UCT graduates showcase documentaries

New vision: Dylan Valley is one of the UCT graduates showcasing their films at the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival.

A reel of films produced by UCT graduates are being screened at the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival this year.

These include Nikki Comninos ' Do Girls Want It?, Tebogo Ngoma's BEEing Me, Lost Prophets by Dylan Valley and Sean Drummond and Black Sunday, co-directed by Karabo Lediga.

With Do Girls Want It?, Comninos assesses the current value of virginity among South African women, and how factors like social pressure and HIV/AIDS infection rates impact on their views.

In BEEing Me, Ngoma embarks on a mission to find out if black women can make sense of, and reconcile, their everyday experiences with the aspirations that are portrayed in the media, focusing the camera on three young black women.

Black Sunday, co-directed by Lediga with Tamsin Anderson, explores the counter cultural institution of young artists gathering together in open spaces in Soweto on Sundays.

South Africa's first hip-hop group, Prophets of da City, were no-holds-barred political spokesmen who generated a large fan base in the late 1980s before being banned in South Africa and forced to relocate overseas. In Lost Prophets, Valley and Drummond look back at the trajectory that catapulted a tight, clean crew to stardom, only to let them fall into relative and separate obscurity.

Encounters runs in Johannesburg from 13-22 July and in Cape Town from 20 July to 5 August. For further details, visit the festival website.