The Durban International Film Festival (Diff), organised by the Centre for Creative Arts (CCA) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal recently announced its award winners. The Best South African Feature Film award went to the time-piece “1960”, directed by AFDA alumnus King Shaft.
The jury said that they chose the film because “1960 is a powerful historical re-imagination that lays bare some of the chasms of trauma in our history and the effect that this has generationally. We come from a legacy of a lot of pain and a lot of secrets. The film offers a sensitive portrait of a powerful woman with full agency and highlights a narrative sensitive to gendered erasure. The film also does a beautiful job of portraying the historical period, offering a crips window to the past.”
Lehlogonolo “King Shaft” Moropane graduated with BA in Motion Medium Picture from AFDA in 2003. He has close to 20 years experience in the film industry working as a director, writer and producer.
In 2004 his short film “Ivory Mask” won the Best South African Short Film award at The Durban International Film Festival, which together with his AFDA graduation film “Small Street” also premiered at the Zanzibar Film Festival later that year.
King Shaft owns the production company Sunrise Entertainment. He has directed and produced numerous feature films, short films, TV dramas and music videos. Some of his work includes directing the SABC 1 dramas such as “Skeem Saam” and “Uzalo”.
He was the creator behind a series of documentaries for SABC 1 titled “Why Are We So Angry”, a diagnosis of the South African people post-apartheid. He has directed two films for ETV, Ekasi stories, “After Tears” and “My Brother’s Keeper”.
King Shaft has also directed music videos for artists such as HHP, Proverb, Flavour and Mafikizolo and runs his own production company Sonrise Entertainment.
