Kurzfilmprogramm - Change goes on in hidden places

In the organizer's words:

The short film program shows a selection of the diverse filmmaking in Tanzania. The seven films tell of growing up, of vulnerability, of new subcultural phenomena and recurring traditions - and set thematic highlights that are as diverse as their use of camera, aesthetics and narrative styles.

The short version of Greed for Speed documents the emergence of Singeli at a time when it was still an absolutely marginal phenomenon in the precarious neighborhoods of Dar es Salaam. While the film Daladala Verse impressively tells the story of the Tanzanian shared buses that criss-cross the cities and are more than just a means of transportation. WonDarLand, on the other hand, moves through the various districts of Dar es Salaam to the coast in a surreal, dance-like manner. A young man who returns to an important place of his childhood is at the center of Naomba Eid Yangu, while in Kimya Kimya the young Aggy is tormented by a painful experience from her past. The film Sahani deals without words with the relationship within a family, including the (unfulfilled) wishes, needs and hopes. And the short film Mwanahiti addresses how knowledge about sexual and reproductive health was and is passed on in matrilineal communities.

With films by: Haikaeli Gilliard, Kelvin Kagambo, Matthieu Nieto, Sudi Masomwa, Aurelio Mofuga, Jan Moss and Nicholas Calvin Mwakatobe.

The filmmakers

Sudi Masomwa is an experienced consultant and storyteller with special expertise in documentaries and film production. He is a proud member of the Nafasi Film Club from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

With over eight years of experience, he has successfully worked with various renowned companies such as Netflix, MFDI and California Pictures. He has contributed significantly to notable productions such as Fatuma and Katope, both available on Netflix, as well as Father Africa. He is adept in cinematography, story development, screenwriting, directing and color grading. His goal is to tell authentic and unique stories that appeal to a global audience.

Aurelio Mofuga is an experienced technologist and digital artist who specializes in combining art, culture and storytelling to bring African narratives to life using immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). He is the creator of the Daladala Verse project, which tells the rich history of public transportation in Tanzania and its contribution to the country's social and economic development. This highly acclaimed project has been exhibited at major international art and science festivals including the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, in Dakar, Senegal and locally in Tanzania.

Kelvin Kagambo is a Tanzanian filmmaker and journalist with a unique point of view and a passion for storytelling. Born and raised in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Kelvin draws inspiration from childhood experiences. He believes in telling authentic, personal stories with a fresh point of view that encourage audiences to experience the world from a different perspective.

Kagambo has been working as a scriptwriter at Ubongo Learning since 2021. He has also directed four short films: Dogo in 2021, Naomba Eid Yangu in 2022, Chini ya Chaga in 2023 and the award-winning Unasemaje? in 2024. He is an alumni of the DW Film Akademie Fund (2023) and the Docubox SRHR film project Get Reel (2023).

Haikaeli Gilliard is an artist, curator and alternative practitioner based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. As the creative director of Balcony Series - a platform she founded in 2019 - she uses art as a medium for social change, particularly in the fields of healthcare, art for wellbeing, research and preservation of indigenous health practices. One of her notable projects is the documentary Mwanahiti, which explores sexual and reproductive health education through female initiation practices of the Zaramo, a Tanzanian ethnic group. Since its release in 2021, the documentary has sparked important debates on sexual and reproductive health and reached more than 20,000 adults and students, over 2,000 of whom attended in-person screenings. The film was screened at the Zanzibar International Film Festival in 2023 and the Accra Indie Film Festival in 2024 and is now part of the Tanzanian National Museum's permanent collection. Haikaeli believes in the power of art and creativity to promote health, make health information more accessible and serve as a healing tool for communities.

Jan Moss is a film director, DJ, activist, curator, promoter and an intermedia artist who mainly uses film, sculpture and sound. He is interested in the origins of dreams and ambitions, sustainable development, the cyclical self-regulation of nature and the role of the sublime in conditioning social needs, for example the commodification of the experience of fear in nineteenth century horror literature.

He studied fine arts at the academies in Krakow, Oslo and Malmö. Since 2018 he has been working closely with the Ugandan record label Nyege Nyege Tapes, creating music videos and a series of documentary films.

