The current version of django this template project uses is outdated.
django>=1.11.0,<2.0.0; python_version <= '2.7'
django>=2.2.0,<3.0.0; python_version >= '3.6'
Django makes native datetime timezone aware at template/form level, because templates/forms are not used in Django restframework views, Django will not convert the datetimes.
In Django REST Framework, like vanilla Django, you have to set USE_TZ and TIME_ZONE to activate the timezone settings, otherwise no conversion will be done.
However until v3.8.0(released in May, 2018), Django REST Framework only convert timezone during the parsing stage(json -> model) , not in the rendering stage(model -> json). That confused a lot of people.
-- Leonardo.Z