The Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) has announced a strong focus on development, women, and ‘tales of transit’ during the festival next month.

Ster Kinekor Musgrave and Gateway as well as the Playhouse have been confirmed as venues for the premier and commercial screenings; while the outreach programme will see screenings take place in film schools and townships including K-cap (Theatre)- KwaMashu, Luthuli Museum- Groutville, Qashana
Khuzwayo Library, Westville Correctional Services, Ohlange Library- Inanda, Creative Arts College, Wushwini Arts Centre, Umlazi Library, Lamontville, uShaka Marine , Max’s Lifetyle, History Museum, Bay of Plenty Lawns. The weeklong programme entails screenings and some workshops aimed at ensuring not just city-wide participation in the festival but also engaging locallybased prospective film makers.

In a world in which people find themselves displaced and seeking refuge in foreign lands, the theme for the festival is “Transit Tales”, with a number of films capturing the emotive stories of human displacement as result of war and catastrophic events. It is the vision of DIFF’s newly appointed Festival
Manager, Chipo Zhou, for the festival to reinvent what it is to be a film festival within the African context, and to set an industry standard for the inclusion of women and women-led films. As such the festival has a special focus on African content and womenled films.

“We have to redefine what and who tells the tales in society as that has a significant role in how people
learn and understand the world, particularly the African continent” says Zhou.

“The festival this year is giving women a platform to take ownership of our stories, the origins of our stories and how they are told. We have the opportunity to reconstruct our narrative as such that we re-socialise society in order that it reconceives perceptions about women especially in the wake of the brutality against women we have seen in South Africa recently.”

“As the East African saying goes, unless lions have their own historians, all tales about the hunt will always glorify the hunter,” she says in a proverbial reference to male domination in ownership and control of media companies.

It is a remarkable milestone that we have some strong female-led films this year.

Consistent with the special focus on women is the Durban Film Mart’s programme which will feature a session on women-led film conversations with Tilane Jones, executive director at ARRAY, as well as a women-led film media breakfast.

The DIFF will go a long way in contributing to Africa’s Aspiration 5 of Agenda 2063 where the role of film in fostering a strong African identity is concerned. The continent has risen to the occasion this year with a significant upward jump not only in the number of submissions but also the quality of the films. In keeping with the African film focus, the KZN Film Commission will host a delegation of Kenyan filmmakers to foster relations between the two countries in the context of film, and to possibly promote co-productions.

This will see the screening of several Kenyan films at the festival. The festival will run from the 13th-23rd of July, returning to its original dates (2nd week of July) after taking place in June last year due to the 2016 AIDS Conference held in Durban. Dates for the next three years have been secured to ensure the festival continues to take place in July.

The DIFF awards take place on the 22nd of July, a day before the closing film draws the curtain on this year’s edition of the festival. The awards are where the most outstanding film submissions and filmmakers are honoured.

For more information on the DIFF 2017 and the Centre for Creative Arts please contact Noluthando Lamula- Centre for Creative Arts Publications Officer
Tel: 031 260 1650
E-mail: lamulan@ukzn.ac.za