He has worked as a consultant or creator on projects for documenta13 in Athens and Kassel, the ilm Study Center at Harvard University, the Mies van Der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris and the Lithuanian Pavilion for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Project Room, Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2019), Handbook for city dwellers, Krakow (2017), Noplace, Oslo (2017), Hotel Pro Forma, Copenhagen (2016) and group exhibitions: Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince (2018), Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2016), Futura, Prague (2015), National Gallery, Ulan Bator (2014).

Nicholas Calvin Mwakatobe is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Dar es Salaam. He is interested in stories as a means to make sense of our existence in a changing world.

In 2018, he founded PichaTime, a platform that focuses on storytelling as a critical tool for public engagement on issues of history and collective memory. Since 2018, they have hosted workshops and public performances and collaborated with various institutions to produce short films and host talks and presentations with guest speakers from different fields (art, science, technology, poetry, music and anthropology).

Nicholas is a British Library's Resonations Artist Residency Fellow (2023), a Video Consortium Fellow (2023), a Civitella Ranieli Visual Art Fellow (2019, Italy) and an Apex Art Visual Art Fellow (2019, NYC). He has worked locally and internationally in media, art and film projects.

Niiza Edesy Mchenche: Born (February 11, 1999) and raised in Dar es Salaam as the daughter of a social worker and a housewife.

"Thanks to my late father, I fell in love with movies and acting as a child. Ever since I saw Home Alone and Titanic, I have been in love with acting. I started keeping a diary in elementary school. My interest in reading books and writing was sparked in the third grade of secondary school after reading two novels, Honor by Elif Shafak and Adam's Fall by Sandra Brown, which got me interested in the world of literature and other genres. During my late secondary school years, I became interested in filmmaking. I taught myself how to write scripts using Google and Youtube.

Since then, I have written and directed a 6-minute short film called Kipimo with the support and guidance of Nafasi Film Club. I am currently working on another project, Mkufunzi, a very personal piece that I have written but is still a work in progress. It's a story about my mother, about an incident that happened to her in her late teens.

Matthieu Nieto (aka Matthieu Rainbow) is a multidisciplinary artist who uses the performing arts to promote social change, challenge cultural narratives and inspire personal transformation. Matthieu holds a Master's degree in Performing Arts (2017) and a Bachelor's degree in Dance (2015) from the University of Paris 8. As founder and artistic director of Mouvements Migrateurs, a Toulouse-based organization, Matthieu has been producing impactful work since 2013. He also directs the WonDarLand Project, a dynamic dance and performance intervention in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

With more than 15 years of experience in Europe and Africa, Matthieu has gained a transcultural perspective on art development that allows him to mix genres and connect different communities. His artistic philosophy focuses on the body as a dynamic canvas to explore and reshape identity. This approach is evident in the diverse dance styles and artistic practices Matthieu has studied, including contemporary dance, vogue, krump, butoh, West African dance, theater and song.

Matthieu's work is characterized by a fusion of popular and experimental aesthetics and celebrates diversity, vulnerability and poetic expression. His notable works include I Am Not My Color (2014) and I Came Here to Talk (2018), solo pieces that explore themes of race, personal history and self-awareness. Boy Band (2021), a collaboration with the Amizero Dance Company from Rwanda, addresses masculinity, while Human/Forest (2022), developed with 14 dance students from Muda Africa in Dar es Salaam, reflects on the connection between human "concrete jungles" and the forests of nature. Pop (2022), a duet with South African choreographer Thamsanqa Majela, explores the trauma caused by discrimination and premiered at the National Arts Festival in South Africa. His latest work, WonDarLand (2024), is a short dance film created with Tanzanian artists that takes the audience on a dreamlike journey to self-acceptance; the film was recently selected for the Chéries Chéris Festival in Paris. Matthieu's upcoming solo Neverland (2025) will take the form of a cabaret-inspired choreographic album, weaving together visual memories and original music to explore escapism, self-love and identity fictions.

Alongside his creative work, Matthieu teaches yoga and leads dance workshops that promote self-discovery, acceptance, community building and holistic wellbeing through movement.

- Free admission

- from 6 years

-Languages: English

- Belongs to: History(ies) of Tanzania