Nyasa Film Festival debuts

The inaugural Nyasa Film Festival comes to an end this Sunday at Crossroads Hotel in Lilongwe.

Unlike other film festivals, the event is based on tobacco harm reduction and will feature 11 local films. The event will also review and award published articles on the same theme.

The festival has been organised by Nyasa International Film Festival, which was founded by Philmon Lyson Kuipa.

In an interview yesterday, Kuipa said they believe that innovation is key to information dissemination especially on an issue such as tobacco harm reduction.

“The issue of tobacco harm is usually looked at as a political issue. So, we wanted to use this platform to highlight that this problem is a public health and human right issue above anything else,” he said.

The 11 films to be screened are Out of Bondage, Liberator, Stop and Quit, I Quit, Dangers of Smoking, Diversity, Stop, Wrong Choice, Weak Decision, The Killer I Brought and Utsi.

The production of the films was premised on a workshop that the organisers had in Blantyre and Lilongwe with filmmakers and journalists on tobacco harm reduction which was attracted participants from Malawi, Australia and Zambia.

He said: “After the trainings, they were challenged to develop content in either a form of a news article or a film.”

Kuipa said the Department of Arts has endorsed the festival and it will now be an annual event.

“We have put in place a team which will continue working after the festival. We will have screenings of the winning films with our partners such as Zanzibar International Film. We are hoping to learn from the partnership by tapping from their expertise,” he said.

The task of picking the winning film will be handled by a six-member jury, who were also tasked with shortlisting the featured movies. The jury is made up of members from Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana with Malawian Peter Mazunda as the chief judge.

In a separate interview, Mazunda said the festival is an important platform as it will open up insights on guidelines and principles of film production as well as providing motivation to other aspiring filmmakers.

He said: “This is no ordinary event even from our perspective as judges. We need to provide a proper outline on what is a movie, documentary and others. It provides the filmmakers an opportunity to test their proficiency against their fellows.”