Post from Lynsey Holbrook
Sorry. It was a toss-up between “Going Ape” and “Going Bananas”. Or possibly “Monkeying Around”, but the London sponsorship team were more excited by pics of Gorillas (apes) than the monkeys (er… monkeys?!), so the “Apes” have it...

Pangea Day maybe an increasingly distant memory, but for the winner of the Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Awards, the live event on May 10th was just the start of his adventure.

Eduardo Cachucho’s short film was judged by the NMFA panel as the overall winner and he received a mobile filmmaking trip of a life time to Rwanda, one of the host countries of a Pangea Day event. His week long itinerary took him from his home in Johannesburg to the Rwandan capital Kigali, before heading into the mountains for two days of tracking Colobus Monkeys and Mountain Gorillas.

Rwanda boasts a burgeoning film industry, and a local crew were on hand to provide Eduardo with invaluable insight when filming the primates in the difficult terrain. Now back in Johannesburg, Eduardo is currently editing his film with the help of the professional post production support included in his prize.

A massive amount of work went into facilitating this amazing trip and it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the team at Momo Johannesburg who ensured everything ran smoothly on the ground, and Shirin Arbee here in London who managed to navigate her way through an unlikely list of challenges including expired passports, school holiday entitlements and hugely protective parents in-law; along with the more likely challenges associated with negotiating with a Tourism Ministry based 4,000 miles away.

Not wanting to sign off without expanding your brains, did you know…

… Colobus Monkeys take their name from the Greek word for “mutilated” because unlike other monkeys, Colobus monkeys do not have thumbs

…The Rwanda Cinema Centre champions Rwandan Filmmakers through the “Hillywood” Film Festival (Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills). The festival now tours the country on an annual basis, attracting nightly audiences of 10,000 to screenings and prompting a spotlight on Rwandan film at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Despite this, construction on Rwanda’s first purpose-built cinema only began in 2007.

… There are roughly 700 mountain gorillas remaining on Earth, half of which live in the forests of the Virunga mountains in central Africa, on the green, volcanic slopes of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In captivity, gorillas have displayed significant intelligence and have even learned simple human sign language.