A BEREA resident won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 18th Prishtina International Film Festival (PriFest) in Prishtina, Kosovo, which was held from September 8 to 13.

On the closing night of the festival Cheryl Johnson accepted the award from the Mayor of Prishtina, Perparim Rama, in the presence of Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti.

PriFest is the largest and most important annual feature film festival in Kosovo. It was founded in 2008 following Kosovo’s declaration of independence to help rebuild cinema culture after years of war and repression.

Johnson could not believe the honour. “I was extremely surprised and deeply honoured to get this Lifetime Achievement Award,” she said.

She added that her involvement in Kosovo goes back to 1999, when she was embedded in an Italian humanitarian organisation, INTERSOS, that provided humanitarian aid in Albania to the refugees during a humanitarian crisis.

“Together with my camerawoman from Italy, we lived with refugees in a small camp near the Montenegrin border where we made a documentary about the camp and the refugees living there. Dr Imtiaz Sooliman from Gift of the Givers kindly donated the funding for the editing of this documentary. After the ceasefire, we went into post-war Kosovo, again hosted by INTERSOS, where by chance we met a distinguished British director, David Gothard.

“It was sheer fate that we met, as it was a strange and traumatic time. Everything was broken, buildings were bombed, landmines peppered the countryside, KFOR troops kept the peace, and thousands of civilians were missing presumed dead.

“We ended up making a documentary about this project. David’s assistant director was a Kosovar, Fatos Berisha, who is now the director of the film festival in Pristina, PriFest, the festival that I am involved with. We have worked together ever since the day we first met, for over 25 years, on various cultural projects, one being bringing 24 Kosovar actors to South Africa to perform in the Cultural Programme at the 13th World Conference on Aids, which was held in Durban in 2000. We are currently making a documentary about this project, now all filmed and ready for editing,” Johnson narrated.

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This was not Johnson’s first glittering honour. While she was still a student she was awarded a Fuji Award for her work as the Art Director on a period film, MacHeath, that won the Best Film prize starring John Hurt. “It was a brilliant team effort, and our awards were presented at BAFTA in London by the late great actor and humanist Peter Ustinov,” she said.

Her film journey began in the ’80s as a part-time art director, while she was working in the fashion industry. She later went on to study film at the London International Film School in England.
She believes the South African film industry is in a contradictory moment now, creatively strong, but structurally in crisis.

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“In short: world-class crews, locations and stories — Durban and Cape Town remain sought-after — but until the incentive system is unfrozen and re-funded, local production, especially independent and local-language work, is stuck in limbo,” she adds.

Kosovo, on the other hand, she says, “is a small country of two million people that has withstood a war and 10 years of oppression, and has a robust film industry and a well-functioning film commission”.

She concluded that filmmakers (many are women) are producing quality films in the Albanian language that tell their own unique stories for the international market. “South Africa is missing in action.”

Currently Johnson is involved in making documentaries, developing scripts and film projects as a producer, as well as working for PriFest, selecting films for the yearly festival in Kosovo.

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