IN a brand new corner of the internet the Tala Namibia Online Film Festival is a treat for local film lovers.
Curating a respectable selection of Namibian films for a seven-day festival running from 12 to 19 May, the free online event provides an inspiring sample of new and retro local cinema.
For those eager to explore a particular filmmaker’s work, screenwriters and directors such as Joel Haikali, Perivi Katjavivi, Florian Schott, Miranda Stein, Richard Pakleppa, Tim Huebschle, Naomi Beukes, Vickson Hangula and Andrew Bottelle present multiple titles from which one can begin their local film study.
Also of interest are three films by the late Oshosheni Hiveluah, whose talent lives on in ‘100 Bucks’, ‘Tjiti: The Himba Girl’ and ‘Cries at Night’.
A functional archive featuring blurbs, trailers, crew lists and the films themselves, the Tala Namibia Online Film Festival is a store of cinema as new as ‘The White Line’ ‘#LANDoftheBRAVEfilm’, ‘Briefcase’, ‘Where Beauty Reigns’, as experimental as ‘The Unseen’ and ‘Three and Half Lives of Philip Wetu’ and as historical as ‘Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation’.
“We could not have anticipated the large influx of interest from Namibian creatives who were clearly eager to find a way to share new work developed during and through the challenges of the pandemic,” says Tala Namibia communications manager Caillin Basson.
“This was a clear testament of the collective enduring spirit of resilience. Furthermore, it proved to us the notion that we had of Namibia possessing incredible amounts of talent with very few opportunities that aided the development of that talent. Hopefully, Tala Online streaming is the first of those opportunities.”
Diverse in its offering, which includes live performances, music videos, documentaries, a mockumentary, animation, pupil and student movies, films from the Ombetja Yehinga Organisation collection, as well as shorts from exciting new women screenwriters and directors like Senga Brockerhoff, Jenny Kandenge and Lavinia Kapewasha, the festival also caters to Namibian horror fans in titles such as ‘!Garibasen’, ‘Journey to the Dead’, ‘Wrong Way to Hell: Afterlife’ and ‘Sacred Places’.
“There is incredible value in understanding where we come from in order to effectively pave our way towards a desired future. Film, and art in general, has always carried a unique ability to reflect and encapsulate cultural shifts, perspectives, and shed light on some major events,” says Basson.
“I would encourage all our storytellers, actors and especially aspiring ones to see what and who is out there. This is a great platform to check the credits and see which directors, producers and music video producers you should be contacting,” she says.
“It is really great if partners like the Namibia Film Commission, but now also the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology can see all the creative content that has been supported and produced, but also the potential of this industry.
“The next step has to be to make this content accessible to the majority of the population, and therefore it also needs to be about the affordability of data, alternative payment gateways and so forth,” says Basson.
“We are ready to move this forward and hope we get the necessary buy-in, funding and partnership to do so.”
