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Johannesburg – The South African Film and Television Awards (Saftas) is moving from Johannesburg to Sun City as it dumped categories and added some others in order to try and become more inclusive.
At a press conference on Thursday the Safta organisers revealed that the awards show handing out Golden Horn trophies to South African TV shows and films will no longer be taking place in Johannesburg where it’s been held for the past decade, but will be leaving Gauteng and moving to the North West province.
Safta organisers said the move has been done to develop and transform the TV and film industry in other provinces outside of Gauteng.
The awards show will be televised next month from Sun City.
In previous years the Saftas have been marred by bad production values, the inclusion of some bizarre nominees wrongly appearing in certain categories, boycotts by various broadcasters and TV soap productions ranging from public to pay-TV productions and for ongoing non-inclusive issues.
Controversy also continue to swirl around the Saftas for dumping certain TV soaps from the Most Popular TV soap category if they refuse to enter in any other categories although Safta organisers say they want to make the awards show more inclusive.
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) organising the Saftas, dumped categories like Best Sports Show, Best Animation film and Best TV animation, saying South Africa lacks adequate submissions in these TV and film fields.
Categories within news and actuality remain almost non-existent with no recognition of TV news anchors and TV journalists. Best TV Talk show host and Best Micro film have now been added, as well as the New Discretionary Award that the Saftas will hand out to a youth achiever.
The number of entries for Safta categories increased from 416 to 440, judged by 181 judges with John Kani, Jerry Mofokeng and Firdoze Bulbulia as the three judging chairpersons.
The various Safta nominees are likely to be announced on 16 February.
