Realness Institute together with partners the Southern Africa Locarno Industry Academy Film Festival, and FAME Week Africa, this week announced that the Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy, its 7th Realness Screenwriters’ Residency edition as well as a new initiative, Episodic Pitches will be hosted for the first time at FAME Week Africa in Cape Town, South Africa from 3 to 9 September this year.
“We’re thrilled to see the Southern Africa Locarno Industry Academy getting ready for its first onsite edition during FAME Week. This will continue to boost young and emerging professional into the local and international film industry network,” say Markus Duffner, Head of Locarno Pro and Marion Klotz, Industry Academy Project Manager.
These three programmes housed by Realness Institute, which now has its permanent homebase at The Coot Club in Stanford, Western Cape South Africa, provide opportunities for African filmmakers to develop film and television projects, widen their international networks, and strengthen industry skills.
“I had the pleasure of keynoting the inaugural FAME Week last year and immediately recognized the powerful market it presents for African creators. This is the forum we have all been waiting for on the continent and having a formal partnership with the Realness Institute provides the talent we work with an effective on-ramp to secure deals in the global entertainment business,” says Mehret Mandefro, co-founder and Director of Development and Partnerships.
The Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy, a Locarno Film Festival initiative is dedicated to the development of young film professionals working in sales, traditional and online distribution, theatrical exhibition and programming for festivals, film clubs and archives. Nine film professionals will have the opportunity to enjoy a focused programme of networking meetings with international professionals, masterclasses, workshops, panel discussions at FAME Week Africa, as well as playing an active role in curating its short film programme, to be screened at The Labia Cinema in Cape Town, from 7 to 9 September.
Realness Screenwriters’ Residency is an incubator for African screenwriters in which six participants are given one-on-one practical support through mentorship, focusing on the creative aspects of their work. They are also mentored through the rigorous pitching process to enable them to find potential partners, funders and producers leading up to their market debut.
Episodic Pitches will have its first edition this year, bringing to market the best of the series concepts developed across all Realness’s Episodic efforts from 2021 to 2023. A cohort of 10 creators will be invited to present their well-crafted and developed ideas on stage.
FAME Week Africa provides a development and networking platform for the African creative industries, namely film, television, animation as well as music and entertainment technology. The three Realness programmes will be housed within the MIP Africa event at FAME Week, which is a B2B market for film, television, digital content distribution and co-production business in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Mentors for these programmes include Ayanda Halimana, Cait Pansegrouw, Denis Ruh, Eddie Bertozzi, Elias Ribeiro, Frank Spotnitz, Femi Odugbemi, Mehret Mandefro, Mmabatho Kau, Ozi Menakaya, Pauline Fischer, Selina Ukwuoma and Thandeka Zwana to name a few.
“FAME Week Africa is pleased to partner with the Realness Institute,” says Martin Hiller, Portfolio Director of FAME Week Africa. “Through this collaboration, we aim to ignite African storytelling flare by supporting programmes of, and providing platforms for, the Realness Institute to increase the diversity of voices in the film industry, and lead to more interesting, varied, and nuanced stories. It will also give African filmmakers a chance of securing funding, distribution deals, and other resources that can help them bring their stories to life.”
“We hope to expand this partnership even further and to continue to supply the best talent and stories incubated by the Realness Institute, with an aim to stimulate the appetite of buyers and investors to return to FAME Week Africa for more quality projects in the future,” says Elias Ribeiro co-founder and Executive Director of Realness Institute and Regional Manager of Locarno Industry Academy. “Zoom was a great place to keep things running but nothing will ever replace the power being in each other’s presence. We thank FAME Week for holding the space.”

The United Nations family in Ethiopia on Wednesday marked Chinese Language Day with an aim to promote the Chinese language and culture.
The Chinese language commemoration event was co-hosted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in collaboration with the Chinese Mission to the African Union (AU) at the UN Conference Center in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.
Acting Executive Secretary of UNECA Antonio Pedro said on the occasion that the celebration offers an opportunity to acknowledge the contribution of the Chinese language to the achievement of the objectives of the United Nations and the fulfillment of its mandate.
He said the Chinese culture, of which the Chinese language is a reflection, pertains to a vast and complex set of achievements in a wide range of fields. “That continuity, which has facilitated the dissemination of practices, objects and ideas, means that certain elements of Chinese culture can transcend regional and historical differences.”
“Today, many people around the world who are not of Chinese origin want to learn Chinese,” the UNECA chief said.
Pedro said the UNECA, in collaboration with the Chinese Mission to the AU and the Confucius Institute at Addis Ababa University, has recently started offering Chinese language courses. “That initiative reflects the ever-closer cooperation taking place between the UNECA and its multilingualism partners.”
Participants attending the UN Chinese Language Day celebration emphasized that the event could be seen as an important platform for creating awareness of the Chinese language in particular and Chinese culture in general to the rest of the world under the umbrella of promoting linguistic and cultural diversity.
The event was marked with different activities showcasing the Chinese culture and language, including Chinese calligraphy, art performances, as well as presentations on Chinese culture, tourism and history, and traditional Chinese medicine and healthcare.
Various performances were also displayed by students from the Confucius Institute at Addis Ababa University and the Confucius Institute at the Federal Technical and Vocational Training Institute.
Head of Mission of China to the African Union Hu Changchun said that the Chinese language in recent years enjoyed growing demand among people in the African continent and the rest of the world.
“As one of the languages with the longest history, the most elegant structure, and the deepest ideological connotation in the world, the Chinese language is attracting more and more people to explore and feel the essence of the profound Chinese culture behind it,” he said.
Figures from the Chinese Mission to the AU show that as China actively engaged in cooperation with other countries, Confucius Institutes and Classrooms have been set up in 159 countries, among which more than 70 Confucius Institutes and Classrooms have been established in African countries.
In Africa, 17 countries have included the Chinese language in their education system, and over 600,000 African people are using or learning Chinese, according to the Chinese Mission to the AU.
“The learning and use of Chinese serve as a bridge of mutual learning between civilizations, allowing more and more friends all around the world to feel the beauty of poetry in Tang and Song Dynasty, the profound philosophy of traditional Chinese medicine, the rapid development of China, and find the key to the success of Chinese path to modernization,” Hu said.
The Chinese language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. The other five are Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
The United Nations family in Ethiopia annually commemorates Chinese Language Day in line with the decision by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2010 to mark Chinese Language Day on April 20. The decision envisaged celebrating multilingualism, cultural diversity, and promoting equal use of all six of the UN’s official working languages throughout the organization’s structure and activities.