Sylvia Vollenhoven

Guest: Sylvia Vollenhoven

A writer, award-winning journalist, playwright and filmmaker. In 2019 appointed the University of Johannesburg’s first ever Professor of Practice. Commissioned by the Volksoperahuis of Amsterdam to write Krotoa Eva van de Kaap, a play that premiered in the Netherlands to standing ovations before touring South Africa. Her seminal dance drama about Khoisan identity, The Keeper of the Kumm (based on the novel of the same name), opened on the main programme at the National Arts Festival (NAF). A play she co-authored, My Word, Redesigning Buckingham Palace, was chosen for a run on London’s West End and for the main programme at the NAF. The Festival also selected another of her plays, Cold Case – Revisiting Dulcie September. The latter won both the inaugural Adelaide Tambo Award for Human Rights in the Arts as well as a Standard Bank Audience Award.

    • SA Producer for the BBC mini-series Mandela the Living Legend.
    • Chair of the 2018 & 2019 Alan Paton Literary Award Juries.
    • Guest Lecturer at the University of the Free State, the University of Cape Town’s Centre for African Studies and Stellenbosch University’s Journalism Department.
    • Member of the International Emmy Awards 2018 Jury.
    • Selection Panel Jury: SA National Film & Video Foundation (NFVF) & SA Film & TV Awards (SAFTAs)
    • A Knight Fellow who led a journalism project to improve coverage of poverty and development issues in Ghana for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
    • Founder of VIA – Vision in Africa, a media organisation, that has spearheaded innovative international training initiatives and creative productions.

Films

Jozi Gold Co-director

The World Premiere of JOZI GOLD is a story of wealth, greed and poisonous mountains. Johannesburg has produced a third of all the gold in the world. Now the gold is running out, the mines are falling apart and toxic waste turns water into poison. Former Jehovah’s Witness Mariette Liefferink is on a mission to force the mine bosses to clean up. The film is by Fredrik Gertten and Sylvia Vollenhoven based on an original story by Adam Welz.

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