Mayapur Oscars

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LOCAL DOCUMENTARY WINS HARE KRISHNA OSCAR

 

My Hare Krishna Family, a 48-minute documentary directed and produced by

local film-makers Frank Opperman and Denise Slabbert won three awards at the

first Hare Krishna Film Festival in Mayapur, India on Saturday night.

This film was first aired on SABC2 during August 2005 and has subsequently

been rebroadcast during February 2006 as well as appearing on SABC Africa.

 

The film tells the story of Frank and his relationship with his younger

sister Yvonne - a Hare Krishna devotee. The documentary follows the story of

Yvonne Opperman (aka Ila Devi Dasi), her Ghanaian husband – Shastra Das and

their little son (and Frank’s nephew) Ramananda Raya. The documentary was

shot on two locations. The first location being Frank’s home in Melville,

Johannesburg, when his family comes to visit from Ghana. The other location

is a rural village, outside Accra – when Frank visits his Hare Krishna

family in West Africa.

 

Opperman says, ‘It’s a real honour to have won the awards, not only for best

film but for best soundtrack and script as well. A highlight of this

production is the soundtrack which consists of a number of songs from a band

of street children from Kenya called Little Gokul, and it’s great that they

have been recognised as well’

 

Producer Denise Slabbert says that expanding the audience across our borders

is a real bonus. ‘I think its incredible that My Hare Krishna Family has

received recognition as far away as Mayapur, one of the holiest places in

India. To get accolades from the international Krishna community for a

documentary with a totally independent voice is praise indeed.’ she says.

 

Yvonne Opperman and Shastra Das recently left Ghana and are now living in

Mayapur (some 150km’s from Calcutta) - they were on hand to collect the

awards on Saturday evening. ‘It was really nerve-wracking’ says Yvonne

Opperman, ‘There were over 4000 devotees and I was really nervous.’ She says

that the South African devotees attending the awards were very pleased at

the outcome of a local film winning the Hare Krishna ‘Oscars’.

 

My Hare Krishna Family was produced by Darling Lama Productions in

conjunction with Mafisa Media.

 

The Production Team

/Narrator – Frank Opperman

Producer – Denise Slabbert of Photography - Piet Snyman

Editor: Tiny Laubscher.

 

Produced By Darling Lama Productions/Mafisa Media

Email: denisels (AT) mweb (DOT) co.za

 

 

Source: http://www.filmmaker.co.za