Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) will be held in July this year.
Being a regular attendant to ZIFF, Dar es Salaam-based filmmaker, Amil Shivji, is pleased to hear the 24th edition is here again to conquer hearts of film lovers. The event, which started in 1998, was to be held last year but was cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We decided to hold the event because we believe ‘The Arts have an important role to play in society, and especially so during stressful times like these,” the Festival’s Director, Professor Martin Mhando, told the ‘Daily News’, earlier this week. He also stated that his organising team, do acknowledge that the event needs to be held in a safe way, under Covid-19 protocols.
By so doing, Mhando, who teaches film at Murdoc University in Australia, maintains the festival will be helping visitors to “make sense of the times”. It is with this in mind that all of the necessary protocols connected to public safety under Covid-19 will be observed, he assured.
“There will be temperature screening and disposal of tissues in closed-lid bins. Hands will be cleaned by use of running water or and sanitisers. Visitors and staff will be encouraged to practise sneezing and coughing into bent elbows and wearing of face mask, if age-appropriate,” he explained.
For the same reasons, physical social distancing will be adhered to and frequent cleaning of microphones, together with replacement of their covers, will be some of the new measures taken. Also, according to Mhando, all workshops will take place in open-air locations with partial covers, such as the top floors of the Seyyida and Marumaru hotels.
There will also be medical support and volunteers to ensure protocols are kept. Novel technology will also be used in a number of places to ensure a safe environment.
“To maintain social distancing during village screenings we shall introduce the use of LED Screens. This will permit us to screen using USB media convergence, which will also accept Bluetooth use. This will allow spectators with smartphone or even semi smartphones to access sound individually and in that way enable viewers to maintain social distancing,” he added.
That’s not all neither, for under the pandemic’s cloud instead of the customary nine-day event, there will be a reduction to five days this year. With regards to actual viewing, Mhando also said there will be two forms of screenings and meetings. These are “online/hybrid”, through internet platforms and “onset/hybrid”, together with online platform support.
Screenings are scheduled to take place only in open-air spaces. Together with screenings in the customary Old Fort, this exercise will also be conducted in the neighbouring Mambo Club.
“This will help us reduce the number of spectators each evening. Usually, the Old Fort takes about 1200 people. This time we shall allow only 500 people with social distancing maintained in the seating arrangements. 150 will watch in the Mambo Club,” Mhando stated.
Providing the ZIFF organising crew is able to get their act together, as Mhando assured the ‘Daily News’, chances are Amil, who is the Director of “Kijiweni Productions” (KP), here in the Upanga section of the City, will be attending this year episode after all. Their current feature production, “Vuta N’kuvute” (Tug of War), will not be ready for screening.
However, this doesn’t dampen his initial feeling of excitement, after hearing that the 24th edition is on schedule to take place from this coming 21st to 25th July, under the theme “Urithi huu ni wetu sote” (Sharing this heritage).
“I’m happy to hear that the festival is coming back. I think the fact that we had a poor turn-out and organisation in 2019, followed by nothing last year, it just feels like there might be a breath of fresh air this year. So I’m excited for the festival,” Amil admitted, who also lecturers at the University of Dar es Salaam, stated.
While at the KP’s offices the ‘Daily News’ got the opportunity to hear what their Creative Supervisor, Priscilla Mlay, a.k.a ‘Cece Mlay’ had to say. Basically, she saw the ZIFF as being an important facet for filmmakers across the board.
She had “the pleasure” of running two workshops there, specifically looking at women in film making, in 2017 and 2018, respectfully. This she says enables her now to speak from a personal point-of-view, with regards to the festival, which she referred to as being a “great opportunity” for people, especially filmmakers in the region, to meet and share ideas.
“From my perspective, as a woman, I hope those workshops that I held were eye-opening to just help understand how connected the difficulties, challenges and aspirations that we have in the industry work, in terms of connectedness,” she admitted.
According to Cece Mlay having such a platform, as the ZIFF, is also good because meeting others of similar minds, who are moving towards the same goals and vision, as yourself, gives all concerned an extra boost of energy. She went on to suggest that having the event this year will certainly provide a unique opportunity for filmmakers to also show how they’ve been forced to find other ways of working since the Covid-19 outbreak.
In the case of KP they hope to be able to screen some of the short aminations they’ve made over the period. Ironically, it turns out that having to adhere to restrictions of movement, since the coming of the pandemic, filmmakers have had to turn towards other forms of storytelling.
In the case of KP, they have expanded into animations, as opposed to solely live action filming, while putting the finishing touches to their current feature “Vuta N’kuvute”.
Who knows, when they’ve finished with the preparations to this Period Feature, which was shot in Zanzibar, it will most probably be given its African preview at next year’s ZIFF.
