SA Film Wins TV Academy Honours

Los Angeles, California - 5th May 2011

When Cape Town's documentary director, Clifford Bestall was asked to meet the producer of Invictus, a year ago, he was offered a collaboration with actor Morgan Freeman's company to make a film that was to steal some of Clint Eastwood's film's thunder. 

Tonight, The 16th Man,  the film he produced and directed, will be honoured by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. It's a special Emmy Award which exemplifies "television with a conscience" and will be celebrated in a star-studded ceremony at the Beverley Hills Hotel. But the director and producer of the film will not be there.  He says, "I don't do this sort of thing with the comfort and élan that's required, and, to be honest,  they forgot to invite me."

The evening will be hosted by actress Dana Delany, star of the new ABC series Body of Proof, and will celebrate the power of television to change attitudes and lives — and specifically, the eight programs that have had significant impact on the viewing audience.

The programs selected this year explore such vital issues as sexual abuse and assault, racism, mental health and trauma, teen pregnancy, autism, living with a life-threatening disease and good nutrition in the fight against childhood obesity. 

The 16th Man is a documentary that tells the emotional story of the end of apartheid in South Africa, the start of Nelson Mandela’s new government with its goal of racial unity, and what the South African rugby team’s victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup meant to the country’s healing process. With narration by Morgan Freeman, the program educates viewers on how Mandela used the sport of rugby to make a deeply divided, distressed nation whole again, and how the 1995 Rugby World Cup win became another turning point in South Africa’s history. 

Produced by ESPN Films in Association with Revelations Entertainment, the film won Cape Town's 2010 Encounters Film Festival's Audience Appreciation award and was given glowing reviews by the New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter.

Bestall's films have in the past, won two of the UK's premiere documentary awards, and the Best Factual Moment on British Television among many others.

“We continue to be impressed each year by the amount of programming that not only entertains the audience, but uses the medium of television to showcase and expand understanding about important social issues,” said Emmy CEO, John Shaffner. “The programs selected exemplify the idea of television with a conscience.”

Added Television Academy Honors committee co-chair Lynn Roth, “The programs selected this year are from all different networks and cover a wide array of topical subject matter. When members of the television community embrace the responsibility of telling socially impactful stories as these honorees have, it is our pleasure — and mission — to provide them with the recognition they deserve.”

Television Academy Honors held its inaugural ceremony in 2008.