By Frederick Philander WINDHOEK DECEMBER is the target date for the screening of the Namibia Red Cross Society’s local children’s television series, Desert Soul, it was confirmed by the director of the organization, Razia Kavaria this week. Local independent film company, Home Brewed Productions, had been contracted at the end of 2005 for the production of a children’s TV series for its health and development multimedia project. Said Kavaria: “This TV series targets primarily children aged 8-12 years, and deals with issues such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, children’s rights, safe environments and xenophobia, to mention but a few. However, at this point in time, the pre-production of the TV series is in the final stages of script-writing, and should be ready for production very soon. Some delays have been experienced due to technical hiccups around script-writing, but the Home Brewed Team is back on track now.” According to Kavaria, Home Brewed Productions has also entered a regional competition whereby the company had been short-listed as one of the three best filmmakers in the SADC region. “A brief has been supplied outlining location and topic – a drama set in a clinic dealing with HIV/AIDS. The teams have submitted CV’s, one-page synopsis, with four main characters in four scenes and no more than four minutes long. Homebrewed Productions is one of the teams from the SADC region which was selected to attend a five-day workshop in Johannesburg early in September,” she said. On completion of this workshop, the best four scripts will be selected and the ‘winners’ will have the opportunity to attend a number of creative workshops with the end result of producing a pilot in 2007 next year. The Namibian team consists of Vickson Hangula, screen writer, and Leo Phiri, producer. The training that Home Brewed Productions will attend is to be facilitated by Blue Sky, Soul City, Curious Pictures and Consulting Dynamics.