The Mindblast Festival of Film showcased some great international and South African alternative cinema, including films covering issues of communication activism.  The Festival took place daily at the Popular Media Mindblast in Upington. 

10 TACTICS FOR TURNING INFORMATION INTO ACTION

Dir: Tactical Tech; 50 min

New technologies have significant potential to enhance activists work, giving us the tools to gather and analyse information and the means to turn that information into action. This film shows how rights advocates around the world have used the internet and digital technologies in original and artful ways to capture attention and communicate a cause. It is accompanied with a deck of cards featuring tools, tips and advice to help you plan your Info-activism action. 

THE TAKE

Dir: Avi Lewis; Canada 2004; 87 min

The Take is a feature length documentary that beautifully captures the will and strength of the collective.  It focuses on the struggle of thirty Argentinean workers on a mission to reclaim and collectively run their closed down factory.  Part of a wider movement of Argentinean workers and communities reacting to economic crisis, the thirty workers of the Forja auto-parts factory work day and night to ‘occupy, resist and produce’ in order to restore dignity and meaning to their lives.

BARAKA (BLESSING)

Directors: Omelga Mthiyane, Riaan Hendricks, South Africa, 2008, 24 mins, Subtitles

Two days after South Africa experienced violent attacks against its black foreign nationals, thousands of people were displaced into temporary shelters across the country. After the attacks, the Western Cape community of Masiphumelele went to the nearby Soetwater refugee camp to publicly apologise; inviting their foreign nationals back home. The film follows the returning foreign shop owners to the overcrowded community of Masiphumelele. As the shopkeepers rebuild their destroyed shops, the community struggles to resolve the root causes of the conflict.

THE BURNING MAN

Director: Adze Ugah; South Africa, 2008, 24 mins, Subtitles

On the 18^th of May 2008, Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamavue, a Mozambican national, was attacked and burnt to death by a xenophobic mob in eastern Johannesburg. The following day pictures of his gruesome death made headlines across South Africa and in most parts of the world – a picture that was to become a reference point for the spate of xenophobic violence that spread through South Africa. The media dubbed him the Burning man. The film explores who Ernesto really was and tracks his last minutes from where he lived in Johannesburg, to his family compound in Mozambique, where his remains were finally laid

YOU CHUSE

Directors: Anita Khanna and Rehad Desai; South Africa, 2008, 50 mins

You Chuse is a documentary on the role of new media democracy movements in Africa.  Using innovative remixing and reworking of various media sources, the film looks at wide-ranging initiatives from the Open Source Software movement and the use of such technology in the fight against AIDS in Malawi, to organizations like the Creative Commons and the attempt to bring a nuanced argument to debates around piracy and intellectual property. The documentary is an exploration of the problems and solutions to the ever broadening Digital Divide between rich and poor nations in the information age