Big Fish student films selected for 7 Encounters Sou African International Film Festival

Big Fish is proud that films by four of their second year students have been selected for 17th Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival this year.

Four films: Nostalgie, Courage, Blood Money and Oswenka were made in the second year of their Television and Film Production course by students of The Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking.

The film festival which is on from 4 - 14 June 2015 in Joburg and Cape Town. Included also in the festival is the Oscar-winning documentary on Edward Snowdon, CitizenFour.

Big Fish is again the only South African film school to have work by its students screened. CEO Melanie Chait believes that it is Big Fish's particular approach to storytelling plus its diverse range of students which give rise to films that audiences would not ordinarily have access to.

Xander Foster's Nostalgie is a deeply personal film that defies the patriarchal thinking that alters and hardens the heart of young men by telling them to be tough and not emotional. An experimental film that delves into the life time-line of three generations of men from the same family, Nostalgie explores how time has developed and changed these men.

CT - Cinema Nouveau Friday 5th June @ 8pm Q&A, Wednesday 10th June @ 6:30pm

JHB - Bioscope Friday 5th June @ 8:45pm.

Courage by Cheron Petronella Steenkamp defies a long tradition that tells youth to never question their parents. Steenkamp is one of the first Khoi San to be trained as a filmmaker. In Courage, the 26-year-old travels to see her father to seek answers to questions the family has for years ignored. The film examines how years of silence have affected the filmmaker and the people she loves.

CT- Cinema Nouveau - Friday 5th June Cinema Nouveau @ 8pm Q&A

Wednesday 10th June @ 6:30pm - Cinema Nouveau, JHB - Friday 5th June - Bioscope

In Blood Money Xolani Tulumani examines how money destroys cultural values in townships. It focuses on the culture of paying damages called blood money found in black townships where someone who splatters anothers blood in a fight has to pay a certain amount of money to the victim's family.

CT- Cinema Nouveau - Saturday 6th June@ 8pm Q & A,

Friday 12 June 6:30pm - Labia , JHB Sunday 14 June @ 8pm - Bioscope Q&A

The film looks at the history of Oswenka, a tradition started in the 1950s by the Zulu migrant labourers. Oswenka was a form of Saturday night self-entertainment because labourers often were not allowed or could not afford to get out of their compounds.

CT - Saturday 6th June @ 5:30pm Cinema Nouveau JHB - Sunday 14th June @ 6pm Q&A

Big Fish congratulates all four filmmakers for their contribution. The filmmakers turn the camera at themselves, to have conversations only a documentary can allow. The audience observe how these promising filmmakers do not employ the camera to shield themselves but instead to ask the difficult questions many are unable to articulate.The selection of these four captive works for the Encounters Film Festival is exhilarating for both the students and the school whose ethos the four films aptly embody of creating work that matters said Chait.

For all media enquiries,

or interview requests, please contact:

Lameze Allie in Cape Town at The Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking on

Tel (021) 418 1737 or email: alliel@bigfish.org.za or

Gail Bond in Johannesburg Tel (011) 482 5599 or email: bondg@bigfish.org.za

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LINK:	http://www.filmcontact.com/news/south-africa/documentaries/big-fish-st...
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