Curated Events Screening Sanctum
In the month of June, we had the pleasure of co curating 4 incredibly moving documentary films at the historic The Troyeville House, in collaboration with The Inner City Culture Club and Encounters South African International Documentary Festival. The weekend’s screenings were followed by intimate and insightful Q&A’s curated by Behind Her Lens Visuals with Mbali Mashaba and Aza Mbovane facilitating meaningful conversation with a deeply engaged audience. The event’s focus was to curate a safe space for all audiences, despite background and personal identity, through accessibility and screening films that highlighted and granted visibility to various degrees of intersectionality on screen. The film’s documentary film’s screened were:
The Men Who Speak Gayle
The Men who Speak Gayle explores the history of the gay community in Cape Town and the conditions that people who identified with being gay had to endure during that era, whilst it also provides a sharp contrast to the much more favourable conditions of openly gay men today..
I am Samuel
In this tender but powerful film, Samuel, a gay Kenyan man, has to balance his duty to his family with his love for his partner, Alex, in a country where their relationship is criminalised.
I, Mary
An in-depth and highly intimate look at the experience of albinism through the eyes of Maryregina Ndlovu, an activist who has made it her personal mission to make albinism and albino people more visible in society and the media.
Followed by a Q&A with Mbali Mashaba, MaryRegina Ndlovu and director Aliki Saragas.
A Portrait on the search of happiness
In South Africa’s stark Northern Cape, the search for a better life has its inhabitants literally scratching in the dust for their own share of the diamonds that have brought so much wealth to so few. Part intimate series of character portraits, part poetic meditation on land and myth and part contemporary document of a region wracked by economic hardship, A Portrait on the Search for Happiness juxtaposes elegant cinematography and sensitive storytelling with raw truths about today’s South Africa. From the hopes of a young father striving to provide for his child, to the meditations of a former cook who once rubbed shoulders with royalty but is now living virtually homeless, to the former diamond diver now reliving his best days nightly in shimmering film reels, the film’s sense of futility is affecting – even as its characters’ hopefulness leaves a mark of its own.
Q&A facilitated by Aza Mbovane
Our Host & Partners The Inner City Culture Club
The Inner-City Culture club is a collective of creators finding/reclaiming/engaging with the inner city of Johannesburg. They seek to promote a safe space of endless discovery. The collective group aims to promote creatives to engage with the existing city landscape and document our experiences through all mediums. The collective believes that in documenting our experiences; we learn more about the space, the power of intentional design and getting a feel for the community. Each of these aspects will refine their intentional events within different parts of the inner city. The dream is creating a sustainable creative collective that empowers the existing cityscape.
Maphitha Sithole Co-Founder | The Inner City Culture Club
Maphitha Sithole is a creative whom expresses her work through photography and writing. She is a founder to Unwritten Creatives, a body that promotes untold voices though photography and writing.
She is an Architecture graduate from University of Witwatersrand. Having worked at SVA International during her practical years. She developed team management, event planning and architectural skills.
During her studies she was heavily involved in Blackstudio, a student organization that promoted the voices of african cultures through events, workshops and exhibitions. Her roles were PR agent, Event planner, Exhibitor and Speaker.
Tebogo Manthata Co-Founder | The Inner City Culture Club
Tebogo Manthata is a creative and changemaker passionate about placemaking and storytelling through diverse mediums. An avid reader and writer, Tebogo is always seeking to explore and interrogate the precarious margins that operate in our society and how social justice can be provided for those who fall outside those margins.
A graduate Architect from The University of Witwatersrand and having worked at Fifty Eight and Nirox in the Cradle of Humankind Tebogo has refined skills in multiple disciplines including, Project management, Architectural representation, Regenerative sustainability and Development.
Through fostering formative relationships with changemakers, local communities and his collaborator at ICC Tebogo hopes to continue to learn and create incredible experiences and innovate the contemporary urban landscape on multiple, multivalent levels.