Perivi Katjavivi

Perivi John Katjavivi is a Namibian-Britishfilmmaker. He has made several critically acclaimed films including Eembwiti, The Unseen, and Film Festival Film. Apart from direction, he is also a producer, writer, camera operator, actor, cinematographer and editor. Perivi holds a BA in Cinema from Columbia College, Hollywood in Los Angeles, and an MA in African Cinema from UCT.

Personal life
Katjavivi was born in Oxford, England, and has five siblings. His father Peter Katjavivi is a Namibian politician and diplomat, the speaker of the National Assembly of Namibia, his mother is Briton Jane Katjavivi.

Katjavivi grew up in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. He studied film at Columbia College in Los Angeles where he obtained a BA. He holds an MA in African Cinema from the University of Cape Town. He is currently a PhD candidate in Visual History at the University of the Western Cape. Perivi previously served as Chairman of the Filmmakers Association of Namibia. Aside, he has written extensively for the Windhoek Observer, Africa is a Country and Okay Africa on issues such as culture, identity, race, and genocide. He has presented papers and guest lectured at the University of Westminster,  Nottingham Trent University, and SOAS focusing on film and race in African cinema.

Perivi is an accomplished filmmaker, with his latest work, Under the Hanging Tree premiering at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and becoming Namibia’s first-ever submission to the Academy Awards in the Best International Feature category 2024.

Career
In 2016, Katjavivi made his maiden feature film The Unseen. The film was screened at several film festivals including Busan, in competition at Durban. The film won the award for Best Film at Innsbruck in Austria as well. In 2019, he produced the short Film Festival Film and was co-directed with Mpumelelo Mcata. The film has its World Premiere at the 69th Berlinale in February 2019. His first feature film The Unseen had its world premiere at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2016. It went on to play at several international film festivals including Busan in South Korea and in competition at Durban. The film recently won Best Film at the Innsbruck International film festival in Austria. City Press called it “an entirely new kind of cinema, inventing for itself a new language, refusing to be trapped in the past or shaped by white or Western film models the way many South African films still are.”

Apart from cinema, he has also written extensively for the Windhoek Observer, Africa is a Country, and OkayAfrica. Katjavivi also contends that aside of being any kind of genre film, ‘Under the Hanging Tree’ offers a unique and arguably unseen window into a contemporary Namibia still grappling with its colonial ghosts.