Founded by Senzo Zindela, Ugu Film Festival is the fastest growing film festival in South Africa and is held every year on the KZN South Coast region. It was founded and initiated as one of the Zindela Pictures Pty Ltd’s social responsibility programmes in 2013. In its first year, the festival screened two films, four films in its second year. These were accompanied by three workshops (script writing, acting & editing) which were conducted by local industry experts and around 400 audience in 2014. It also had an international workshop (action & stunt coordinating) held by Hollywood veteran/Hall of Fame, Steve Lambert known for Indiana Jones, Robocop, Rambo etc.
The third year saw the festival receiving 60 international films, screening 23 altogether including local films. The event also featured five international guests who came on their own expenses with an audience of more than 1000 audience members. The 2020 festival was graced by the late Menzi Ngubane, and international stars including Simon Kook and Peter Pham from Vietnam.
MESSAGE FROM THE FOUNDING DIRECTOR - Mr. Senzo Zindela
Adaption and adjusting to the new normal and 4IR at our doorstep is inevitable! COVID 19 pandemic has affected us all in one way or the other, but at UGUFF we are taking it as a wake-up call to unleash our utmost best creativity. Using our technological knowledge, our team is ready to host our guests from all over the world. After traveling the world, studying entrepreneurship & business management at Chicago State University, USA, I made it my life mission to establish initiatives/businesses that are capacitating local communities while having a global breakthrough impact. There are several factors which motivated me to embark on this selfless mission, some of them are the negative facts & perceptions written in most foreign books about us where they state that Africans are
followers programmed to be employees, Africans are not strategic thinkers, Africans don’t have strong intuition to invent or pioneer any project, Africans ONLY starts small businesses with no international appeal, Africans are scared to invest in big ideas beyond their comprehension if one of them attempts to start a big business with international appeal, he becomes a target and pulled down by his own people in every corner using every possible means! The most terrifying lesson in one of the foreign books was the prediction that African will remain in the same position for the next 100 years because innovations & pioneer spirit are killed and held back by the strongest enemy embraced as a norm across the board, that biggest enemy is kick-backs or bribery & corruption!
It is for those reasons that Ugu Film Festival was established as the international information-sharing platform to equip local creatives with breakthrough wisdom enabling them to operate globally without any limitations. We are intending to inspire upcoming youth and captains of industries who will refuse to be associated with the above mentioned negative perspectives!
