AVIJOZI is open to the public — free registration below
Johannesburg gathers this weekend at Summer Place, Hyde Park for AVIJOZI, the city’s open-to-the-public festival for animation, VFX, gaming and film production, where screens glow, panels spark, and makers meet their audiences.
Inside that bustle, the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) kicks off a new France–South Africa exchange on AI for animation, VFX, digital arts and gaming, beginning with the AI Masterclass: Demystifying AI for Animation & VFX, which places practice and principle on the same stage.
Front and centre is Dr Sechaba Maape, PhD, PrArch (Wits), founder of Afreetekture, a cultural consultancy with over a decade of pivoting the discipline of architecture toward being more culturally attuned for an emerging African community seeking more culturally relevant products and services—now embedding these lessons in digital transformation, energy efficiency, sustainability and creative practice.
He asks how AI can show African people and places as real—never stereotyped. “I’ve always been drawn to fantasy—games and film—imagining alternative paradigms. That’s why I chose Wits because it felt progressive about ideas, and diversity.”
That imagination underpins firm guardrails: traceable consent and authorship, and datasets that don’t flatten culture. “AI should help us build with culture, not on top of it,” Maape adds. In the workshop, he frames this work as cultural intelligence—context-aware creative practice across art, design and architecture.
Balancing the ethics is the engineering. Nicolas Erba, Head of Digital Innovation at Digital District (Paris), co-leads training on ComfyUI, the open-source, node-based interface many studios now use to design and control AI image and animation flows.
“You can see every step, swap components, and export clear, reproducible pipelines that work alongside the traditional pipeline—perfect for prototyping and provide artists with advanced visual references to help to guide their work,” says Erba.
Why attend — benefits for African creatives
· Production wins now: practical ComfyUI workflows for small teams and local constraints.
· Ethics toolkit: “real, not stereotyped” representation; consent/attribution checklists; cultural intelligence approaches for context-aware creative decision-making.
· French–SA bridge: exposure to Digital District (Paris) and IFAS—collaboration paths and upcoming festivals.
· Career momentum: language & frameworks to brief clients, pitch funders and defend ethical choices.
· Community: connect with peers and partners (IFAS × Chocolate Tribe).
For IFAS, AVIJOZI is the right place to start. “AVIJOZI is where the sector meets the public,” notes Sofia Saa, IFAS Regional Head of New Media, Film & Television. “Launching the France–South Africa exchange here keeps things practical and ethical—creators learning new workflows while asking better questions about representation.”
The hands-on workshop Demystifying AI for Animation & VFX—co-led by Maape and Erba—remains a closed professional training (selection via prior open call), but its themes ripple through the public festival: responsible use of AI, respectful integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and pragmatic ways to speed previz, concept passes, clean-ups and effects without losing authorship or accountability.
Around it, AVIJOZI offers screenings, conversations and networking that celebrate African ingenuity—with partners including IFAS and Chocolate Tribe.
AVIJOZI 2025 — Open to the public (free): 13–14 September, Summer Place, Hyde Park, Johannesburg.
Get your free ticket here: https://avijozi.zohobackstage.com/AVIJOZI
Note: The Demystifying AI workshop is not open to the public. Following AVIJOZI, the France–South Africa exchange continues at Fak’ugesi (digital arts, October) and concludes with a gaming focus in December.
This project is supported by the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) in partnership with Chocolate Tribe. Funding is supported by the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Institut français as part of the strategy for the export of Cultural and Creative Industries internationally.
