Thursday, 10/25, 7:00pm (Session XXIV)

Director: Peter Goldsmid, Zanele Muholi
Producer: Peter Goldsmid

Description:

A highly personal take on the challenges facing black lesbians in South Africa today emerges through the life, work, friends and associates of “visual activist” and internationally celebrated photographer, Zanele Muholi. How real are the freedoms of newly won democracy for this diverse minority? This documentary offers a moving answer - and a compelling plea for understanding and tolerance. It offers a poignant personal journey illustrated by Zanele’s photographs and a diverse range of encounters - lesbian activists, critics, commentators, victims and even a lesbian sangoma (traditional healer). It counters the charge head-on that being lesbian or gay is “unAfrican” or unChristian.  

Biography:

Zanele Muholi completed an advanced photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown. She has worked as a community relations officer for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng, and as a photographer and reporter for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on lesbian and gay issues in Africa. She had a solo show at Le Case d'Arte, Milan.  She was the recipient of the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the first BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship and was the Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Peter Goldsmid is an award-winning and performance-oriented screenwriter-director-producer who entered the industry as a film editor, but soon went on to produce and direct, first as an employee of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and thereafter through his own company, Southern Exposure. Peter has been writing scripts since 1990, when he wrote the screenplay adaptation of Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca for an international feature film that starred Oscar-winner Kathy Bates. Between 1998 and 2006 he wrote, directed and co-produced four seasons of a human rights legal drama series, Justice for All. It was aired on primetime on national television in South Africa, winning numerous awards.

Contact Information:

E-mail: zmuholi@gmail.com, southex@netactive.co.za (Peter Goldsmid)
Web site: www.zanelemuholi.com/