RUTV Documentary Film Festival

Last night I attended the fourth year TV Journ student’s final documentaries and WOW!!! I can’t believe that in three years time I’m going to be producing work that it that amazing, be it in TV or any one of the other forms of media! I am totally in awe at the high standard of their documentaries and the emotions that they elicited in me. There were times when my legs and arms were covered in goose bumps and I could feel the hair standing up on my neck. I also frequently found myself with a lump in my throat and by the second last piece I couldn’t control my emotions any more and was in tears! A five minute long documentary about Rhino poaching in Zimbabwe was what did it. The footage of a one month old Rhino named Nyasha covered in gashes, lying next to a fire with her new care taker, having just lost her mother to the brutality of poachers was too much for me to handle. The text on the big screen then informed us that the baby Rhino died the next morning. These documentaries not only reminded me of the suffering caused by the cruelty of humans, but it also brought human suffering very close to home. I was surprised at the amount of insight the journ students were able to get into the lives of various Grahamstown people. It hits hard when you realize that down the road from where you live are prostitutes who can’t bear to face life anymore, married couples coping with HIV, atrocious backstreet abortion scams and people breaking the conventional and traditionally accepted boundaries of who lives in which area. I found most of the documentaries extremely evocative and I only hope that one day I am not only able to produce such amazing material, but to be able to use that material to make a difference in the lives of others. I hope that as a journalist, I can turn journalistic conventions on its head by not only being a witness and reporter, but to use my talents and skills in a compassionate manner to better our world.