WGSA Online Session: Scripting for Documentaries with Peter Goldsmid
October 9 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
R75
Scripting for Documentaries with Peter Goldsmid
A session on documentary storytelling with Peter Goldsmid, an award-winning writer and director. On 9 October 2024, he will explore the strengths and limitations of fiction story structure for emotionally engaging documentary narrative. Creatively dealing with reality offers challenges, unexpected joys and pitfalls; Peter will offer suggestions and examples of how to make the best of all three.
Session details
Date: 9 October 2024
Time: 18h00 – 19h00 SAST
Location: Online (The Zoom link will be distributed via email by 12pm on 9 October 2024. Please add pdpassistant@writersguildsa.org to your contact list)
Registration closes on 8 October 2024 at 18h00 SAST
WGSA members attend for free. Non-members pay R75
Meet your Speaker
Peter Goldsmid began his career as a film editor and film critic, reviewing for The Star and other print media, before transitioning into writing. He was inspired to adapt Athol Fugard’s magical play, The Road to Mecca, into a feature film—a project he had longed to direct for years. Ultimately, he accomplished both, and the film won Vita Awards for Best Script and Best Production.
Since then, Peter has continued writing, primarily to create opportunities for himself as a director and independent producer. His work includes four seasons of the documentary-based legal drama series Justice for All for SABC 2. His experience with documentaries also led to the creation of the SABC 2 mini-series Riemvasmaak, set during the forced removals under apartheid, which won the 2008 SAFTAs for Writing, Direction, and Producing.
Peter’s documentaries have been shown at film festivals such as Cannes, the United Nations Association Film Festival, and Encounters. His 2010 documentary Difficult Love, made with lesbian visual activist Zanele Muholi, was broadcast by SABC and on Dutch and Swedish television, as well as nearly a hundred film festivals worldwide. More recently, Our Land, focusing on land rights activists from the Alliance for Rural Democracy, was the Runner-up for the 2023 Encounters Youth Experience Award.
A major catalyst for Peter’s growth as a writer was his six years teaching screen, television, and documentary writing at AFDA, Cape Town, culminating in an MFA (cum laude) in 2020. He has since led documentary courses for both the NFVF and SAE. Currently, Peter is writing, directing, and producing a True Crime series on femicides for SABC 3, David Klatzow – Looking into Darkness.