Nerina Penzhorn, Waited For

Nerina Penzhorn grew up in South Africa and lives in New York. After graduating from the University of Cape Town, Nerina traveled to California and was lucky to land a job at Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. It is here that the filmmaking bug bit. She started out in post-production in LA and then moved to New York where she makes a living as a video editor, producer and teacher. In New York Nerina also started working on her own projects. Her first short documentary Saint Jude screened at festivals in the US and Mexico. She was delighted to come back to South Africa to make her first feature documentary Waited For and is very happy to be screening it to a South African audience at Out In Africa.

Margaret Laurena Kemp, Children of God

Afro-Caribbean actor and writer Margaret Laurena Kemp is a Dramalogue and Ovation Award winning artist who has performed on stage and in film throughout the United States, Greece, Ireland, and France. Her role as Lena in the film Children of God has been hailed by audiences and critics as one of the year’s best performances by a leading actress. The film has won more than 15 top prizes, including Best Film at the NEWFEST (New York), Lesgaicinemad (Italy) and T&T (Trinidad and Tobago) Film Festivals.

Her television appearances include recurring roles on The Orlando Jones Show and guest appearances on ABC’s In Justice and Commander in Chief. She originated the role of ‘Thyme’ in Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of Splash Hatch on the E’ Going Down and of ‘The Devil’s Daughter’ in Arena Stage’s Tom Walker. Also a writer, her solo play Creative Instructions…from mycrummylife, ran to sold out audiences in three separate productions in Los Angeles. Margaret’s newest work, A Negro Speaks of Rivers, will be presented in the Out of Box Festival (September 2 & 3) and at the Magnet Theatre (October 3-9). Margaret is in Cape Town as an Artist in Residence with MotherTongue Project and Visting Lecturer at the University of Cape Town.

Matthew Brown, Glitterboys and Ganglands

Matthew Brown’s first film, Clowns, won South Africa’s Avanti Awards for Best Film and Best Script, the Visual Spectrum Award at the South African Society of Cinematographers and was purchased by Canal+ and M-Net.

In 2008 Brown produced the Bollywood movie, 8 x 10 Tasveer for The Percept Picture Company and directed Zapiro’s Z-News, the political satire puppet show that caused a huge stir.

For the past few years Brown has been working in the film animation industry and among his credits are 52 episodes of Florries Dragons for the Disney Channel where he led a team of 120 people across two continents. He line-produced episodes of Mr Bebe, an animated satire for Xilam in France, and the new 26 episode season of Caillou for Cookie Jar Entertainment. Caillou is the number one preschool show in Germany, Spain and Canada, with revenue of $40million. He directed 60 half hour episodes of the critically acclaimed URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika and produced all 104 episodes.

In 2009 Brown was named one of South Africa’s 300 most important young people by The Mail & Guardian.

Glitterboys & Ganglands, directed by Lauren Beukes, is his first documentary.