Script2Screen

Script to Screen is poised to become the biggest and most dynamic African cinema history and indigenous scriptwriting initiative in South Africa and the continent. With African films breaking out of the margins and into the mainstream, the time has arrived to use quality indigenous African language scripts to promote the diversity of African voices and culture in a professional and world-class environment.

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It is in this light that Script to Screen, in collaboration with the Gauteng Film Commission, wishes to invite aspirant filmmakers to partake in a series of introductory workshops that will take place in four of Gauteng-based municipal districts.

The project partners – the GFC, SABC, ETV and MultiChoice – will conduct intensive pitching presentations at the workshops, while along with directors, scriptwriters and producers, Script to Screen facilitators will help train future scriptwriters in the art of writing for a brief. These workshops will also form an important component of the commission’s community outreach programme with communities being invited and included in these events. Expert panellists and moderators are secured to create a diverse range of workshops that speak both directly to the film industry and filmmakers, and also to the general public.

Targeted audiences include natural storytellers, young and dynamic filmmakers with the appreciation of indigenous languages and passion to explore film as a medium of expressing those stories. Under the supervision of Development Executive Mtutuzeli Matshoba, a founder member of the Staffrider literary art journal, and Paul Zisiwe, a filmmaker and African film historian, a number of scripts will be researched and developed with the aim of submitting them to South African broadcasters as per their RPFs.

Furthermore, other expert panellists and moderators are secured to create a diverse range of workshops that speak both directly to the film industry and filmmakers, and also to the general public.

Workshops will be conducted in

  • Alexandra: Alex Kopano – 30 and 31 January 2012
  • Kagiso: Backyard Gallery – 01 and 02 February
  • Katlehong: Art Centre – 06 and 07 February
  • Orange Farm: Theta FM – Friday afternoon and Sat
  • Newtown – 14 February

For more information and publicity please contact Gontse Mmutle on 084 553 5970 or gontse@redflag.co.za.

Biographies

Mtutuzeli Matshoba is among South Africa’s select literary activists who through their writing, despite the draconian censorship system of the 70 and 80’s, were able to address the social problems caused by racial discrimination in all areas of South African life. His collection of short stories on urban black experiences in the 70’s, Call Me Not A Man was published in 1978 followed by Seeds of War, a novella on forced removals that won win the Southern African English Academy Award for Creative Writing in 1980.

He has written feature film scripts for Wheels and Deals – a film about car theft and local government corruption in the 80’s in Soweto (co-writers Mike Hammon, and Ramolao Makhene, featuring Sello Maake & Kimberly Stark) as well as Chikin Biznis, a feature comedy paying tribute to the township informal income earning sector staring Fats Bokholoane. Matshoba the protagonist documentarist also co-wrote, researched translated several documentaries including Soweto A History, Apartheid’s People 1&2 (1986 and 1994) – a Profile of South African people at the height of Apartheid repression, and Mandela, Son of the Soil, Father of a Nation which was nominated for the Oscar Academy Awards. He is currently Script Developer/Editor for Avea (Audio Visual Education Association), SABC 2, National Film and Video Foundation, Council member (training) at the South African Scriptwriters Association. Through the MNet New Directions program founder member of Script to Screen, Mtutuzeli Matshoba helped unearth film making talent like Dumisani Phakathi, Teddy Materra, Minky Slechinger among others

Filmography

Feature Films

  • Chicken Biznis: Short and Feature – creator/writer
  • Red Dust: Script Doctor
  • Jerusalema: Associate producer
  • Wheels and deals: Associate producer

Television

  • Yizo Yizo 1&2: Co creator/Writer
  • Stokvel: Co Creator
  • Soweto, the History: 6 part documentary about the growth of Soweto
  • Zero Tolerance: Co creator
  • Scoop Schoombie: Script Editor
  • Emzini Wezinsizwa: Script editor
  • Mandela, Son of the Soil, Father of a Nation: Co Creator

Paul Zisiwe is a writer and documentary filmmaker based in Johannesburg, passionate about Cinema from the African continent and the Diaspora. He has directed and shot a number of documentaries for local and international broadcasters including BBC, over and above his teaching career as an African Cinema Historian. His recent film,! Xun Electronica, is soon to be broadcast on ETV, while his Rooms of Unlearning is being screened at various international film festivals.

He is currently developing a manifesto on The Cinema of the Theatre (Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide and Metal Violenc) being the first two experimental projects under the banner

Author of two published anthologies (At Virtue’s Zone and An Autobiography of a Self-Exorcist) Zisiwe is also a script writer from a theatre background as having studied drama at the Pretoria Technikon Drama Department.

Mpho Ramathuthu has worked with the South African Script Writing Institute for 7 years, she has project managed various projects and also run the Level 3 beginners course and introduction to script writing. She is also part of the Script2Screen organization where they identify and develop first-time writers writing in indigenous languages around the Country. Mpho has written and published two Tshivenda novels funded by the National Arts Council of South Africa. She is now working at one of the popular television soapies in South Africa, Muvhango as a Venda translator.