Climate Story Lab ZA supports the impact of creative projects that address the climate crisis and has partnered with FAME Week Africa to present two sessions at the 2023 edition that takes place in Cape Town from 3 to 5 September.
FAME Week Africa is a business-to-business event for African and global creative professionals that offers content sessions, showcases, screenings, exhibitions and networking opportunities for the creative sector.
CSLZA will present two sessions at Fame Week. One will engage with filmmakers around reducing their carbon footprint, and the other will provide feedback on some of the creative communication solutions that came through the Lab from nine different projects in 2023.
The session titled Clean Up Your Act! How We Learned to Love the Planet and Minimise Our Contribution to the Climate Crisis deals with how filmmakers can make their productions sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint. Coming from three very different perspectives, this panel offers production companies and individual creatives feasible, adaptable solutions .
The panellists are Stephen Horn, SA country director: Clean Creatives and Politically Aweh! Producer who was recognised in 2022 as a Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans for his work in climate change communication; Reinie Swart, founder of Eco Ninjas, a Cape Town start-up offering specialised waste management and sustainability solutions to the local and international film industry; and Andy du Plessis, food justice activist and managing director of FoodForward SA who has been involved in the development sector for nearly 30 years. This session is hosted by Carla Bernado from the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security and takes place 13h30 – 14h30 Tuesday 5 September in MIP Africa Theatre 2 at the CTICC.
In the second session, Climate Story Lab Southern Africa 2023 Project Spotlight: The Power Of Story To Drive Change, CSLZA invites the creatives behind three of the documentary film projects selected for the Lab in 2023 to share their experiences of using powerful stories to address the climate crisis. The session will look at how cleverly crafted impact strategies can help shift the dial on this entrenched issue. The projects are in various stages of production and their creators will shed light on the impact challenges and opportunities inherent in development, production, and distribution.
The conversation will be hosted by Dr Liani Maasdorp, CSLZA co-director and convenor of the MA in Documentary Arts at the UCT Centre for Film and Media Studies. Siza Mukwedini (Zimbabwe) a film and new media content producer and founder of Matamba Film Labs for Women, a programme that trains and capacitates women to use new media storytelling tools like 360 VR/AR/XR and Animation. She will discuss the feature length documentary film The Conservationist along with director Rumbi Katedza. Katedza is a filmmaker and writer, who produces independent fiction and documentary content through her production company, Mai Jai Films. Tembisa Jordaan is a marine scientist and the Biodiversity Stewardship and Biodiversity Economy acting manager at Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. Her short documentary film Ulwandle Lushile spotlights indigenous knowledge as a collaborative tool for marine conservation. Alexandria Hotz is a producer and South African Lead Coordinator at WoMin African Alliance, an ecofeminist organisation. She leads their SA programme working on movement building and organising around mega extractive projects, building ecofeminist politics, and visioning ecofeminist development alternatives to the neoliberal extractive model. She presents the film Namakwa, which tackles the potentially harmful impact of the “green economy” on rural communities. This session takes place 10h30 – 11h30 Wednesday 6 September in MIP Africa Theatre 2 at the CTICC.
For more information about or to register for MIP Africa / FAME Week Africa go to www.fameweekafrica.com/en-gb/mip-africa/register.html.
For more information about Climate Story Lab ZA go to: climatestorylabza.org
