Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), partner to the Prince Claus Fund

June 2004 -

'Exploring the Currents, Feeling the Winds.’ With these poetic words as its theme, the ten-day Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) of the Dhow Countries will commence on 25 June 2004. The ZIFF is one of the network partners of the Prince Claus Fund.

The ZIFF festival of the Dhow countries (east-African countries) has grown in seven years into one of the largest cultural events in Africa. More than one hundred east-African and international film and video productions will be shown. The artistic programme also includes music, dance, plastic arts and, for the first time this year, a literary forum with authors from the Dhow region.

Special attention will be devoted to South Africa’s tenth year as a democracy, with South African films and performances by Ringo Mandlingozi and Bongo Muffin. Another part of the programme, Brazil@ZIFF, has the historical ties between eastern Africa and Latin America as its theme. A separate screening will also be made of the series of experimental audiovisual productions supported by the Prince Claus Fund within the framework of the Urban Heroes theme.

The ZIFF is one of the six partners with which the Prince Claus Fund recently entered into cooperation for a period of three years.. According to policy officer Geerte Wachter, the PCF is interested in the festival because it is internationally-oriented, links a social focus to a multi-disciplinary approach, and gives the island of Zanzibar and its history a part in the programming. With the concept of the Dhow countries, the festival also emphatically focuses on South-South exchange: ‘one of the PCF’s priorities’.

With the three-year cooperation the PCF, which usually only works on a project basis, hopes to give the festival structural financial support (totalling € 216,000). The two organisations will organise a few workshops with the theme Living Together and publish a work about this theme.