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24th Zanzibar International Film Festival
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A FEAST OF FILM, MUSIC & VISUAL ARTS
Zanzibar International Film Festival (ziff), popularly known as the Festival of the Dhow Countries is East Africa’s largest film and arts festival, exhibiting the latest and best films and promoting film talents from across the African continent, the dhow countries and beyond. This year’s 24th annual Festival will take place from July 21st- 25th, 2021 in venues across Stone Town and in the Ng’ambo of Zanzibar”
Each year, some of the most captivating and cuttingedge cinema from Africa and beyond is screened in venues across the island. From world-premiers to local shots, we’ve got it all, with a long history of showcasing the highest quality film from all over the world.
The festival was almost cancelled, but the Zanzibar government and ZIFF management have decided to share the great heritage that the country and the festival have, as well as the beauty of cinema, and hold the festival amidst the pandemic.
This year’s theme is “Sharing Our Heritage” with the aims to raise awareness and promote international cinema as art, entertainment and as an industry, promoting dialogue, human rights and freedom.
With films from 35 countries, this is the year when Tanzania leads Africa in the number of films in selection. Tanzania has 13 films, compared to Kenyas 9, and South Africa’s 6. Estonia makes its debut at ZIFF. With two screening spaces in the Old Fort
No longer is a festival about a place alone, but a festival is also about its creative structures, its sustainability as well as its contribution to the multi-colored garden of world cinema”
in order to cater for the COVID19 protocols, the audience will be treated to more documentaries than ever before.
- Martin Mhando- ZIFF CEO
A key theme of the festival’s Workshops is the focus on women. The festival will be a hybrid affair with the pandemic in place. The festival will take off with a Webinar – Women in Conversation on the gender struggles in the film industry. A workshop on acting for the camera for Women run by women including Tanzania’s own Seko Shamte will be a major attraction to ZIFF.
Seko Shamte’s film Binti will open the festival making it only the third time that a Tanzanian film has opened the festival.
The Masterclass will involve 12 selected actresses to undertake an ACTING FOR THE CAMERA workshop with a view of enunciating the Gaze of the woman film director. So, while the training is essentially about acting it is also meant to entice the actresses to begin the journey towards becoming film directors.
Other workshops include a Writing for the Screen workshop to be run by one of Hollywood’s master Dialogue writers, CHRISTOPHER DOHERTY. Doherty, writer of the blockbusters Baghdad Café and Name of the Rose, has volunteered his services to ZIFF to lead a workshop that would unfold new talents in the industry. The workshop will explore the rules and principles of successful drama and comedy. Why writing is rewriting and when not to overdo it.
The Women Panorama, a key program of the festival, will also focus on women film productivity, with the EU supporting the screening of short films and animations made with women in creative positions of the films. Screenings in Nungwi, Paje, Jambiani and Makunduchi will also allow audiences to share their experiences with women filmmakers from Europe. At ZIFF this year, we again shall stop the festival to talk about this most urgent matter to Africans and Tanzanians in particular since we have many stories about our fights against Covid 19 and Malaria.
Malaria has killed more people than all other diseases and wars on Earth combined. What if there was a herb that could defeat the deadly malaria parasite and save a thousand lives per day, every day? Sounds good? Not everybody thinks so. Likewise indigenous knowledge around both Malaria and Covid 19, used extensively in Africa, continues to suffer as nations battle to understand how best to utilize technology without putting lives in danger as well as without undermining indigenous knowledge. This is the Difficult Dialogue of our days.
The Blue Economy is a factory of opportunities for Zanzibar Youth Photography, it is a key link to Tourism that affords a huge scope for creative entrepreneurship including photographing landscapes, portraits, culture, food and wildlife. The objective of this workshop is to learn how to represent Zanzibar’s beauty through photography as a creative enterprise.
A beauty indeed!
All Pictures Courtesy of Zanzibar International Film Festival
