-proclaimed transformation. Blahyi travels the nation of Liberia as a preacher, seeking out those he once victimized in search of a uncertain forgiveness.

“This amazing film confronts the contradictions of reconciliation in a war-ravaged continent.”
- VARIETY

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/artscape/2011/06/201161915345231307.html

Abeer Soliman is a charismatic public storyteller, recasting the classic tales of One Thousand and One Nights to reflect modern-day Egypt and to explicitly push for change.

The movement that began in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in January 2011 swept Abeer, and many others, along on a wave of euphoria.

Now change has come to Egypt Artscape follows Abeer as she struggles to define herself post-revolution. As she plans and structures new pieces for performance, Abeer wonders how many of the themes of her previous work still hold true in the new Egypt and in what way she will have to adapt to keep up with the deep-rooted changes taking place around her.

Five Roads to Freedom follows five individuals, A former policeman, a young soccer star from the townships, a former warlord who denies the blood on his hands, the sister of a murdered ANC comrade and a wealthy white lawyer who lost everything for inter-racial love – each’s experience serves as an individual expression of the country’s struggle to overcome its past, complete with a few victories thanks to the power of faith, family and a belief in the possibility of a new South Africa.

Directed by Riaan Hendricks, Young Lion Films
Produced by Neil Brandt
Status: In Development with the assistance a Puma BritDoc creative catalyst award

http://vimeo.com/23937652

“Can ordinary unarmed citizens tame an unforgiving beast in a world where evil presides?”

More than 3000 prisoners are released back into society every month.
Their criminal record denies them the opportunity of finding meaningful
employment, thus further reducing chances for rehabilitation.

Many become the bone and marrow of the illicit drug trade, the main
source of income for gangs and the root  from where most other illegal
and violent crime stem.

The only legal way for ordinary citizens to fight these crimes,  is by
volunteering in Neighborhood Watch structures regulated by the the
South African Police Service.

Over the last few years a number of neighborhood watch volunteers
have been killed during retaliation attacks.

With every violent confrontation, tension within the communities escalates.

This film explores the stark contrasting realities of a communties’ struggle
againts crime and the life choices of previously convicted prisoners
surviving in the criminal underworld.
Background

Vigilante justice is South Africas’ way of dealing with criminals and suspected offenders.
In pursuit of social justice, alternative legal community structures has been developed to enable ordinary unarmed voluntary citizens to confront criminal and illegal activities affecting theircommunity.

But over the years, a number of volunteers has been killed in retaliation attacks.

The volunteers are ordinary people, teachers, hard laborers, mothers, wife’s, some very old and others very young. When they join, they unawarely enter a world where evil yields no forgiveness. A world regulated by conflicting forces competing for the illicit drug trade amongst the densely populated poor, unemployed and working class communities. Where every mandrax tablet or packet of crystal meth sold, has a trail of violence, blood and body bags following behind it. And the path ahead is a continues rampant disfunctionalization of society under the hands of those desperate to use it.

The abuse is not a public affair, but the irritance thereof manifests in the constant house burglaries, thefts and violent crimes that plagues the citizens. And that’s what gets them to volunteer and join to cleanse their communities.

In the process, their frustrations are sometimes accidentally expressed in violent street battles with the gangs. Every violent confrontation yields more and more tension in the communities.

This film arms civilians with insight into a world that they automatically become a part of when they find themselves joining a local neighborhood watch. It enables them to make better strategic choices, and develop more affective community safety programs and methods for fighting the social illness plaguing their daily lives.

To do that, the film journeys into the Devils Lair during a time of a gang turf war. From there, we explore the thinking of the men(both free and in bondage) who influences the conflicting forces that regulates the illegal drug market in the Western Cape.

Giving a brushstroke of their operation methods, their foot soldiers, commanders, commissars and generals who setup and manage a violent landscape of drug labs, peddlers and dealers.

Written and Directed by Thandi Brewer
Produced by Bridget Pickering
Status: Raising Finance and Casting

No Money. No Morals. NO TEETH.

