In the first round of the Wild Cinema Short Film Competition on the theme of “18 years in Windhoek” the international jury con-sidered a total of 23 sub-mitted scripts and script ideas. The Jurors decided to award funding of N$ 50.000 each to three of the submitted scripts: Joel Haikali and Sophie Mukenge for their working title production “Diffe-rences”; Tim Huebschle and Jana Brückner for “Rider without a Horse” and Perivi John Katjavivi with “The Shop”.
The jury was, however, of the opinion that the sub-mitted scripts are in need of polishing up in order to turn them into fully fledged shooting scripts. To this end it was decided to invite renowned Cape Town based script writer and director Hoymeyr Scholtz to facili-tate a script development seminar from July 21 till July 27 at the American Cultural Centre in Wind-hoek.
Jurors on both side of the Atlantic, Berlin-based Jana Cisar and Alexander Martens as well as Namibia’s Paul van Schalk-wyk and Wild Cinema Director Irmgard Schrei-ber, were pleased with the record number of submis-sions received, but felt that local film makers would stand to gain invaluable knowledge and experience from the script workshop by Hofmey Scholtz. All entrants were invited to participate on the first day of the workshop, when script writing will be dealt with on a general level. The remaining six days of the workshop, Hofmey Scholtz worked one-on-one with the 3 winning scripts writers in individual 2 day sessions. 
The three funded pro-ductions must be ready for the second round of judging by September 20, but independent film makers, whose scripts are not fund-ed, are free to also submit their finished productions for judging in the final round. The winning film maker will be invited on an all-expenses paid trip to the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in February 2009, to take part in the Berlinale Talent Campus, the most reputed get-together of young, talented film makers from around the world.
The Wild Cinema Short Film Competition was made possible with the generous support of the cultural exchange NGO, ‘p.art.ners berlin-wind-hoek’ and their sponsors: Stiftung Deutsche Kla-ssenlotterie Berlin, Kala-hari Sands Hotel, Air Namibia and Roof of Africa. The American Cultural Centre has generously made their conference facilities avail-able for the workshop. Well-known local artist, Imke Rust, one of the two founding members of ‘p.art.ners’, has extended her best wishes to the wining entrants on behalf of ‘p.art.ners berlin – windhoek’.
Hofmeyr Scholtz
Hofmeyr Scholtz has been a noteworthy industry player for the past 20 years in both the technical as well as the creative depart-ments. He has written and directed short films since the early ‘90’s and has been nominated for the Vita Arts Awards. Since 2002 he has concentrated on writing feature film scripts, set locally, and servicing foreign commer-cials shot in Cape Town. One script, “Four Cor-ners”, an original story commissioned by Giant Films in Cape Town has been part of the Official Selection for the presti-gious Berlinale Co-produc-tion Market in 2008. Other feature scripts include “Fokofpoliesieman” currently in pre-production development with Big-WorldCinema, as well as “KarooBoy”  for Anant Singh’s Videovision, and “Unfeeling”, for London-based Portobello Pictures. Further, he has twice been invited to participate at the Scrawl Writer’s Labor-atory, founded by Lisa Key, where, together with other local novelists, playwrights and script writers, over the course of ten days, scripts are developed in the company of peers and foreign specialists in the field, i.e. directors, producers and script writers flown in from the UK and Los Angeles.