The second edition of DocuFest Africa will be run at the Hilton Arts Festival in Hilton, KwaZulu-Natal from September 15-17, 2017. DocuFest Africa is a visual storytelling festival presenting to the public important African documentary projects and the curation of significant African archives. In our work at Africa Media Online of running a picture library and digitising historic collections we are often coming across collections and work that should be seen by a wide audience. DocuFest Africa provides the opportunity for that. The interface between those recording history (the media – photographers, filmmakers and journalists) and those who become the custodians of history (heritage professionals – archivists, museologists and librarians) we believe will inspire enduring documentary practice and is an interaction that the Festival seeks to facilitate.
Veteran South African documentary photographer, Paul Weinberg, presenting a personal project at DocuFest Africa 2013 held at Michaelhouse in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.
This year DocuFest Africa will be run in conjunction with the World Press Photo Exhibition 2017 which will be on display in the Raymond Slater Library in the Centenary Center at Hilton College. DocuFest Africa will be held in the same building in Lecture Theatre A. A ticket to the World Press Photo Exhibition qualifies you for entrance into any of the 8 DocuFest Africa presentations. The presentations will take a form of a visual presentation of the work for 30-40 minutes and then there will be 20 minutes of interaction with the audience. Be aware that there are only 100 seats in the lecture theatre and entry will be on a first come first serve basis.
Tickets:
Tickets to the World Press Photo Exhibition 2017 and consequently to any and all of the DocuFest Africa presentations will be sold on the landing of the staircase leading up to the Raymond Slater Library. Being linked events, a ticket to the World Press Photo Exhibition 2017 grants the ticket holder entry to all of the DocuFest Africa presentations.
Tickets can also be purchased ahead of the event online
Cost:
For access to the World Press Photo Exhibition 2017 and all sessions of DocuFest Africa on a first come first serve basis:
R120 for adults
R65 for children under 16 and pensioners with a pensioners card
R40 for school groups of over 10 scholars
DocuFest Africa 2017 Programme:
| Masixole Feni | A Drain On Our Dignity | Fri 15 Sep | 17:30 – 18:30 |
| Matt Kay | The Front | Fri 15 Sep | 19:30 – 20:30 |
| Ian Bruce Huntley and Chris Albertyn | Keeping Time | Sat 16 Sep | 10:00 – 11:00 |
| Jodi Bieber | Between Darkness & Light | Sat 16 Sep | 13:00 – 14:00 |
| Siona O’Connell | An Impossible Return | Sat 16 Sep | 16:00 – 17:00 |
| Peter McKenzie | Theemeri | Sat 16 Sep | 17:15 – 18:15 |
| Paul Weinberg | Traces and Tracks | Sat 16 Sep | 18:30 – 19:30 |
| Andre Odendaal |
A Post Colonial History of a Colonial Game | Sun 17 Sep | 10:00 – 11:00 |
| Gille De Vlieg |
Returning to the Source | Sun 17 Sep | 13:00 – 14:00 |
A Drain On Our Dignity. PHOTO: Masixole Feni
Masixole Feni: A Drain On Our Dignity
Documented here are the inequalities, class divide and the spatial injustice that our democratically elected government acknowledges but continuously fails to substantively address. These are clear when a child and her mother relieve themselves in an open field next to a national road in clear view
Masixole Feni is a young freelance photographer living in Emfuleni Cape Town. He is part of the Iliso Labantu Photography Collective and he recently won the Ernest Cole Photographic Award. His work is focused on social justice issues.
The Front: Durban beach front. PHOTO: Matt Kay
Matt Kay: The Front
The front is a presentation of two photo essays one on the natal midlands and the other on the Durban beachfront. The talk will deal with adapting style and narrative to suit specific projects as well as the importance of personal subject matter.
Matt Kay studied at the Market Photo Workshop and is currently based in Durban. His work has been shown widely both in South Africa and internationally. Matt was the recipeint of the Tierney Fellowship in 2014 and was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award 2017.
- Chris McGregor playing the piano with the Blue Notes at Rondebosch Town Hall, Rondebosch, Cape Town; 1964. PHOTO: Ian Bruce Huntley
Ian Bruce Huntley and Chris Albertyn: Keeping Time: The photographs and Cape Town Jazz Recordings of Ian Bruce Huntley
South Africa’s 1960s ‘underground’ jazz scene persisted in creative defiance of all that apartheid threw at it. Ian documented this phenomenon with 1500+ photographs, and quality audio recordings of more than 58 hours of historic performances.
Ian Bruce Huntley is a retired land surveyor who invested all his spare time and resources in photographing and audio recording an otherwise little known but significant cultural phenomenon of jazz persisting to unite people and spirit. Chris Albertyn curated the Huntley archive, facilitating its public access, and also preservation via the International Library of African Music, and via Africa Media Online. He also produced a book, Keeping Time, presenting 120 images selected by Ian, and documenting the recordings has been published.
