Jozi: Love/Hate mobile phone film competition winner

When CN&CO leverages and links everyone with everyone else, everybody wins. That’s the real power of relationships.

In September, our friends at Jozi Film Festival hosted yet another successful event, the fifth annual Jozi Film Festival. It was a three-day movie-fest that took place across three venues in Joburg. CN&CO was in full swing as a partner.

As part of the festivities, EasyEquities, a friend and client of CN&CO’s, partnered with JFF to launch a mobile phone film competition. EasyEquities invited contestants to make a 30-second to two-minutes film on their phones portraying the best and worst of this complex city. Contestants had to upload their videos (entries) to the JFF Facebook page to stand a chance to win great prizes.

colbert-dube

Colbert on a night shoot with the Picture Tree team

“We ran this competition to highlight the fact that we can make films on our phones and that film is not the preserve of established filmmakers,” says JFF co-founder Lisa Henry.

All the entries were impressive. The judges faced a difficult task of selecting the finalists, but in the end, a winner was chosen: Colbert Dube’s Jozi:Love/Hate film.

Colbert’s mobile film features a poetic voice-over with very subtle music playing in the background. The audience gets to see the “best and worst” of Joburg through his eyes, where he portrays that in every bad situation there’s a positive side. Colbert claimed R5000 grand prize sponsored by EasyEquities.

Colbert was studying cinematography, but had to drop out of his final year for financial reasons. When the folk at JFF discovered this, they organised him an internship with Picture Treea boutique production company. Gary King, an executive producer at Picture Tree, was looking to connect with Colbert after the award ceremony. He saw true potential in Colbert’s mobile film and didn’t want to let such talent go to waste.

JFF, like CN&CO, also believes in the power of relationship.

“We’re a film festival, but we also do work behind the scenes to connect people in the film industry to one another and to international festivals,” says Lisa. “We hope entering our competition was a small step towards big things for Colbert.”