Film about Plastic City to be released

Benoni’s filmmaker and environmental awareness documentarian Yakima Waner will release her lasted feature film, The Harvest on International Soil Day, December 5 at the Bioscope in Johannesburg.

The feature film celebrates the children and women of Plastic City informal settlement in Brakpan.

The 30-year-old said the feature film will explore the lives of the people who call the informal settlement home and aim to share their stories and the benefit they are providing for the planet through recycling.

Yakima previously told the City Times that the film will introduce the audience to an amazing day care facility in the informal settlement, called Blessings Eco Preparatory School formally known as Teletubbies Day Care Centre and Pre-School, which was founded after a little girl named Blessing drank poison while being left under the supervision of a friend while her mother was picking in the landfill.

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“Jessie Nkosi from Tsakane, who was visiting a friend at Plastic City became Blessing’s saviour,” said Yakima.

“Jessie and her sister Hlengiwe later founded the day care centre, which became a place of safety for the children as many didn’t attend school due to their immigration status.”

The Morehill resident said The Harvest project will uplift the school, creating a sustainable food garden, creating a community group which will help the women empower themselves and set the example of how recycling should be done in a cleaner and safer way, as well as create new ways to build homes with trash.

“The moment I entered the informal settlement and heard about the day care centre, I knew this was a story which needed to be celebrated and shared,” she said.

“The Harvest Project partnered with the day care centre and it was renamed from Teletubbies Day Care Centre and Pre-School to Blessings Eco Preparatory School.”

Despite several challenges, Shoprite chose the school as one of their Act For Change schools.

Yakima said this was a dream come true. Shoprite sponsored them with ECD training through the Early Development Foundation, meals through the Lunchbox Fund, a fruit and vegetable garden through Fruit and Trees for Africa, and a new structure, a container school constructed by the Bright Kid Foundation.

“The school is an institution which celebrates the lost lives of children who were denied an education and executed due to their identity; it also involves nature, conservation and sustainability in all learning fields,” she said.

The launch of Blessings Eco Preparatory School was held on May 30 in celebration of International Children’s Day.

Waner’s last documentary, To Wake Buddhi, has been screened at two national and 24 international film festivals.

The film won two awards – best short documentary at the Echo Television Brics awards in Moscow last year, and the best short eco documentary at the Smaragdni Eco Film Festival (SEFF) in Croatia.

Waner graduated with a BA in Dramatic Arts at the University of Witwatersrand in 2014 and she is the editor of Intent Conscious Media.