AFDA Student Film Scoops The 2006 Toronto Based ReelWorld Festival's Award

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Release Date: May 15, 2006

Embargo Date: None

Contact Details:
Name: Sibusiso Molefe
Company: AFDA
Phone: 0114828345
Email: sibusisom@filmdramaschool.co.za
Url: www.filmdramaschool.co.za


AFDA Student Film Scoops The 2006 Toronto Based ReelWorld Festival's Award

Johannesburg - The AFDA student produced film "SA/X" has walked away with ReelWorld's Award for Outstanding International Short Film. The ReelWorld Film Festival was founded by actress, Tonya Lee Williams (Hill Street Blues, Matlock), in Toronto, Canada. This award honours a director from the international community who has demonstrated filmmaking excellence.

SA/X is a comic mock-documentary, set in Johannesburg. It follows a fair-skinned African girl who dares to look outside of her burglar-proof suburban world. What she finds is a city both tattered and triumphant and generation come-of-age in a post-apartheid reality. SA/X profiles a truly contemporary slice of urban youth culture. The film inter-cuts an absorbing, simple narrative with (staged) documentary-style interview clips of random South African 20-somethings exploring their concerns and values. The interviews bring a universal element to the story, as our heroine breaks free from her controlling prejudiced family and boyfriend. She befriends a multiracial punk band, and ventures into a part of the city long considered being a no-go zone by most whites. Ten years on, amid a landscape rife with urban and social blight.

The film was completed in January 2005 and has traveled around the world - to Cannes, Holland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Canada. Some of the accolades the film has achieved so far; it was a winner of Best Picture in 2004 at the AFDA Awards and again winner of the prestigious Silver Leopard of Tomorrow Award at Locarno in Switzerland.

The team that made the film is Meril Rasmussen (Producer/Writer), Gilli Apter (Director/Writer), Stuart Rae (DOP), Jasyn Marais (Producer),Shaz Shapurje (Production Designer), Melissa Parry (Editor) starring Kerry Childs and Nandi Dlepu as lead actors.

Meril Rasmussen, the Producer/Writer says: "The humour in SA/X is intimate and local. It's brutally honest and quite self-deprecating, but in a liberating sort of way. I'm actually surprised that people overseas seem to like it so much. I'm sure they miss half the jokes."

Garth Holmes, AFDA Chairperson, said "We are once again proud of our students and their achievements. The film was always a winner in our eyes; it won Best Picture in the 2004 AFDA Awards evening."

Comments or Questions?
CONTACT Garth Holmes on garth@filmdramaschool.co.za OR CALL 084 256 7155
Or
Bata Passchier on bata@filmdramaschool.co.za OR CALL 084 850 0108
Meril Rasmussen (Producer/Writer) Cell: 082 921 9587 OR Gilli Apter (Director/Writer) 083-326-7235
Thank you for supporting great films! For more on AFDA visit http://www.filmdramaschool.co.za
AFDA is at: JHB CAMPUS -TEL: (011) 482 8345 FAX: (011) 482 8347, PO BOX 277, MELVILLE 2109, 1 FROST AVE, AUCKLAND PARK 2092 AND CPT CAMPUS TEL: (021) 448 7600, FAX: (021) 448 7610, PO BOX 53572 KENILWORTH 7745, 18 LOWER SCOTT RD, OBSERVATORY 7925
Date of this press release 15/05/2006