WINDHOEK– Films collections of the Namibian Movie Collection (NMC), which was launched in November 2009, now consists of 60 Namibian films as new films are being produced in the country constantly adding to the collection.
For the purpose of promotion, filmmakers agreed to grant non-commercial rights of their films to be part of the collection, and the Franco-Namibian Cultural Centre (FNCC) granted space in its Multimedia Library for public access. For a broader dissemination and exposure of Namibian film works, a catalogue of the NMC is published and promoted on the website of AfricAvenir, which are introducing Namibian films and filmmakers to an international audience. Currently the collection has been reproduced and handed over to two public libraries (EPIZ and AfricAvenir) in Berlin, Germany, the Ministry of Youth, National Service, Sports and Culture, the Katutura Community and Arts Centre, the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies, the library of the Basler Afrika Bibliographies, and has been partly screened on a community TV channel, Cape Town TV in South Africa in the beginning of 2012.
Since the collection was introduced to the Namibian public and a global audience, several requests have been made, including some festivals (Sweden, South Africa, and Zambia, libraries e.g. Department of Cinema, Universidade Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and distributors and TV channels (SABC, South Africa, MNet South Africa, trigon, Switzerland), to purchase a copy of the collection in order to learn more about Namibian films, and eventually include these films in their distribution channels and festivals.
In 2011 the Delegation of the European Union to Namibia screened several films from the NMC throughout Namibia in a Mobile Cinema project. This endeavour will be repeated towards the end of this year. During a Home Furniture and Living Exhibition called “Eden” at the FNCC, the films from the NMC where played throughout the exhibition. A month ago, the Namibia Film Commission (NFC) screened parts of the NMC at the Windhoek Agricultural Show to the public and also at the ninth African Film Festival Cordoba in Spain. AfricAvenir presented the NMC under the theme “Alternative Distribution” to the attending film festival audience at an expert workshop. Furthermore Flamingo, Air Namibia’s monthly inflight magazine, over a period of more than a year, featured one film from the NMC each month in its magazine.
It is currently planned to have a public bi-monthly Namibian film series at the Basler Afrika Bibliographies in Switzerland as from March 2014. The films will consist mostly of content from the NMC. The catalogue of the movies can be seen online here: http://www.africavenir.org/projects-namibia.html.