Director
Anli Serfontein
(c)2016 - Gogga Productions
Anli Serfontein is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where she majored in Drama and Film and Comparative Literature. She started her documentary film career with IKON Television in The Netherlands in 1983. Her first documentary on the socio-critical American filmmaker Leo Hurwitz, won the Filmfonds Televisie prize at the Nederlands Filmfees in Utrecht in 1984.
She returned to South Africa in 1986, working for ARD, ZDF, BBC, NBC and other international television stations as a TV producer and documentary filmmaker. During this time she also worked on many of her father’s films, most notably:
- Breaking The Fetters I & II (1987 & 1993) about Afrikaners meeting the then banned ANC in exile.
- I Shall Never Lose Hope (1985) - a portrait of Winnie Mandela then banished to Brandfort.
- Portraits of the dissident artist and poet Breyten Breytenbach and the theologians Beyers Naudé and Frank Chikane.
As a field producer for BBC current affairs and documentary programmes, the documentary “Hitler's Bunker: The Last Survivor Speaks”, researched and produced by her, was one of the six nominees for the Best BBC Documentary in 2006.
In June 2010 her second manuscript Traitor's Daughter was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing (Non-Fiction) in Johannesburg. She is the author of From Rock to Kraut (2008)published in a second edition for German-speaking countries as Basteln, Wandern and Putzen.
Links
Interview in Afrikaans on COZA
Interview Maandblad Zuid Afrika