Spier Films is a motion picture production company with offices in London, Los Angeles, Cape Town and Reykjavik. We develop, produce and sell films and series unrestricted by form, genre or Platform.   We create and support films which have both critical and commercial success and often work with highly respected international producers in both a servicing and co-production capacity while remaining dedicated to fostering South African talent.

The Goree Island off Senegal has a history of the enslavement and oppression of Africans but it was also the site of the meeting of the African National Congress (ANC) and South Africa’s business community in 1987, which hastened the end of Apartheid. During a workshop for Arts and Culture activists in Africa in 2005, the poet and ANC activist/exile Breyten Breytenbach, reflected on the ‘rosary of islands around Africa’ – Zanzibar, Goree and Robben Island. He imagined that creative people, especially storytellers in the audio-visual world, could “benefit from the creative winds that blow off the African continent on to these islands”, but at the same time “would not be bogged down by the politics and bureaucracy of the continent”, figuratively speaking of course. From the powerful inspiration of this workshop, we began to explore ways in which we could not only “re-imagine” Africa, through motion picture storytelling, but where we could also imagine a different future for audio-visual entrepreneurs, transformed by the inspiration of these islands to create an African powerhouse of storytelling to meet the growing demand for quality African stories. Africa Imagining is an incubator aimed at mentoring film and TV producers who, after a three-year incubation period in joint-venture production companies, will have the experience and expertise to develop their own live action films or TV series that are produced for the international market, in partnership with international creatives.