Aliki Saragas
"I am a Documentary Film Maker and Director. I own my own production company called Elafos Productions. The ethos of my production company is to be a film company that champions women’s stories.” Aliki also does freelance work for other production companies but mainly doing documentary work. She also works for the South African Woman In Film and Television Organization (SWIFT) at the moment, heading up the impact and advocacy subcommittee.
Aliki’s academic career includes a BA and Honours in dramatic arts from Wits University and a two-year master’s in documentary film from UCT. “The first year of the course was course work and working on a short documentary. The second year of my master’s was a feature film and dissertation, both research and creative.” Aliki decided to do a short documentary on the women in Marikana called ‘Mama Marikana’ which was 60 minutes long.” The film looked at the experience and perception of the woman surrounding the massacre.” 5 months of the year was spent of filming the documentary in the North West and then editing the film, then followed by the research which was associated with the film.” My research thesis looked at trauma and memory and a structural analysis of my documentary film and looking at how within filmmaking one can create a collective memory’’.
Aliki is now busy working on a feature link to the film ‘’Mama Marikana’ which will be released later this year. The documentary film is called ’Strike A rock’, for more information on the up and coming South African documentary film directed by Aliki, you can check the website: http://strikearock.co.za/, Facebook and Twitter accounts @strikearock.
Aliki’s immediate response to the question how did what you learnt at UCT help you to get where you are now? was “what didn’t I learn from UCT, it was just so valuable”. Her supervisor at UCT is the producer of her new documentary film coming out, which she explains shows just how much the support received at the university is valued. “The support I received whilst doing my MA in Documentary Arts at the university was incredible, all the lectures are so passionate and always went out of their way to go above and beyond for the students. I learnt so much and met so many amazing people, the friends I made from the course are still to date some of my best friends. I would highly recommend postgrad studies within UCT’s Film and Media Centre department. ”