African Couch Potato: The Mash-up Gino Shelile

When you are watching stuff on the screen, big or small, there is one thing that tells you where you should be emotionally; tells you whether you should be sad, or happy, or terrrified. That is the score, the music that takes you on the emotional journey that you are watching.

Today Gino finds out more about what goes into scoring music for television and film as he chats to  Modiakgotla Keatile Shole, better known as Modia.
Modia, who holds a  National Diploma in Electrical Engineering, began his music career producing ringtone's for his friends

Twenty years later his music is heard on productions wherever you turn, including,  1802: Love Defies Time
The Last Fight
 The Ground Beneath Her Feet
 Summertide
and Lavish
 
Check out Modia's insights into the world of film and tv scoring.
Let us know what you think, what movie or series you would like to see featured, or just to tell us how brilliant it all is:
instagram.com/africancouchpotato
twitter.com/africancouchpot
justginosa@gmail.com

Produced by Ted Loukes and A10 Consulting
ted@aten.co.za

Music by The_Mountain from Pixabay

© SANTE MEDIA 2023

We recently received a VIP invite to a preview screening of local movie Just Now Jeffrey. On the back of that, Gino now has the chance to chat to Brett Morris, co-director and co-writer of this coming of age South African comedy.

Brett has had a long career as a creative in the advertising world, ranked in the top 5 by his peers. He is a published fiction, non-fiction and feature film script writer and shares his insights about cinema and just what it took to bring Just Now Jeffrey to the screen.

Without wishing to give anything away, Just Now Jeffrey is set in South Africa, 1989 - against the backdrop of the final months of Apartheid and features a well known local ensemble cast. While the world was radically changing around him, teenager Jeffrey Greenbaum hardly noticed. He just needed to get laid. Jeffrey convinces his best pal Brad Berman, to help devise a strategy to lose their virginity before they finish high school. But things don't go as planned and Jeffrey and Brad soon become entangled in a crazy web of love, lust, videotape piracy, rugby violence, political protest and pornography. This unique and edgy coming of age story will no doubt touch your heart ... and your funny bone. 

On in local cinemas, give it a whirl.
Let us know what you think, what movie or series you would like to see featured, or just to tell us how brilliant it all is:
instagram.com/africancouchpotato
twitter.com/africancouchpot
justginosa@gmail.com

Produced by Ted Loukes and A10 Consulting
ted@aten.co.za

Music by The_Mountain from Pixabay

© SANTE MEDIA 2023

On Spring Day, 1 September 2023 SABC TV Licences launched the Win A Holiday Experience competition campaign in an effort to encourage South African customers to pay (or renew) their TV Licences.
For their efforts, customers would be rewarded with weekly prizes such as smart TVs, Bluetooth speakers, wireless headphones and laptops. This was done by a random selection automated by a dedicated microsite that was set up to monitor the competition entries.
In order to qualify for the prizes, the customers needed to pay their TV Licence between 1 September 2023 and 15 December 2023. A random winner would be selected each week from the valid entries.
To sweeten the deal, the overall winner for the competition would get to choose an international experience: either the Coachella music festival in California or a Bundesliga match in Germany.

In this episode  Gino chats to the winner of the grand prize, Thabo Batshe, who has just got back from California. We get to hear his experiences of winning a big competition and what it was like being whisked across the world to the U.S. Thabo is a Communication Assistant at one of the big banks and had never been overseas before. 


Let us know what you think, what movie or series you would like to see featured, or just to tell us how brilliant it all is:
instagram.com/africancouchpotato
twitter.com/africancouchpot
justginosa@gmail.com

Produced by Ted Loukes and A10 Consulting
ted@aten.co.za

Music by The_Mountain from Pixabay

© SANTE MEDIA 2023

Former minister of Arts and Culture, Pallo Jordan, once called today's guest "a
South African writer to look out for".
Palesa Mazamisa is a published playwright, author and producer.

Before entering the world of theatre and film, she worked in the publishing industry and has touched on journalism while remaining a human rights and gender activist.