Two 70 something pensioners take on a fraudulent Pensions Boss in a daring heist. A 100 minute Heist Movie with a difference

Lulu Roberts is a granite voiced granny from hell.  No friends. No money. No brakes. She drinks too much. Swears too much.  Wants too much.  She also has cancer and six months to live. And she has a dream.  She’s bet her ludicrously young doctor that she’ll outsmart the Big C and get to Broadway before she dies. One small problem:  All of her investments have disappeared into the “Trusted (We can be) Pensions and Investments”.  And they’re not giving them up.

Faith Kekane is a gentle church going gogo who hates foul language, is terrified on authority, and just wants to keep her family provided for. One small problem.  Trusted isn’t paying her pension so she can’t pay her electricity, help her single mom recently retrenched daughter Lineo, or send her dearly loved granddaughter Palesa to leadership camp.

There’s an unexpected link between these two baby boomers: they were both sex goddesses of Photo Books in 70’s South Africa, Faith was “She”.  Lulu was “Tessa”.  They never met of course.  It was a different time. Until Lulu tries to withdraw her investments from glitzy highrise Trusted and is shattered to discover that her money has disappeared.  Almost as shattered as Faith who cannot get her pension out of them. And the two finally meet.

When Lulu discovers that silver-tongued CEO of Trusted, Grant Roberts, is planning to leave the country having stripped “Trusted” and it’s investors and pensioners of their money, she arm-twists the reluctant Faith into agreeing to the Robin Hood heist of the 0’s, accessing their alter egos: She and Tessa, who would never have stood for this.  Their target? Naturally the flamboyantly wealthy, charismatically ruthless entrepreneur Grant, who has piled all of the stolen funds into four Netsukes (Japanese action figures).
It’s “Thelma and Louise” meets “Cocoon” out of “Ocean’s 11”. And it’s not going to be easy.  The gogos have to woo the geekish media student Sivu  as clumsy pyrotechnician/driver/logistical expert, and guilt ex photobook photographer-now-masquerading as Vogue icon Gerhard Bothma out of retirement by threatening to expose his murky past. These four misfits make up the Chemo Club, out to make one very big score and the payday of a lifetime.

Will Lulu have her cake and eat it? To score the netsukes, she’ll have to put her newly won friendship with Faith on the line. But if it all goes according to their intricate, nearly impossible plan, she won’t have to choose between her dream of Broadway and her fantasy image of herself? Or will she?

It’s a case of little old ladies rule as the tension rises until the exciting climactic robbery where everything goes very wrong – and very right for these four oddball “criminals” caught in the web they wove themselves: where Gerard redeems himself, where Faith regains her high kicks, and Lulu loses her wig, and throws away her necklace, where Sivu learns a little more than he ever bargained for about women, and where South Africa’s pensioner’s get payback in a way they never anticipated…

A South African plastic surgeon searches for meaning as he leaves his successful private practice to volunteer on a hospitable ship – but at the risk of losing the woman he has always loved. Dr Tertius Venter is a surgeon in his fifties who has achieved everything in life that is supposed to satisfy him. But deep down he knows that there has to be more to life. Hyacinthe is a ten-year-old boy growing up in rural West Africa.

When he was a baby he fell into hot ash. The hospital ship is sailing to Hyacinthe’s country, Benin, where surgeries will be performed onboard to the poor at no charge.  However, Tertius can only see his wife, Trudi, three months a year and she is devastated. Hyacinthe is temporarily reunited with his mother who must be his caregiver on the hospital ship. Can he convince her to not leave him once his leg heals?

To be a gynaecologist in Sierra Leone, is no easy job, but Dr Koroma is a tenacious man,ready to face the challenge. The filmmakers spend a week in the maternity ward at Bo government hospital, where Dr Koroma is the only gynecologist in the region. We follow him as he rushes from emergencies to training health workers & administrating the entire hospital. WELLBODI BIZNES is a documentary about a brave country trying to rebuild itself by caring for the health of mothers and children