Real Residency and Creative Producer Indaba have called for submissions from film producers and creative industry practitioners into their respective programs with a bid to unearth the wealth of African stories.
Realness Residency, an initiative from Realness Institute is a six-week program that takes place in the stunning Cradle of humankind in South Africa. The program strives to empower African filmmaker and unearth the wealth of African stories, by having real stories from the continent told with an honest and unapologetic point of view by African filmmakers.
There, residents undergo focused incubation. Writers are given the space and support to refine their projects from a creative perspective, as well as to position their projects to industry partners for potential financing and production.
According to one of the recipients of the 2019 Real Residency initiative, Beza Hailu Lemma, from Ethiopia, the programme gives room for creative personnel in Africa to excel.
“There is nothing like it in Africa, especially for African filmmakers, nothing like this exists… It gives space for emerging filmmakers to just swim in their imagination and give them everything that they need to achieve that dream of making a really good first feature film.”
Realness Institute is an initiative by Urucu Media in partnership with Berlinale Talents, CNC (Le Centre National du Cinéma et de L’image Animée), Cocoon Productions, Deuxieme Ligne Films, Durban FilmMart, The Durban International Film Festival, Durban Talents, EAVE, IEFTA, Institute Français, The French Institute of South Africa, International Film Festival Rotterdam’s IFFR Pro, Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF Filmmaker Lab, Locarno Filmmaker’s Academy, Nirox Foundation, Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Sundance Institute and TorinoFilmLab.
From the 2019 cohort, the following filmmakers have been granted the following awards by the Realness Institute’s partners: Iman Djionne (Senegal) and Athi-Patra Ruga (South Africa) both attended Locarno Filmmaker’s Academy, Silas Miami’s (Kenya) project and producer, Carol Kioko, were selected for the TorinoFilmLab Meeting Event and Beza Hailu Lemma (Ethiopia) was selected to attend the TIFF Filmmaker Lab.
Over and above their Realness awards, Iman Djionne has been selected for Atlas Workshops taking place in December at the Marrakesh International Film Festival. Both Beza Hailu Lemma and Iman Djionne have also been selected for Produire Au Sud in Nantes.
Realness Institute is also thrilled to expand its partnership with IFFR Pro from the Creative Producer program into the Screenwriter’s residency with a scholarship for a Realness producer to attend Rotterdam Lab. Mmabatho Kau, the producer of Fanyana Hlabangane’s (South Africa) 2019 Realness Project, has been nominated to attend the Rotterdam Lab in 2020.
Alessia Acone, Rotterdam Lab Coordinator, is enthusiastic about the prospect of working with an African producer.
In her words, “We are very happy that an emergent African producer selected within Realness Residency, the pan-African programme dedicated to develop and support the next generation of screenwriting talent, will take part in the 20th edition of Rotterdam Lab, thanks to the new partnership with IFFR Pro and Realness Institute. The selected producer will attend IFFR together with a group of over 70 emerging producers coming from all over the world to experience an important co-production market like CineMart first hand.
Rotterdam Lab participants will be provided with a tailored programme which will give them the confidence and skills to navigate the international market space, through workshops, pitching training and active and open round-table sessions with industry experts. Rotterdam Lab 2020 will take place during the 49th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam” she revealed.
Creative Producer Indaba, on the other hand, is a year-long professional development program which hopes to bring together 15 producers to develop their capacity on the continent and create a pan-African network of producing talent with the ability to bring African projects to the international market. The program also aims to empower producers from Africa with the necessary industry tools and business strategies for entrepreneurial development thereby expanding sustainable infrastructure and bridging the gap between financial support from North America and Europe, and also addressing the lack of policies and treaties in place that could catalyze this support.
The program is an initiative presented in partnership with EAVE, International Film Festival Rotterdam’s IFFR Pro and Sundance Institute.
The programs which are now in its fourth year has developed 20 film projects in 13 African countries.