Palesa spent her childhood in The Netherlands before continuing her education in the US. From there she was "head hunted" back to South Africa. Following her passion for writing she turned to theatre and stories. Her short story ‘Kadra’s Decree’, published in Open: An anthology of writing by South Africa’s best women writers, was widely recognised for its subject matter of Female Genital Mutilation. Her short story ‘A Day In August’ was published in the literary anthology Botsotso 17 in 2016. Her play, the satirical Shoes & Coups: A Paradox of the Absurd won awards and is still used in coursework to this day.
As she says, "the rest is history". 


Let us know what you think, what movie or series you would like to see featured, or just to tell us how brilliant it all is:
instagram.com/africancouchpotato
twitter.com/africancouchpot
justginosa@gmail.com

Produced by Ted Loukes and A10 Consulting
ted@aten.co.za

Music by The_Mountain from Pixabay

© SANTE MEDIA 2023

"This time around Gino hooks up with the producer of Netflix's Inkabi - who also happens to be an old school colleague, in the person of Princess Zinzi Mhlongo; both of them hailing from eMalahleni, Witbank in Mpumalanga.

Her professional theatre directing debut was a production of And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses presented at festivals in the UK.  In 2010 she was selected to be one of 12 theatre producers from across the world to participate in the Theatre Foreman Festival in Germany.

In 2012 she was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Theatre, followed in subsequent years by 6 Naledi Theatre Awards nominations. Her work has taken her to the US among other countries.

In 2016 she directed a new musical, Divas Of Kofifi based on the lives of Dorothy Masuku, Abigail Kubeka, and Thandi Klassen with sold-out shows. In 2017 - 2019 she explored music management working with one of the country's biggest stars, Samthing Soweto.

In 2022 she produced The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu which had an international tour in 2023. 

Princess is also the managing director of African Entertainers, a company that seeks to develop new voices in film and performance art. 
Let us know what you think, what movie or series you would like to see featured, or just to tell us how brilliant it all is:
instagram.com/africancouchpotato
twitter.com/africancouchpot
justginosa@gmail.com

Produced by Ted Loukes and A10 Consulting
ted@aten.co.za

Music by The_Mountain from Pixabay

© SANTE MEDIA 2023

Three lucky kids from Thokoza will soon be winging their way to Portugal to represent South Africa as part of the CinemaTAKE filmmaking project.

This week's episode finds Gino chatting to Emilie Demon and Mpumi Mcata (BLK JKS) from Cinema TAKE, an association born out of the friendship of film lover Emilie Demon and Muriel Huet, a presenter at the BFI (British Film Institute), among many other jobs, along with film director Mpumelelo Mcata. 
The association’s main objective is to bring cinema to the people of inner-city Johannesburg and to experience it differently: not just as a form of art, but also as an educational tool. Cinema TAKE (The Alternative Kinetic Experience) is where people can engage with films that may not otherwise be shown in mainstream cinemas.

"This opportunity that CinemaTAKE has to work on film making and education, with the young people at Of Soul & Joy photography school in the Thokoza township of Johannesburg is beyond a dream come true and in some ways more than what any of us could have imagined. As we teach, we learn and grow, all together."

Created in 1995, Cinema Cent Ans De Jeunesse offers an educational experiment with cinema. Each year participants set up training groups in schools and extracurricular environments where young people get the chance to work with cinema practitioners on a regular basis. The young students then get to show their work at a dedicated film festival in competition. 

"We are so excited to be the first African country to present the final filmic results of what has already been an incredible workshops experience and cinematic process for us, the guest lecturers and the absolutely brilliant kids, at the legendary Cinema Cent Ans De Jeunesse in Lisbon 2024."

Watch this space!
Let us know what you think, what movie or series you would like to see featured, or just to tell us how brilliant it all is:
instagram.com/africancouchpotato
twitter.com/africancouchpot
justginosa@gmail.com

Produced by Ted Loukes and A10 Consulting
ted@aten.co.za

Music by The_Mountain from Pixabay

© SANTE MEDIA 2023