Diff’s sparkle and new shine

Buhle Mbonambi spoke to the new manager of the Durban International Film festival, Chipo Zhou

AS ONE of the longest running and most respected film festivals on the continent, the Durban International Film Festival (Diff) is no stranger to controversy. It was, after all, started as a way to push back against the apartheid government, one of the few times that people of different race groups could convene without the government interfering.

It’s an important festival, especially to South Africa’s film industry, where sometimes the festival is one of the few platforms that filmmakers have to screen or sell their films to distributors. It was therefore heartbreaking to see all that drama last year about the opening film.

It ceased being about celebrating local film, but instead became all about the egos. One could swear that Harvey Weinstein was involved. It was also so dramatic that someone should actually make a movie out of it.

This year everyone’s expectations are pretty high. UKZN’S Centre for Creative Arts, which owns the festival, has a new director in David Wa Maahlamela. He has appointed Chipo Zhou as the film festival manager, a role that sees her curating all the film content and programmes at Diff. It’s a historic appointment – the first female and first black person to manage the festival. Ironically enough, this will be Zhou’s first Diff and the choice to open the festival with Amanda Evans’s Serpent, instead of a film like Akin Omotoso’s Vaya, has already raised eyebrows. On making history “I feel privileged to be here and so grateful. I have grown a lot in the last two months. I’m very happy being in Durban and with the beautiful people of this city. I think I’m going to love it here.” On this being her first Diff “This will be my first Diff... I’m like a Diff virgin (laughs). But I’m really looking forward to it being a proper 10 days of film… The films are spread out evenly this year. Since I have watched most of the films already, it leaves me free to be part of the other programmes at the festival.”

On choosing Serpent as the opening film

“I have been watching a lot of films in the past few months. My job is to curate films for the festival. But after watching Serpent, it spoke to me in so many ways. Firstly, it is very minimalistic.

The story is so good, that it held together the script and the characters, including the snake… Sitting through 90 minutes of that and not wanting to leave the room or look away for five seconds, was just impressive to me. The way the story was told, the setting… Call me a hopeless romantic, but it’s the best love story I have seen coming out of South Africa in a very long time.”

On Diff ’s focus on women in film

“It was a conscious decision for us to choose Amanda’s film to open the festival. My introduction into the film industry was when I worked with the International Images Film Festival for Women as an assistant director, in Zimbabwe for four years. So this is something that has been a passion of mine. I strongly believe that female voices should be heard in film. And this is in our programme, our jury selection, facilitators – we have made a conscious decision to accommodate more females in the festival this year.”

On African films at the festival

“It’s very important to be able to tell our stories from our point of view, our narrative… We are who we are and we have this context built into our DNA, so we should be able to tell that story with every bit of that context so that people can see our stories from our lenses.”

On the major red carpets at Diff this year

“I like watching red carpet events and shows. I feel like they add value, just the whole element of film and the event.

The idea of a film festival is to celebrate film and the filmmakers. And if we can’t celebrate them in a way that sparkles and shines and makes the entire world stop, then there’s no point in celebrating at all. So when we do red carpet, we need to go all out.” Part of Anton Lembede (Smith) Street has been cordoned off to allow for the red carpet to have a bigger space. On the films at Diff “The films we’ve chosen this year are all story-driven – really good films with amazing stories. It’s something that we Africans need to start developing, because once you have a good story everything else falls into place.”