WGSA Online Session: The Adoption/Rejection, Impact and Regulation of Artificial Intelligence – Part 3
January 25 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
R75
The Adoption/Rejection, Impact and Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Within Cultural and Creative Industries in South Africa – Part 3
By popular demand, join Zunaid Mansoor and Guests, as we continue our robust, hard-hitting, prismatic conversation and interviews tackling AI’s impact on screenwriting, filmmaking, content creation, academic scholarship, public funding for the arts, and on our democracy and leadership.
One Job Lost Is Too Much!
Copying or Sampling Text Without Permission, Acknowledgement and Fair Compensation is Theft!
AI Generated Text presented as the Fruits of Human Labour is Fraud!
No, to Manufactured Consent!
No, to Structural and Systemic Coercion!
Yes, to Human-Centrality!
Session Details:
Date: Saturday, 25 January 2025
Time: 10:00 – 12:00 SAST
Location: Online (The Zoom link will be distributed via email by 12pm on 24 January 2025. Please add communications@writersguildsa.org to your contact list)
Meet your speaker:
Zunaid Mansoor is a professional script editor, story development consultant, screenwriting lecturer/researcher, and creativity coach serving live-action, animation, documentary, video game, literary fiction and creative writing. He also serves as an independent film fund advisor and script editor with the NFVF, KZN Tourism and Film Authority, and the Durban Film Office.
The U.S. and South African governments named him the Amy Biehl Awardee as the top Fulbright Scholar in 2007 – his field of study was Screenwriting. After completing an MFA at Oscar-winning film school, Chapman University’s Dodge College, he worked at CBS’ The Bold and The Beautiful, and for Oscar-nominated producer, Alexandra Rose.
As Senior Lecturer and National Head of Screenwriting at AFDA Johannesburg for 12 years, Zunaid served some 10 000 students of film and screenwriting. Known for his servant leadership, devotion to community service, his nurturing of authentic voices for the page and screen, and his results-driven, in-demand consultation, his alumni and clients have been nominated and decorated several times for the Student Oscar, the SAFTA, WGSA Muse Award, the NEFTI Prize, the 48-Hour Film Project, the KykNet Silwerskerm and awards in all continents. Several of them were selected as Berlinale Talents, Durban Talents, MultiChoice Talent Factory participants, and have films/series/doccies/content on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Showmax, SABC, DSTV channels, YouTube and TikTok. They are commissioning editors and managers with MultiChoice, and have been listed as part of the Mail & Guardian Top 200 Youth.
He serves as a jury member for SAFTA, the WGSA Muse Awards, the Simon Sabela Film & TV Awards, and for the UFVA Screenwriting Competition for U.S. film schools. He was appointed to the Oscars selection committee for South Africa with the NFVF. An award-winning public speaker, Zunaid has guest lectured at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, the Durban University of Technology, UKZN, the University of Southern California, and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He was honoured in 2024 when he was selected to co-facilitate the isiPhethu Screenwriting Programme during the Durban International Film Festival alongside the legendary, Mr. Edmund Mhlongo.
In 2009, his South African-based feature film screenplay was selected to be pitched to the president of Creative Artists Agency, Richard Lovett, in Los Angeles – the world’s largest and most prestigious talent agency. At just 16 and 18, Zunaid was the youngest accredited journalist in the world at both the World AIDS Conference in 2000, and the World Conference Against Racism in KwaZulu-Natal, in 2001. He is also a proud alumnus of UKZN where earned law and social sciences degrees cum laude, passing his attorney’s admission exam in 2006
NB: Registration is essential. WGSA members attend for FREE. Non-members pay ZAR 75.00