The Durban International Film Festival has announced the
winners of its audience awards for 2014.
The winning feature is The
100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared from Swedish
director Felix Herngren. Based on the internationally best-selling novel by
Jonas Jonasson, this energetically oddball black comedy begins with
irrepressible pensioner and dynamite expert Allan Karlsson’s escape from a
retirement home. His subsequent cross-county shenanigans are interspersed with
flashbacks to a past studded with extraordinary events and famous historical
figures. Highly entertaining, its pastiche of history refracted through the
life of an eccentric is reminiscent of a darker take on Forrest Gump. The film received nearly unanimous votes of excellent
from the DIFF audience.
The DIFF 2014 audience award for best documentary goes to 1994: The Bloody Miracle, directed by
Meg Rickards and Bert Haisma. As South Africa celebrates the 20th anniversary
of the advent of democracy, the film chronicles the countless deaths and
widespread mayhem which nearly brought South Africa to its knees in the early
‘90s and speaks to the hard men who did their best to thwart the transition to
democracy and who have now made an uneasy peace with the ‘Rainbow Nation’.
More than 700 industry guests from around the world attended
DIFF and its sister event the Durban FilmMart (DFM). With 202 films spread over
nine venues, and more than 350 screenings, the festival was once more a great
success. With just over 30,300 seats occupied, including workshop and
attendance at DFM, attendance at the festival increased slightly, with the
number of sold-out venues increasing dramatically.
More than 2,800 people attended the beach screenings,
including the annual Wavescape opening event as well the additional four
outdoor screenings funded by the British Council and the National Film and
Video Foundation.
In terms of the festival’s visual literacy programme, the
festival once again presented a programme of youth-oriented films for more than
4000 students from schools in the region, who were provided with transportation
to Suncoast CineCentre’s Supernova theatre.
DIFF together with the Durban Film Mart accommodated more
than 300 guests and 1,500 room nights at the newly renovated Tsogo Sun Elangeni
and Maharani Complex, with hundreds of additional festival visitors paying
their own way at the many hotels along the Durban beachfront. 72 temporary jobs
were created, resulting in more than 5,000 job hours, while DFM hosted more
than 900 meetings between local filmmakers and producers, financiers and distributors
from around the world.
While DIFF and DFM provide a world-class film event with a strong
African focus, it is also an integral part of economic development within the
local and national film industry and is an increasing driver of tourism. An
Economic Impact Assessment study on the festival and the market will be
released later this year.
The 35th Durban International Film Festival is organised by
the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (a special
project of the Deputy Vice Chancellor of the College of Humanities, Cheryl
Potgieter) with support from the National Film and Video Foundation,
KwaZulu-Natal Department of Economic Development & Tourism, KwaZulu-Natal
Film Commission, City of Durban, German Embassy, Goethe Institut, Industrial
Development Corporation, KwaZulu-Natal Department of Arts and Culture and range
of other valued partners.
For the judged winners of the festival, see previous
article. For more information visit http://www.durbanfilmfest.co.za/
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