Mayibuye Film Festival on Wabona

Wabona, one of Africa’s premiere video streaming services is happy to announce a ground breaking partnership with Cape Town based Gravel Road Entertainment. On the 13th of April 2014 Gravel Road Entertainment’s Retro Afrika Bioscope launches the Mayibuye Film Festival on SABC 1.  The festival will run for three weeks, airing two never before seen films every Sunday in which Wabona and Cinemo, Wabona’s mobile service, will be released 2 hours after broadcast free for its users on both services.

This will be a first as Gravel Road and Wabona will be releasing film content on three media platforms within hours of each other. This keeps with Wabona’s mantra of being at the cutting edge of African content distribution. South African audiences will not only have the opportunity to watch the Mayibuye Film Festival on broadcast TV but on their computers and mobile devices via Wabona and Cinemo. This allows for a Catch-Up TV-like service in which audiences who missed the premiere of Mayibuye Film Festival can catch it on-demand on Wabona.com and Cinemo respectively.

Gravel Road Entertainment CEO, Ben Cowley notes that “very few people are aware that there were literally hundreds of movies produced for African audiences during the Apartheid era, the majority of these (films) are pure entertainment and range in genres from Comedy to Westerns in local vernacular.” Cowley goes on to say “this was the beginnings of our industry and no-one has paid any homage to this. This is our way of honoring those who contributed to the development of our industry under the most trying of circumstances, where cast and crew were forced to eat, be transported and accommodated separately because of the colour of their skin”.

Wabona CEO, Simbarashe Mabasha is ecstatic saying “Wabona and all the people in our family are focused on giving access to Africa’s rich storytelling history. With the Mayibuye Film Festival, Wabona is using its infrastructure to give unprecedented access to these never before seen films for every South African to enjoy on the SABC or on-demand on Wabona and Cinemo. We are very much honoured and humbled to be a part of this historical step forward in bringing these stories to audiences via multiple platforms”.

Sign up at Wabona.com and/or download Cinemo, which is available on Mxit and Google Play to catch the Mayibuye Film Festival.

About — Wabona is an online video streaming service from South Africa that offers African TV shows, films, documentaries for audiences in Africa and the African Diaspora. It is a division of Cape Town-based media company Afrikan Dust Media Group.

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