Julie Frederikse

Julie Frederikse "has produced all of Vuleka’s award-winning film and TV productions, most recently a film and television mini-series for SABC 2, Land of Thirst, an historical romantic drama set in South Africa’s Karoo in 1913, which won international distribution in a deal signed at MIPCOM, Cannes, 2007. She was producer of The Sky in Her Eyes, which won Best African Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics Choice Week (2003), as well as awards in Milan and Montreal, and was selected for screening at Sundance, Tampere, Clermont-Ferrand, Banff, Toronto and many other international film festivals, televised in Europe, North America and Australia, and screened at the United Nations General Assembly Session on Children. She and Ncayiyana have co-written the screenplay of My Secret Sky, which she is producing with Dv8 Films in 2008. The feature film was selected for development at the “Producing with the South” seminar by the French 3 Continents Film Festival in Nantes, Paris and Cannes in 2004-05 and by AVEA (Audio Visual Entrepreneurs of Africa) in 2002.

"Frederikse has produced TV series, including an award-winning environmental children’s show, and documentaries for South African broadcasters. She also produces for international clients, e.g. the European Union, United Nations, US National Institutes of Health, Planned Parenthood International and the Ford Foundation. Her international TV co-productions include series for Sesame Workshop, US and Channel Four, UK.

"Frederikse has a background in writing and in radio. She is the author of nine books, including a novel, The Diary Without a Key (Heinemann Books, 1994) that won the South African Children’s Book of the Year award, while other books of hers have been nominated for the M-Net Prize, the CNA Literary Award and the Sunday Times Alan Paton Book Award. Primary source material used in research for her books on the anti-apartheid struggle is housed as “The Julie Frederikse Collection” at the Robben Island Mayibuye Archives in Cape Town and at the South African History Archive at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She worked as a journalist covering southern Africa for the US Public Broadcasting System’s National Public Radio, BBC Africa, CBC and Radio Nederland; hosted radio talk shows on SA-fm and Capital Radio; and studied filmmaking at MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) in the US under Ricky Leacock, Jean Rouche and Ed Pincus."

She has written a number of books including None But Ourselves: Masses vs. Media in the Making of Zimbabwe (Johannesburg: Raven Press, 1982) and South Africa: A Different Kind of War: From Soweto to Pretoria (Gweru: Mambo, 1986). She lives in South Africa where she is a director of Vuleka Productions, an award-winning production company specializing in media around social issues, and media for and about children. This interview was conducted during the conference A Decade of Freedom: Celebrating the Role of the International Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa's Freedom Struggle held in Durban, South Africa, October 10-13, 2004. (Source: Vuleka Productions website)

Related Sourcewatch

 * Robert M. Price