Filmmakers for inaugural Christian Film Festival
FILMMAKERS are working on the first ever Zimbabwe International Christian Film Festival and preliminaries for the event will begin today.
The initiative was facilitated by award-winning actress, producer and director Marian Kunonga.
She has joined forces with pastor and film producer Angeline Dimingo, Charles Matare’s Matchmo and Testimonies Media owned by Mercyline Mutarisi-Nyamayaro for a five-day boot camp that starts today.
The boot-camp will see 50 participants who are mainly church pastors and other interested individuals drawn from different Christian denominations receiving training in various aspects of filmmaking before their productions are taken for screening at the International Christian Film Festival set for November this year.
In an interview, Kunonga said all is set for the festival boot camp.
“It has been observed that there is scarcity of locally produced Christian or religious films in Zimbabwe at large despite the fact that the majority of Zimbabweans are Christians.
“It with this in mind that have decided to train people from different Christian denominations in film production, something which we will be doing on a quarterly basis.
“The first quarter workshop will be from the 13th to the 17th of April. This will be in preparation of the first ever International Christian Film Festival which we will be held in November,” she said.
Fellow filmmaker and project creator Pastor Dimingo said the workshop was designed to give the participants an insight into the motion-picture process while using Biblical concepts into designing stories for screenplay.
“The workshop will be divided into segments representative of the various stages of development in the professional process of film production. The workshop is composed of theory and practical sessions. Participatory learning methodologies will be incorporated throughout the whole workshop,” she said.