Ennead Cineplex

About the editor

Naledi Mokoena keeps the weekly file honest

Naledi has spent eleven years in and around Johannesburg screening rooms, first as a relief projectionist at a Braamfontein repertory house, later as a festival volunteer handling print traffic and guest Q&As. She threads 35mm, runs changeovers, and has sat through enough midnight marathons in Maboneng to know exactly when the coffee runs out.

On this journal she edits the weekly screening notes and writes most of the projection diaries herself. Her beats are booth craft, repertory programming and the unglamorous logistics that decide whether a night works. She also handles the interview transcripts, which means chasing colourists and directors until the quotes are accurate and the credits are right.

Filed from the booth

Weekly entries from Johannesburg screening rooms, sorted by venue and format. Three recent posts below.

35mm Braamfontein Maboneng Rosebank
Film projector reel and threading path inside a dim projection booth

Projection booth craft

What 35mm Actually Sounds Like in a Braamfontein Booth

The booth at a Braamfontein repertory house is a narrow room with a carbon-arc lamp, a platter system older than most of the audience, and a small fan that never quite wins. This diary follows three consecutive weekends of 35mm screenings, from the first threading on Friday afternoon to the last reel change on Sunday night. It covers the audible texture of the format: the low hum that sits under dialogue, the sharp pop when a splice crosses the gate, and the way a slightly warped reel announces itself two minutes before anything looks wrong.

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Cinema lobby at night with queue barriers and warm overhead lighting

Event operations

Midnight Marathon Logistics in Maboneng

A midnight marathon in Maboneng looks romantic on the poster and logistical in the room. This piece walks through the decisions that decide whether the night works: how many doors to open, where to put the ticket check so the queue does not block the pavement, how to stagger the snack bar so the second film does not start with a hundred people still in line. It also looks at the economics honestly, because a marathon runs on concession sales more than on tickets, and a bad coffee decision at 1 a.m. can flatten the last two hours.

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Colour grading suite with monitor, control surface and warm desk lamp

Craft interview

A Colourist on Why South African Shorts Look the Way They Do

This piece is built from two afternoons in a Rosebank grading suite, watching a colourist work through a slate of South African short films. The conversation keeps returning to the same problem: how to grade a story shot in high-veld light without flattening it into a generic look. The colourist talks about skin tones under harsh midday sun, about dust in the air that reads as haze on a wide lens, and about why the teal-orange preset is the first thing to throw away.

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