From Our Soundbooth | February 04, 2016

This week on The Missouri Review Soundbooth Podcast, as part of our podcast series covering The Citizen Jane Film Festival, we had the opportunity to talk to Sara Blecher, the director of Ayanda. The Citizen Jane Film Festival celebrates independent film by independent women and takes place in Columbia, Missouri, every fall. You can find out more information here.

Blecher is a co-founder of CINGA Productions, a South African-based production company that has made numerous award-winning films, documentaries, and series, including Zero Tolerance which was nominated for an international Emmy Award. Blecher’s debut feature Otelo Burning was named one of the top ten African films of the decade by CNN. Blecher’s latest movie, Ayanda, is the coming of age story of a South African woman who fights to keep her father’s auto repair shop open in Johannesburg. Ayanda has been distributed in the United States by Ava Durvaney’s Array and is currently available on Netflix.

In this podcast, Blecher discusses the difficulties of filming a sex scene, the challenges of being a female film director, and how she created her own version of Johannesburg, among other topics.

For information about Ayanda, visit Array’s website. Enjoy the interview!

Don’t forget about our annual spring Audio Contest, with winners in the categories of fiction, prose, audio documentary, and humor each receiving an award of $1,000.