By Frederick Philander WINDHOEK As from this month, the Wild Cinema Windhoek International Film Festival will support the community cinema programme of Nawa Life Trust (NLT) and will thus help to bring quality entertainment and education to Namibia’s regions, it was announced in a press release. Nawa Cinema is an initiative of local NGO, Nawa Life Trust – a partner organization of international public health specialists, Johns Hopkins University Centre for Communication Programmes – and aims to inform Namibians on HIV/AIDS through the medium of films. At the same time, Nawa Cinema will become a partner of the Wild Cinema Film Festival (WCFF) and will bring to Namibian communities in the regions movies otherwise only to be seen at the annual film festival in Windhoek. This will be a first step for the organizers of Namibia’s most popular film showcase to realize the long-standing ambition of bringing cinema to the people in the far-flung corners of the country. Nawa Cinema will feature DVD/Video drama series with HIV/AIDS messages, discussion forums with the community audiences conducted by trained community facilitators and a careful selection of feature films from the Windhoek International Film Festival. The programme will be implemented by local Community Action Forums (CAF), groups of volunteers that have decided to do something about HIV and AIDS in their towns. With the help of these CAFs, Nawa Cinema and Wild Cinema can offer entertaining and educational films to Namibians in the regions. Pilot sites identified for first screenings scheduled for April this year, include Oshakati, Rundu and Rehoboth, while scale-up sites Otjiwarongo, Omaruru, Nyangana, Keetmanshoop and many others are to follow in the ensuing months. Once suitable venues have been identified by the various Community Action Forums, it is aimed to facilitate bi-weekly screenings, rotating the HIV/AIDS drama videos and a number of feature films throughout the country. NLT director, Nahum Gorelick, and deputy director, Salen Engelbrecht, faced with the challenging task of organizing the countrywide outreach programme, have welcomed the support and know-how of the Wild Cinema Film Festival in adding an entertainment component to the HIV content that will be shown to broaden the communities’ knowledge of the spread and prevention in their communities. While Wild Cinema is finally realizing its long-standing ambition of bringing movies to the whole nation, the NLT team envisage that the community cinema will stimulate discussions on HIV prevention, care and support, and encourage the rural population of Namibia to make individual and collective decisions to protect themselves against the disease. Venues and timings of the Community Cinema Programme will be made public at a later stage.