Having earlier completed the online Professional Program in screenwriting at UCLA's School of Theatre, Film and Television (TFT), where she was nominated for UCLA's coveted Nate Wilson Award for Screenwriting for one of her student scripts, Zarina in 2018 also completed the screenwriting bootcamp at the UK's prestigious National Film and Television School (NFTS) .
Preceding that, her 3-minute documentary called 'The Lost Souls of San Francisco' - made during a 4-day learners' bootcamp in San Francisco on documentary film-making - was selected from that bootcamp's entries for uploading to YouTube, where it can be viewed.
Next, her historical docudrama 'Flat 13' - written, directed and narrated by her and edited by cinematographer and editor Steven Cholerton - was showcased at the 2009 Durban International Festival (DIFF) jointly hosted with the Berlinale International Film Festival. - where it was screened twice at The Suncoast NuMetro cinema by public demand, alongside the films of celebrated film-makers.
It was nominated later that same year for Best Director at China’s 10th Sechuan International Film Festival out of 3962 entries from 62 countries. And then screened in SA's Parliament and schools countrywide to showcase the social cohesion between SA's diverse ethnic groupings during the struggle to overthrow apartheid
The documentary has also been distributed internationally by 'Off the Fence', an Amsterdam- based film company, on ETV's behalf
When the US's PBS TV channel sought to screen Flat 13 to US audiences, ETV/eNCA refused to grant PBS permission to do so, not least because this docudrama, to which eNCA owns the rights, was the last interview that President Nelson Mandela was prepared to give on camera, a special favour to Zarina for which she remains grateful to this day.
Having frequented Flat 13 as a 22 year-old law student, President Mandela had famously declared - in his autobiography ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ - that ‘Flat 13 is 'where the first seeds of non-racialism were sown and the concept of a nation came into being'.
'Women of the Sun', an international organisation encouraging women film-makers in Africa, has also screened the film - at the erstwhile Johannesburg's Market Theatre, including to a packed group of youth across SA's racial spectrum, who in the post-screening discussion admitted they'd previously known nothing of the moving story of Flat 13 and of the young freedom activists across race and class that it attracted and united in defiance of apartheid law.
Those fearless 1950's Flat 13 activists were to become leading artists, musicians, writers and politicians in SA, and included, to name just a few more, Walter Sisulu, Nadine Gordimer, Ismail Meer, Ruth First, Sophie de Bruyn, Ahmed Kathrada and Hugh Masekela, icons who would be turning in their graves today at how their legacy has been squandered.
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