Saving the Class of 2020
The GFC, in partnership with Primestars embarked on a journey to save the Matriculants Class of 2020. The purpose of the partnership was to support under-resourced learners that missed out on almost 5 months of class time due to the lockdown. 4000 Learners from around Gauteng had an opportunity to access Maths and Science revision lessons. The entire matric math and science curriculum and lessons were implemented across the country over 10 weeks and held in Ster Kinekor cinemas. About 2000 in learners in Gauteng attended the sessions at 16 Ster Kinekor cinemas on Sundays, some students with the help of Cell C got access to the revision lessons online, there was also a chatline accessible to all matriculants where students could download study guides in preparation for their exams. The program commenced from the 13th September – 15th November 2020, just in time before the exam season in November.
Salvation participation at Moscow International Film Festival
In 2015 Sangsang Entertainment was awarded production funding by the GFC, amongst other sponsors was the NFVF, DTI, and AWCI. Salvation had its world premiere at the Silicon Valley African Film Festival in October 2019 and subsequently screened at La Femme Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2019. The film was selected for participation at the Moscow International Film Festival in October. The production company received financial support from the GFC to enable Sangsang to travel to the festival in Russia.
Enterprise Development initiative: Film Equipment
As film is a business, through this initiative GFC will assist emerging filmmakers to operate their companies as profitable businesses. The SMME start-up Film Kits provided by the GFC enables these businesses to function. For Quarter 3 the initiative will assist 8 production companies: 4 from Sedibeng and 4 from the City of Ekurhuleni. The application submission call was sent out to GFC social media platforms on November 11th, 2020 and closed on the 20th of November 2020 – with a total of 68 submissions from both regions. A member panel has been selected to adjudicate the applications.
Industry Association: Documentary Filmmakers Association (DFA)
We spoke to some of the industry associations and they shared with us what they have been busy with during lockdown.
We have been quite busy at DFA during this Covid time, finding new ways to do our work and support our members, said Miki Redelinghuys
We’ve hosted some great initiatives, such as the Covid-19 short film grant we created and the Covid-19 Citizen Journalist awards, as well as our monthly catch up sessions called docCHAT.
Check out these projects above, and if you are interested in documentary filmmaking do join as a member, contribute and in turn benefit from their network.