2007

Early 2007 Kambisa! set up a programme for training young Zambians wanting to become a filmmaker and realising a few of their first film ideas. After the selection of students and the best ideas, an intensive online course covering the basics of independent documentary production was begun. In September This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  (Dutch filmmaker) arrived in Zambia to train the students at the spot and to prepare the documentaries for being shot by a team of the professional filmmakers This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (Dutch filmscientist & editor), Iris Weerd (Dutch camera woman), and Jack Kampole & Joshua Katope of the Zambian based company Prime Images (who won an award at the latest New York Festival!). Students who have successfully participated in the course will get a certificate and a reference letter.  

 

We hope to screen this year's resulting documentaries of the young aspirant filmmakers Musilizo Munalula, Victor Miselo, MacFellan Nkoma, Gift Phiri and Mathew Tembo at a large number of international film festivals and with several broadcasting companies, both in Zambia and abroad. The documentaries will deal with street kids getting married, handicapped people making an independent living in the streets of Lusaka, young men leaving the security of their homes for a better chance in the capital and the potential role of traditional music in the popular arena. As these documentaries are made under Kambisa!, we encourage ideas which deal with underrepresented issues from a perspective of the underrepresented people, which are made from a journalistic independent perspective and which not only portray an image of victimship and misery but also show the strength and the resilience of the people you will be working with when shooting the documentary.

 

2008 and beyond
Considering the great difficulties independent filmmakers face in the upcoming Zambian film industry, we aim to repeat the same film project each year until the industry has grown big and professional enough to cater for more competition and creative thinking. The abundant enthusiasm in Zambia as well as amongst the Dutch volunteers suggests we will not have any problem finding enough students, or the people to train them and help shoot the ideas into professional documentaries which can be distributed on an international level.

The postproduction and launch of the Kambisa! documentary project 2007-2008 was realised with the help of Hivos.