GCATN5D - GIFF 2025 Community Celebration Event - Knysna

by IngetjieZA

Since receiving my Community Celebration Event, I spent most of the year agonising about what I was going to do. Then GIFF was announced, and as it happened, it overlapped with our move down to Knysna. I had the brilliant idea to host it at our new home in Knysna as my CCE. I was incredibly skeptical about whether anyone would attend, as I had hosted two events in Plettenberg Bay previously with no attendees.

Regrettably, the local BelvidereBelle was unable to attend. However, I did receive a will attend from roadrunred who coincidentally lives one street over. Then I received a note from Andredj that plans were being made... and all of a sudden, my little event was turning out to be a much bigger one. The guest list grew as slowly familiar names trickled in, some new ones, and even a few from Germany.

To make the trip worthwhile, I decided to place some caches coming into Knysna and the surrounds for some FTF fun. What I didn’t realise is that everybody joined up in the hunt to find the caches as ARRTIST. If the logs are to be believed, resulted in many trips down memory lane, laughs, and fantastic camaraderie.

While Orosman, BDuthie13, and I were waiting for the cachers to come to our event, Strandlopers w&e came with a special guest, Vroutjie from Louwtjie&Vroutjie. It was lovely to meet everybody and catch up during the event, and the GIFF reel was fun to watch, especially as we had two submissions from South Africa.

In true fashion, after the GIFF and braai was done team ARRTIST said their goodbyes to go and find more caches, while we spent some time with the Germans, Mikkky, and drache grema, who attended there first braai and tried some boerewors.

Eventually all good things come to an end as we waved the last cachers goodbye. It was a really great experience seeing our community come together in the spirit of caching. Having some laughs and sharing stories. Thank you very much to everyone for making this event memorable and we hope to see you soon at the next one (sooner rather than later.)

Attendees: Andredj, Rockdaisy, RietjiePiet, TEAM SCHUTTE, iPajero, Skattie@1, terunkie, BDuthie13, roadrunred, Strandlopers w&e, Vroutjie from Loutjie&Vroutjie, Mikkky and drache grema hosted by Orosman/Umsizi and IngetjieZA/Afrikasekind

GIFF 2025 - Johannesburg Community Celebration Event

GCATKX7 -  GIFF 2025 - Johannesburg

by Panthera03

The Geocaching International Film Festival was officially launched in 2013, however, not in the format that we know today. The first GIFF was screened outdoors in August, as part of the Geocaching HQ Block Party and again in 2014.  In 2015, it was decided to make the GIFF available to all geocachers around the world to be screened in their own communities as part of an event. Thank goodness for that decision, because GIFF has now become a firm favourite with many geocachers.

I only realised while researching for this article, that it is actually the 10th Anniversary of GIFF as a community screened event.  Another reason to celebrate this great concept of home-made geocaching films!  

Since the first GIFF that we have seen in 2015, the quality of films has improved and the creativity next level. I decided to make use of my Community Celebration event type for this year’s GIFF event, which meant a double souvenir was possible for attendees. I had planned a traditional “bring & braai” and everything was set up for this at a stunning venue in Bryanston. A crystal blue swimming pool and double braai facility on the side – perfect for a summer’s afternoon in Johannesburg.  The weather decided otherwise, and as the days crept closer to the event, the forecast for torrential rain increased.

A few days before the event, I decided to resort to “plan B” and announced that the braai would probably not be possible and that all attendees were to come prepared with their lunch of choice.  

This year’s GIFF had a special guest team attend all the way from Germany (Carrotking), as well as Voelhond and Muishond’s first GIFF!  In true Portuguese style, there could be no risk taken of anyone going hungry, so I put out a spread of chips and dip, fresh bread with butter, jam or cheese, vanilla and chocolate cakes and Christmas mince pies.

The urn was simmering for the tea and coffee on offer and thankfully the rain abated for the afternoon, enough to allow us to enjoy the event without getting soaked from the car to the viewing room. We started off enjoying our food and the spread on offer and when all attendees had arrived and were ready to watch the reel, I made fresh popcorn and handed out the gnome hats to get everyone in the spirit of GIFF.  For the first timers, this GIFF needed to be special. We were excited to view the two South African entries, but as the reel progressed many of us were faced with a dilemma!

So many excellent films with brilliant ideas – how on earth do we vote on our favourite?  Could we give up our one vote for a South African entry? A few of us needed time to mull it over while others cast their votes right there and then.

After one last graze and interesting conversations about all the entries, it was time to go home.  A quick clean up of the premises and as we were reversing out of the driveway, the heavens opened up again.  Perfect timing for a perfect GIFF event! Thank you to everyone that attended from Johannesburg, Pretoria and especially from Germany!

And a big thank you to Khali for the use of her premises and equipment for this event. See you all at the next GIFF!

