By Chris Loka:
Film Association of Malawi (Fama) has partnered Latitude 13 Hotels in Lilongwe, which will see the two players embarking on projects aimed at growing the film industry.
Fama General Secretary James Kitchen says in a press statement that the partnership will help strengthen Fama members’ capacity as well as help improve production.
“Working in partnerships is a fundamental principle of Fama. We strive to build evolving, reliable and strong partnership to secure long lasting impact and increase the legitimacy of development interventions, and secure sustainable change beyond the scope of individual projects,” Kitchen said.
Latitude 13’s partnership with Fama comes barely a month after it also hosted 10 Days of Malawian Art Contemporary art exhibition which was a success and saw visual artists selling their works.
According to Kitchen, the partnership is in three areas namely movie night space, film festivals and capacity building and workshop venue.
On movie night space, Fama and Latitude will be hosting movie nights which will give filmmakers platform to screen their movies and also give a chance to people to watch movies by local players.
“On capacity-building and workshop venue, Fama would want to conduct workshops to capacitate its members and other creatives in general as one of the ways of helping refine their works and this also will include so many things for the benefit of both parties,” Kitchen said.
On film festivals, Kitchen, said these are hugely important as they offer a platform to filmmakers to, among otherthings, present their creative ideas, stories and enhance storytelling.
“Fama intends to organise Malawi Film Festival in November or December this year and this will be an annual event. This will see a number of films produced by Malawians being showcased and, in this, Latitude will help us in organisation,” Kitchen said.
Latitude 13 General Manager Ronald Stilting has since pledged support to Fama and that they will be providing venue for workshops, film festivals and movie night space.
He said recently that, in the coming months, Latitude 13 will organise events to showcase performing arts.
“We will also continue to use and showcase local products and work together with local producers with their interesting stories, thus marketing Malawi as a fascinating country with great potential that deserves more attention,” Stilting said.
