Jane Thandi Lipman

Jane Lipman returned to South Africa in 1997 after nine years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s top nightly news and current affairs program as a current affairs producer and director. Prior to that, she worked for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, starting in 1986. She worked with young people in London, particularly with young women at risk. Her award winning films on Bosnia and South Africa won Director’s Awards at Monte Carlo’s Golden Nymph News and Current Affairs Awards and the Columbus Ohio Video and TV Awards. She was sent across North America, to Europe and Southern Africa for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Since her return she has directed and produced numerous documentaries for the CBC and SABC and etv locally, and the 48-minute drama documentary THE GREAT ESCAPE for SABC1. The film is currently in development as a feature film, with support from the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa and European partners.

In 1999 Jane produced and directed a one-hour documentary SOL PLAATJE: A MAN OF OUR TIME, which was voted Best Documentary for 2000 by SA City Life and was shown at “Celebrate South Africa” at the National Film Theatre in London in May 2001. Jane was then engaged in programming on AIDS in Southern Africa for an international group of broadcasters and produced and directed MOTHER AND CHILD, a profile of two young HIV positive women, which won an international documentary award at the Banff International TV Festival in Canada and has been translated into 18 languages and shown to hundreds of thousands of mothers across Southern Africa as part of an educational campaign to combat HIV/AIDS.

Recent projects include a flagship video project with UNICEF, the National Prosecuting Authority and the SABC, training 45 young South African women, many of them rape and abuse survivors from diverse cultural and language backgrounds, as well as a documentary series about South African and Canadian youth called CRIME AND PUNISHMENTS, produced with the support of the Canadian International Development Agency and the Toronto District School Board.

Jane and her partner Beata are currently in development on the feature film, while Jane and Neville Josie have also just completed an exciting new series of documentaries for the SABC on safety in schools, focusing on finding a community-based solutions to violence. (10/08)

Courting Justice
A film created by Ruth Cowan, Directed by Jane Thandi Lipman, 2008, 54 min., Color
From tyranny to democracy. Fourteen years after the defeat of apartheid, South Africa’s fledgling democracy is acclaimed for its constitutional promis...