Durban - Acclaimed international cartoonist Nanda Soobben has won top awards at the Crownwood International Film Festival (CWIFF), held in India, for the television mini-series Nelson Mandela's Favourite African Folktales Episode 1 Fesito Goes To Market.
Soobben, founder of the Centre for Fine Art Animation & Design (CFAD) established in 1994, and colleagues Sheldon Noble and Claudia Noble-Areff won best animated short film.
Soobben won best art director while the best director (short) and best editor (short) went to Sheldon Noble. Claudia won the best producer of a short. The backgrounds for this episode were hand-painted by Soobben.
“My sincere gratitude to the festival director and their team, especially the jurors for bestowing this honour on us all. To the Noble Pictures and CFAD team, great things come from great collaboration!” said Noble-Areff.
The CWIFF is a monthly festival held in Kolkata. It celebrates films from all around the world with awards in different categories and genres. Fesito Goes To Market also raked in four laurels in other film festivals around the world.
Soobben said their confidence in the project oversaw the difficulties to win in India and America. He met Claudia four years ago at a film festival and a conversation about the project began.
Soobben drew animations for the script adaptations of the book for Claudia and, after approving them, they worked on the final concept.
“It was tough to work with computers and traditional animation. You had to get the balance correct. We experimented a lot to get the right formula,” he said.
Speaking of her win at the Crown Point International Film Festival in Chicago, US for best animation short, Claudia also thanked Claude Gombard, Ofense Rakololo (Voice of Fesito), the supporting cast, freelance animators, the animators at CFAD and their funders the KZN Film Commission.
“Thank you all for your brilliant talented contributions which have led to us receiving this coveted award. To the production team of all the other award-winning films alongside us, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the recognition of our film,” Claudia said.
Noble-Areff conceived the idea when she was surfing the internet and came across the book Nelson Mandela’s Favourite African Folktales.
“It caught my attention as I had just completed a short story in which the lead actress was a child, called Phindile’s Heart. The film had won several awards and I was thinking of making another film with children.”
She explained that there are 32 stories in the book but the publishers were only able to find 30 of the writers to agree to the animation of their stories in the book.
“We first searched for funding to produce all 30 stories. We obtained funding from the National Lottery Board and did one pilot episode. With the pilot, we travelled abroad searching for further funding. It is really hard to find funding and eventually we had to settle with only producing a further five stories, having been fortunate enough to secure funding for them from the KZN Film Commission,” Noble-Areff said.
The team is currently on their festival run but they have been in communication with both e.TV and SABC and intend approaching online platforms like Netflix and Amazon to make the content available to South Africans.
Daily News