“It’s painful to see how much pain my people are in. It dawned on me that we have not healed, it has been a lingering reality that has been passed on from generation to generation…”
- Girley Charlene Jazama who plays Kezia Kambazembi in Measures of Men

Sunshine Cinema partnered with zero one film to tour Measures of Men around Namibia in March 2023. The film tells the little-known story of the extermination of Nama and Herero tribes between 1904 and 1908 in German South West Africa (now Namibia). The film is an urgent call for the recognition of the genocide by Germany, suitable reparations and most importantly, the return of all human remains.

“It’s difficult when you go and get tested and you discover you are HIV positive. We are too young for that”
- Audience Member

“Regardless of the matters you face each and every day - you are HIV positive/you are HIV negative - never lose hope. Know that you have one life and value it.”
- Audience member

In May 2022 as part of the Bushfire Schools Festival, Sunshine Cinema in collaboration with the Aids Healthcare Foundation, the EU and MTN Bushfire hosted a series of impact screenings of the documentary Liyana in Eswatini (the kingdom of Swaziland). The area is one of the epicentres of the global HIV/Aids epidemic with the world’s highest prevalence rate estimated at 26 per cent. The screenings aimed to spark conversations about sexual health and HIV among the youth. In the film Liyana, a Swazi girl embarks on a dangerous quest to rescue her young twin brothers. This animated African tale is born in the imaginations of five orphaned children in Swaziland who collaborate to tell a story of perseverance drawn from their darkest memories and brightest dreams. Their fictional characters journey is interwoven with poetic and observational documentary scenes to create a genre-defying celebration of collective storytelling.

"Change is very, very difficult, not everybody accepts it. But I do what I do because I know that I am bringing them hope. I know that somewhere, somehow, it will trigger something in that persons mind. And they might not change now, it might take years, but I know I have planted a seed that someday might generate."
– Prisca Kunsida, SBA Mulanje, Malawi In 2020

Participant Media, a leading Hollywood Studio working in the impact space, approached us about touring their latest release, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, produced in Malawi and based on the best-selling memoir of William Kamkwamba,an innovator and activist working to lift his own farming community out of poverty in the face of the climate crisis. The film is an effective tool for inspiring young audience members to embrace education, creativity, and innovation so they can participate in lifting up their own communities. We screened it across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Malawi on the tour reaching hundreds of rural audience members sparking conversations about climate change and resilience.

In 2018 Movies that Matter and Sunshine Cinema brought a series of fresh contemporary films to the Langa community in Cape Town. For many residents of Langa it is rare to get the chance to go to the cinema and they were very excited to see African-pioneered films that focused on relevant issues. Some of the films had not even been commercially released! For many, the post-film conversations were the most important as it allowed them to debate opposing viewpoints.

“I think projects like this are necessary for such communities to see that film is not only entertainment, it can be meaningful, it can bring a message, it can educate, it can inspire people.”
- Langa audience member

This was Sunshine Cinema’s first ever tour and pilot Sunbox Ambassador programme in 2018 and it happened thanks to the The Prince Claus Fund and The Bertha Foundation. Our team traveled around Southern Africa, building a network of youth ambassadors who could use the Sunbox (a solar-powered cinema) to spark change and stimulate conversations about gender rights, the environment and the challenges faced by impoverished communities.

“We are affected, even when we are not infected”
- Gcina Mhlope

Ahead of its worldwide release, Sunshine Cinema toured this documentary around South Africa in 2019, sparking conversations led by frontline HIV activists. This globally relevant film highlights the trajectory of the fight against HIV/Aids from the first Aids conference in Durban in 2001(which changed the course of Aids globally), to the second conference in 2016 (which reflects how far the fight has come), to what still needs to be done to end Aids. It features key issues concerning access to health rights and how the fight against HIV/Aids shifted access to broader medicines, changed the face of public health advocacy and promoted the voices of key populations. The film focuses on peoples power, and the importance of a multi-generational struggle in accessing rights to health.