By Andrew
Mulenga
Organisers of Zambia’s very own international festival, the Shungu Namutitima
International Film Festival (SHUNAFFoZ) have reported that 2013 may turn out to
be the biggest year for the event so far as it is officially endorsed as one of
the UNWTO General Conference sideline entertainment events.
An annual
event now in its 8th year, SHUNAFFoZ a
not-for-profit project of Vilole Images
Productions (VIP) will run between Friday, 23rd to Saturday, 31st August,
with a vision focused on: “promoting the use of film as a tool to highlight
issues on women, youth, girls and women-with-disabilities, capacity building,
development and trade in film/television products in Zambia and around Africa,
and the promoting of Livingstone as a preferred location for filming and as a
tourism destination of choice,” states a press release made available by
festival coordinator Mumbi Mwape, a Kabwe-based Independent Documentary Film Maker and
cultural activist.
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Shungu Namutitima International Film Festival
Executive Director Musola Kaseketi
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According to
the release, currently, film submissions have been received from regional and
international filmmakers and SHUNAFFoZ is part and parcel of an even broader
national initiative to market and expose Zambian filmmakers and their products.
“It is also a base for non-credentialed
training of producers, directors, cinematographers, distributors, promoters and
other creative and cultural industry stakeholders. This, it is hoped, will
enhance the development of the film making industry in Zambia in the medium to
long term, evolving into a source of employment for the many talented aspirant
and upcoming filmmakers working as a cog in a machine in empowering a people
and creating a self-sustaining creative and cultural industry with excellent
opportunities for further backward and forward, as well as horizontal and
vertical investments for an integrated synergetic national economy.”
Zambia being a country whose film industry
is still in its infancy with no formal film training school save for short
courses in video production at institutions such as ZAMCOM, the organisers,
headed by award winning film maker Musola Kaseketi the Festival Executive
Director and CEO at Vilole Images Productions have continued, to use the film
festival as a platform for “networking and the assertive sharing and acquiring
of critical professional film industry skills for the discerning cineaste.”
This year, as part of its training and
discussions programme, SHUNAFFoZ
have included what may turn out to be quite an interesting “Arts Discussion
Forum” that will critically examine the current worldwide phenomenon of reality
television.
Themed “Are Reality Talent Shows a bonus or a minus for the budding
creative and cultural industry in Zambia and Africa as a whole?” the
forum is expected to be an intensive yet
interactive informal arts education and cultural management practice
experience-sharing with the festival audience and the local, regional and
international arts and cultural fraternity at large. Through their website and
other media, the organisers have invited participation by all interested
academic, creative, cultural, tourism and business.
“Lately, Zambia’s public television
channel ZNBC, like most cable programming, has been deluged with locally
produced “Talent Search/Shows” in the increasingly popular “Reality
Shows” genre, with today’s and tomorrow’s wannabe big-stars across the
predominantly performance art discipline vying for that ultimate stardom tag,
Hollywood-style, with all the usual trappings: winner-takes-all windfall cash
award, studio and/or recording contract, the all alluring promise of almost
guaranteed commercial success up for the grabs as staked by the often well-resourced
sponsoring corporate and service businesses, a permanent dangle,” state the
organizers concerning the forthcoming arts forum.
They further declare that most of these
participants have had little formal arts education and arts production, or arts
management training and it is against such a background of next-to-none
creative arts and culture management or arts development education in Zambia
and around most of Africa - private or public that the discussion forum invites
papers or presentations that will bridge the divide or will seek to compare and
contrast the business and often product-marketing and so profit-inspired ethos
in creative arts production and cultural practices rather than a nurturing
contemporary arts education development systems.
“Discussion papers or presentations may
reflect on, but not be limited to, the fundamental nature and motivations of
artistic creative productions or activities of indigenous cultural groups, as
to how some of their time-honoured traditional methods have helped sustain some
of now UNESCO-recognised cultural communities and their practices
like the Makishi Masquerade/Likumbi lya Mize and Nyau Mask/Gule
wam’Kulu in Zambia,”
“Or a range of other creativity in the
fields of film, other new media, literary arts, fashion and design, performance
or visual arts. Can contention be raised that cultural communities are more
transparent with better deliverables and resulting in measureable more
objective outcomes in the molding of individual performing and creative
artists?”
The forum question also probes whether an
argument is to be made that contemporary corporate tailored and
television-based programmes in Zambia, past and present, loosely modeled around
the brand events like “Idols”,
“[America’s] Got Talent”, “EuroVision Song Contest” and the ever so popular “Big
Brother Africa”, etc., at the regional and continental levels is just such
the antidote needed by Africa’s fledgling creative and cultural industries to
bringing about new audiences, increased re-investment, and infrastructural
improvements – in arts education and the economic potential of the creative and
cultural tourism sector, in Zambia as elsewhere?
SHUNAFFoZ
interrogates risks posed by apparent imitation and
mimicry of western talent shows only to produce arts and culture industry
parodies at best.
It suggests those gravely concerned are worried
saying, there is a systematic and unconscious perhaps even over-commercialization
of authentic artistic, cultural and heritage production, or are these
perceptions just being imagined by a section of contemporary society lacking
inventiveness?
“What suggestions of some of the proven
traditional methods, if any, of nurturing and mentoring, can make for adoption
and incorporation, to sustain and engender originality in contemporary artistic
and cultural creative practices with benefits for the local industry and making
a meaningful impactful global presence even?”
The SHUNAFFoZ Arts Discussion Forum is to take place at
the Livingstone Museum on Monday, 26 August 2013 and should provide for some
interesting discourse depending on the participants as well as the quality of
papers, presentations and arguments raised in response to the call.
It is exciting however that the organizers
have broadened the forum beyond the phenomenon of reality television but have
also allowed room for the discussion of the perceived “over-commercialization of
authentic artistic, cultural and heritage” events and activities” of which much
can be said.
Anyone who has attended a cultural
ceremony in Zambia over the past few years can attest to the fact that,
ceremony participants, fairgrounds and in certain instances chiefs and headmen
can be seen clad in the brightest corporate merchandising paraphernalia such as
t-shirts and caps. Traditional ceremonies, as we call them have become
battlegrounds for ferocious corporate crusades particularly between the mobile
telecommunication companies and banking houses some of whom are rumored to pay
as little as K1,000 to have their large colours splashed around to be
documented and therefore immortalized in photographs for eternity.
Nevertheless, as much as the arts forum will be an exciting component of
SHUNAFFoZ during the UNWTO,
there are quite a number of things lined
up for the film festival. Other
activities are a “Grand Opening Night under a warm African summer sky”, public
and outreach film screenings, non-credentialed filmmaking skills workshops, a
special Kids Day for children, and an Awards
and Humanitarian Recognition closing night, each at Livingstone’s creative and
tourist partner-venues.
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