Fraternal is a 60-minute documentary film that explores the relationships between twin siblings and their parents – the hellos and goodbyes, arrivals and departures, beginnings and endings and rituals that bind family together. Super 8mm home films capture their exiled life in the 1980's which is set against the pixelated video images of the 1990's on their return to South Africa. Spanning over three decades the film is an intimate portrait of fraternal twins as they grow from being seen as inseparable to their individuation as adults. Told using audio recordings and news broadcasts, the filmmaker captures how the rite of passage to adulthood is a fragile negotiation of memories, nostalgia and desire for the past in order to enable the future.
Runtime:
00:59:20
Information for the Audience:
Directors: Nikki Comninos
Producers: Jyoti Mistry
Director: Nikki Comninos
Nikki Comninos has been working in the South African film and television industry for over ten years working on programming for private companies, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), and local channels eTV and MNET including several programmes that have been broadcast internationally. She has over 50 screen titles to her name as director, editor, or editor-director. In 2011 she was awarded Best Documentary Editor at the South African Film and Television Awards. And in 2013 she was awarded the South African Editors Guild (S.A.G.E.) acronym for distinguished editors.
She also has a strong academic background in media, earning BA and Honours degrees in Film and Television from the University of Cape Town (UCT), and a MA in Television from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). She is recently completed her Ph.D. in Creative Arts at WITS University focusing on home video and memory. Her supervisor was academic and filmmaker Jyoti Mistry.
Her key, and most cherished, experience lies in the directing and editing of documentaries. She was selected to attend the Sithengi Talent Campus in Cape Town, 2004 and was flown to Germany to attend the prototype Berlin Talent Campus, 2006. In 2006 she was selected as one of six directors for the Encounters Documentary Filmmaking Lab to produce 48 minute documentary for SABC, for this she directed and edited a documentary on virginity testing and young women’s attitudes to their sexuality, Do Girls Want It? which was screened on SABC-1 and at South Africa’s documentary film festival, Encounters, as well as Elles Tournent in Brussels. Five of the films she has worked on as either director, editor or director-editor were in the Official Selection at the Durban International Film Festival, a fictional short she edited was part of the official selection of the Berlin Film Festival and two documentary shorts she edited. Increasingly, she has also become involved in the growing industry of reality TV and has been the editor for three seasons of BBC entertainment's Come Dine with Me.
She sits on the board of executives for the South African Editors Guild as treasurer.
Fraternal is a 60-minute documentary film that explores the relationships between twin siblings and their parents – the hellos and goodbyes, arrivals and departures, beginnings and endings and rituals that bind family together. Super 8mm home films capture their exiled life in the 1980's which is set against the pixelated video images of the 1990's on their return to South Africa. Spanning over three decades the film is an intimate portrait of fraternal twins as they grow from being seen as inseparable to their individuation as adults. Told using audio recordings and news broadcasts, the filmmaker captures how the rite of passage to adulthood is a fragile negotiation of memories, nostalgia and desire for the past in order to enable the future.
Directors: Nikki Comninos
Producers: Jyoti Mistry
Director: Nikki Comninos
Nikki Comninos has been working in the South African film and television industry for over ten years working on programming for private companies, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), and local channels eTV and MNET including several programmes that have been broadcast internationally. She has over 50 screen titles to her name as director, editor, or editor-director. In 2011 she was awarded Best Documentary Editor at the South African Film and Television Awards. And in 2013 she was awarded the South African Editors Guild (S.A.G.E.) acronym for distinguished editors.
She also has a strong academic background in media, earning BA and Honours degrees in Film and Television from the University of Cape Town (UCT), and a MA in Television from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). She is recently completed her Ph.D. in Creative Arts at WITS University focusing on home video and memory. Her supervisor was academic and filmmaker Jyoti Mistry.
Her key, and most cherished, experience lies in the directing and editing of documentaries. She was selected to attend the Sithengi Talent Campus in Cape Town, 2004 and was flown to Germany to attend the prototype Berlin Talent Campus, 2006. In 2006 she was selected as one of six directors for the Encounters Documentary Filmmaking Lab to produce 48 minute documentary for SABC, for this she directed and edited a documentary on virginity testing and young women’s attitudes to their sexuality, Do Girls Want It? which was screened on SABC-1 and at South Africa’s documentary film festival, Encounters, as well as Elles Tournent in Brussels. Five of the films she has worked on as either director, editor or director-editor were in the Official Selection at the Durban International Film Festival, a fictional short she edited was part of the official selection of the Berlin Film Festival and two documentary shorts she edited. Increasingly, she has also become involved in the growing industry of reality TV and has been the editor for three seasons of BBC entertainment's Come Dine with Me.
She sits on the board of executives for the South African Editors Guild as treasurer.
Categories:
14th Cambridge Africa Film Festival
Cambridge, UK
October 17, 2015
European Premier
student project: No
completion date: 2015-02-15
shooting format: various (home video)
aspect ratio: 16:9
film color: Color
first-time filmmaker: No
Country:
Language: