Women in mobile film making are honored for their creative work

Cleo Matuwane walks away with a grand price for her wonderful mobile film at Father Louise Blondel, Diepsloot. Picture: Wot-if trust.

Maleka Charles

As the Fourth Industrial Revolution continues to shape township life across South Africa, women in communities like Diepsloot are seizing its opportunities to tell their own stories and build sustainable careers.

On Friday, the Wot-if? Trust, in partnership with Two Spinning Wheels, hosted a mobile film showcase in Diepsloot to celebrate local women filmmakers. Using nothing more than their mobile phones, these creatives have been producing powerful stories that reflect both their realities and aspirations.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Wot-if? Trust said the initiative aims to empower women by recognizing their achievements while also providing access to training and mentorship programmes through its partners.

“One of the key objectives of the Wotif trust is to empower women in the Diepsloot community.”

“One of the ways we do this is by arranging training and mentorship programmes provided by our partners for young women in sectors where they are underrepresented."

Shelly Barry, from Two Spinning Wheels, said she was both speechless and inspired by the creativity of young women in Diepsloot, particularly their use of smartphones to narrate their own stories — a movement she described as “a new wave of African filmmaking.”

“Witnessing the films made by the young sister from Diepsloot today, there are no words.”

“Except that it is with immense gratitude that the path of this life time has led me to having a small part of play in the new wave of African film making, viva the mobile phone viva!”

Speaking on the potential of monetization, Gail Styger, founder and trustee of the Wot-if? Trust, acknowledged that while generating revenue could be challenging at first, the organization is determined to encourage corporate partners to advertise on the content once it gains significant traction on social media.

“The monetizing is challenging, we need to get corporate to advertise on content that is being created to say, that piece of content on Facebook is getting thousand hits a day.”

Styger added that if enough local content is produced, the Trust envisions creating a community movie theatre in Diepsloot — a space where residents can enjoy films at an affordable price.

“On a Monday night when we went to a 48 film festival, we realized local people like local content.”

“So there is a market here and we need to find a way of creating a movie theater, we can have movies once a week, where we start creating that culture.”

“And people can pay twenty rand or something like that,” she said.

Thoriso Ngwatwane, whose film was also showcased, was among ten women recognized for their contributions to film. Each honoree received a certificate after completing a short training programme in mobile phone filmmaking.

“Honestly we are the face of these stories and we need to start speaking them, and we need to start speaking them out loud.”

The showcase proved to be a fitting way to close Women’s Month in style, highlighting how women are steadily claiming their place in South Africa’s male-dominated film industry — this time as pioneers of the digital filmmaking era.