The Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE) will hold its Annual Healing and Reconciliation Film Festival, this October to contribute to national healing and reconciliation efforts in Zimbabwe.
Dubbed the Asakhe Film Festival, the theme for this year is “The Power of Memory.”
The film festival will runs from October 25 to 30, 2021, where it intends to highlight the importance of transitional justice using Film and Academic lectures by experts in the area of History and genocidal studies.
CITE Director, Zenzele Ndebele, said more than three decades later, the legacy of genocide that occurred in Matabeleland and Midlands between 1982 and 1985 leaving an estimated 20 000 people dead and many others with physical and physiological injuries, continues to impact victims’ daily lives.
“The Asakhe film festival is part of our three-year project: Confronting the Past: National Healing, Reconciliation and Transitional Justice in Zimbabwe. The project is built on three pillars, namely, national healing and reconciliation, transitional justice and research and documentation of human rights abuses,” he said.
Ndebele stated the project focuses on truth-telling as a way of finding closure for victims and also promoting reconciliation within communities.
“Truth-telling helps in community healing and preventing the recurrence of past abuses. It also helps identify the necessary reforms that can prevent such violations from happening again. CITE also uses alternative media platforms to promote dialogue on transitional justice in Zimbabwe, focusing on the historical injustices that occurred in Matabeleland and Midlands in the 1980s,” said the director.
This year’s activities include film screenings, Online Public lectures, and workshops with Journalists on transitional justice.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of this year’s activities will be online.
On the 25th and 29th of October, CITE will launch Documentaries titled “One night in 1983”, a documentary that tells the story of 11 Men from Silobela who disappeared in Jan 1983.
The second documentary, titled “Children of the Genocide,” focuses on people whose parents were killed during the Genocide.
