Gums and noses on a high

'Gums and Noses', a feature film that romps through the tough world of advertising, has won the Best Feature Film award at the local Apollo Film Festival.

"Making the movie was a great experience, and a tremendous amount of work went into producing it in a very short time. This award is shared by all the people who worked tirelessly in front of and behind the camera to translate 'Gums and Noses' from stage to screen — successfully!" producer Robbie Thorpe said.

The fourth annual all South African film festival showcased 12 feature films and 22 documentaries. Graig Freimond, the writer and director of Gums and Noses, said: "It's a fantastic sort of vote of confidence in the film. It's a very small film made on a very small budget. It's competing against films with much bigger budgets so it just means a lot."

The film beat out stiff competition from five other movies, among them Darrel Roodt's 'Yesterday' and Ntshavheni Wa Luruli's 'Wooden Camera'.

Rehad Desai's 'Born into Struggle' won the best documentary award.

The Apollo Film Festival, now in its fourth year, is a community-based initiative aiming at promoting and encouraging local films. The vision behind the Apollo Festival is to provide a platform for films and documentaries from South Africa and other African countries in a drive to boost the local film industry.

This year's adjudicators included Letebele Masemola-Jones, Martin Botha, Darryl Accone and Helen Kuun.

Gums & Noses will be rebroadcast on Saturday 31 October at 11pm and Wednesday 10 November at 2:20am on M-Net as part of the channel's Original Movies initiative.

Source: iafrica.com