Africa in Motion

11 October 2016

AiM 2016 Competition Selection Process By: Grant Halliday

Helping to curate Africa in Motion’s short film and documentary competitions for this year’s festival has been both an enlightening and interesting challenge. As a student studying MLitt Film and Television at the University of Glasgow, getting involved in AiM allowed me to build upon my studies and gain practical experience behind the scenes of a small independent film festival, providing me with an insight into the dedication and tireless work that is involved in staging the festival each year. With both competitions being free to enter and open to all conceivable genres, the festival is annually inundated with a large amount of material that ranges from films created using a mobile phone camera to professional-quality productions. A group of four University of Glasgow students based in the university’s College of Arts and studying a module on arts festivals, myself included, were invited by the module leader Lizelle Bisschoff, who founded AiM in 2005, to volunteer as part of the Short Film and Documentary Competitions Submissions and Selections Team. Initially we were tasked with making sure every single submission was watched. It was decided that the best way to tackle this huge list of films was to split it between the four of us, with each film being watched by at least two members of the group. For the short film competition submissions could range from under a minute to thirty minutes, while the documentaries could often reach feature length. Once all the films had been watched each member of the group chose their own personal favourites from both categories, which were then assembled into an initial longlist. A roundtable meeting allowed us to whittle this down into the final shortlist and which running order would complement the chosen films.



The most challenging aspect of this process was the sheer amount of footage that had to be watched, and juggling this process alongside dissertation writing and work commitments; even once we had begun the process of watching the films the festival was still receiving submissions and list seemed to grow ever larger. However, what also became apparent alongside the huge number of submissions was the diversity of the submissions, which ranged from music videos and children’s television, to films that tackled difficult subject matter such as poverty, domestic abuse, and prostitution. In the end we attempted to retain this diversity within the final shortlist which features fiction, non-fiction, animation, farcical comedy and harrowing personal crises, reaffirming the festival’s assertion that filmmaking on the African continent is both rich and diverse, and worthy of exploration. Having watched countless hours of submissions I can attest that anyone attending this year’s African in Motion festival will be supporting a vibrant artistic community and the festival’s mission to spread the reach of African filmmaking to British audiences. In an era where cinema is increasingly becoming a closed shop of Hollywood franchises and Oscar bait it is more important than ever to provide a space where alternative filmmaking can flourish and find an audience.

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