The Silence of the Ranto Twins. PHOTO: Jodi Biebe
Jodi Bieber: Between Darkness & Light
Jodi Bieber’s lecture will focus on her personal projects which have been influenced by her experience to South Africa, the country of her birth and the psychological impact of her experiences through her experience through photography. She will give you insight into what is behind each experience, what she has learnt about the human condition and will challenge certain stereotype you as the viewer might hold.
Jodi Bieber’s career as a photographer started prior to the 1994 Democratic Elections held in South Africa. Jodi travelled the world working on assignments for NGO’s and international publications whilst at the same time her main focus was on her projects mainly dedicated to challenging existing stereotypes. She has three monographs, a mid career show “Between Darkness and Light’ touring South Africa and the world, a string of awards including the coveted World Press Photo of the Year Award for her photograph of the young Afghan women Bibi Aisha whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband in Afghanistan and appeared on the cover of Time magazine. She is included in numerous group show internationally,her work can be found in international collections and she mentors up and coming young photographers.
An Impossible Return: Living in the aftermath of apartheid forced removals in Cape Town, South Africa. PHOTO: David Brown (1972)
Siona O’Connell: An Impossible Return: In the Aftermath of Forced Removals in Cape Town
Following on the film, “An Impossible Return’ the talk considers apartheid afterlives through forced removals.
Dr Siona O’Connell is a visual studies scholar at the University of Pretoria who has directed and produced 5 films and curated numerous exhibitions, with her most recent being “Promises and Lies: Fault Lines in the ANC”. She is also Director of the Centre for Curating the Archive at the University of Cape Town.
Peter McKenzie: Theemeri
Theemeri is a centuries old Hindu practice of fire-walking, as a manifestation of diversity’s moral codes, a return to intrinsic cultural, social and spiritual values, the essentials of historical reach.
The social ideals of community, dedication and commitment, the pillars of such, a sensitivity to locale that has withstood the vagaries of time, South African time, where the ancestors were booted out of Cato Manor’s homes to disparate parts of Durban. Yet devotees return to the same spirits sustaining time past, nourishing and informing the present.
Veteran press and documentary photographer, Peter McKenzie has recently co-founded the Durban Center for Photography. The DCP hosts regular workshops, photography student projects and exhibitions. His present pre-occupation in Durban is the re-imaging of urban space and a study of the history of African photography.
A young child watches on as a supply helicopter leaves. PHOTO: Paul Weinberg
Paul Weinberg: Traces and Tracks
Traces and Tracks is a thirty year journey, photographer Paul Weinberg has been on with the San of southern Africa. At university, he had learnt about their special relationship with nature, their survival skills and their hunter-gatherer existence. Prior to university, on leaving school, he had been conscripted into the South African army and was sent to the Namibian border. He witnessed how the SADF attempted to ‘win the hearts and minds’, of the local population, including the San. These two contrary experiences set the tone for his encounter with the San. His work has sought to work against a romantic, mythologised view of the San.
Paul Weinberg is a senior curator at the Centre for African Studies Gallery. He is photographer, filmmaker, writer, educationist and archivist. He began his career in the early 1980s by working for South African NGOs, and photographing current events for news agencies and foreign newspapers.
Basil D’Oliveira, a South African of Cape Coloured descent, played cricket for England
Andre Odendaal: Archives and images in the writing of a post colonial history of a colonial game (cricket), 1795-2017
Andre Odendaal and his co-authors, Christopher Merrett, Krish Reddy and Jonty Winch, are writing a four-volume history of South African cricket, which overturns long-held foundational narratives of the game in this country. This project has entailed a decades-long search in the archives and old newspapers. Andre will share his experiences and approaches and the lessons he has learned in the process.
Andre Odendaal is Honorary Professor in History and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape. His ten books include, Vukanu Bantu! (1984), The Story of an African Game(2003), The Founders (2012) and Cricket and Conquest (2016, with the above-mentioned authors). He is currently involved as writer and project co-ordinator with the Albie Sachs Trust on Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law (ASCAROL).
Gille De Vlieg: Returning to the Source
Veteran photographer and activist, Gille De Vlieg will be presenting on a project where she took original images she had taken in the past back to the places where they were taken and the benefits of the outcome.
Gille De Vlieg is a South African human rights activist, photographer and member of the Black Sash. From 1982 to 1998 she was a member of the Afrapix collective.
Information:
Click here for more of the story behind DocuFest Africa
Click here for the World Press Photo Exhibition 2017 programme and ticket information
Click here for the story behind the World Press Photo Exhibition 2017 coming to the Hilton Arts Festival
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