GCBEEMM - (official) GIFF in Bloem

by Uncle Chem

If you were at the Bombastic Bloem Braai last year, you’d recognise the Saints Club. Noting the lack of will attends, I called upon the local old boys to share in popcorn and caching joy with me.

What I did not anticipate was converting 3 muggles into enthusiastic cachers and we had our first outing on Naval Hill later in the month.

Another bragging mark was that we were the first GIFF held in SA this year.

GIFF 2025 Event Cache

GCBE1GN - GIFF 2025 (Natal)

by NinJa Speechie

What does it take to create a film using cross stitch? A spot of delusion, a lot of madness, and supportive family members and friends making sure you never take a break from stitching the damned trees.

Back in June 2021, I wrote a story about a particularly fun find titled “Eighty Rand and a Rope” with was published the GOSA newsletter. In 2025, this same story inspired one of the films in the Geocaching International Film Festival show reel. Tree-m Work was entirely hand-stitched by NinJa Speechie and MichiEtal, along with a small group of volunteers who did some of the trees and bakkies.

It all started late at night on the 9th of April, when I messaged MichiEtal with an idea. She, like the responsible adult she is, was asleep, but when she woke up and saw my mad ramblings, she agreed that it was a great idea. (Perhaps she isn’t as responsible as I had thought…) This set something completely unexpected in motion.

I sat down with sheets of paper with printed grids, and slowly started sketching out the storyline patterns using a light pad to see previous frames and adjust accordingly. With zero animation experience and no idea whether the sketches would end up looking good in animated form, I figured that the only way to find out was to try.

I went away on holiday a few days later, and along came my stitching kit, light pad, and more gridded paper. In the evenings, I sat sketching out more frames, and stitching the title pages MichiEtal had designed. We were past the point of no return, and every spare moment was dedicated to The One Task. Not that there was ever a clear plan – it was made up as we went along.

After nearly 4 months of stitching in the evenings, at restaurants during quiz nights, on aeroplanes, during lunch breaks, and even in the midst of the chaos of moving house, we finally had 182 stitched trees, 35 stitched cars, 67 stitched bakkies, and all the extra frames for the credits. We were cutting it dangerously close to the submission deadline, but the end was in sight. With how much travel and handling each piece had gone through, they all needed to be washed, dried, and ironed before being photographed. This was when all the problems came to the fore – like slight variations in fabric colours and miniscule differences in the size of the fabric grids that noticeably affected the sizes of the trees, and human error where I had cut the frames slightly too small. There was no time to fix these issues, so we decided to embrace the slightly janky, hand-made, zero-AI aesthetic.

Photography happened thanks to a heavily-McGuyvered stand setup and a relatively ancient cellphone, which was also used to record some of the sounds. I used the audiology booth at work to record the bell (a metal bowl balanced on a water bottle and tapped with a teaspoon), ladder sounds (gentle tapping on an old metal shelf), walking on grass (tapping a polystyrene-filled bean bag), the pencil signing the log, the bison tube being opened and closed, and the vocal interjections with the help of a colleague (which was incredibly hard to do, amongst the fits of laughter). I used my cat, Juniper’s, purr as the sound for the car engine,  recorded the noise of a stationary engine at a local vintage engine display for the bakkie, and shoved my phone into a bush and rustled the leaves to get the sounds of climbing through the tree. And finally, while recording the car doors closing outside, some hadedas flew overhead, so I decided to incorporate them to really emphasise that the film was South African.

The final stretch of compiling the images in a stop motion program and adding the edited sounds at the right moments was done on an ancient laptop that had the speed and efficiency of the South African Department of Home Affairs. MichiEtal stepped to help with some digital editing to fix the outer frame, which had not photographed well, and make some adjustments to try get a little more consistency with the sizing, and after playing around with some royalty-free music (there was no time left to assemble a kazoo orchestra for an original score), we finally had a finished product.

The end result is far from professional, and now that we actually have an idea of how to do it, there are a few things we could have done differently to get a much smoother, more consistent result. But considering our lack of knowledge and our gung-ho approach, the fact that the end result is recognisable as an animated story is nothing short of a miracle and we are so incredibly proud of what we did – even if it made us question our sanity after a while!

After all this effort, it was an absolute honour to be able to host my own GIFF screening event on the East Coast. In keeping with the theme of my own submission, the log book was stitched, allowing the attendees to demonstrate their prowess with a needle and thread (or perhaps as an audition for the 2027 edition?).

It was a small, but lively group, with both new and experienced cachers present. The conversation and popcorn flowed, and the film reel was highly entertaining with fantastic submissions from around the world.

When I attended my first GIFF event in 2016, I never could have imagined that nearly a decade later I would be hosting my own. I absolutely would never have imagined that I'd be hosting one to show people my very own creation! It's been a wild ride, but I honestly couldn't have done it if the Geocaching community hadn't helped me to enjoy this hobby as much as I do - so all I need to say is THANKS FOR THE COMMUNITY!

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