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Mickey Mouse in Mandarin

A cheeky, speaking vegetable is just weeks away from bounding on to Chinese cinema screens. When The Magic Gourd opens at the end of this month, the Chinese-language film will mark a departure for Walt Disney and a step-change in its charm offensive in emerging markets.

Michael Moore, the guardian angel

It's not easy being a nemesis. Particularly if your opponent is Michael Moore. Jim Kenefick has spent years trying to expose the documentary maker's "deceptions and half-truths" through his website, Moorewatch.com, under the mantra: "Watching Michael Moore's every move."

'Those who want to succeed, will'

Despite a dearth of locally made feature films in the past year, the South African film industry is being buoyed by comparatively low production costs that attract foreign films and commercials. And the glitter-dust from Tsotsi's Oscar win last year and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha's Golden Bear for best film at the 2005 Berlinale casts a hip glow on the film industry.

Creating a factory of content

A few years ago if you had seen Leon Schuster's Mr Bones you would have watched one of the highest grossing and, dare it be said, best films South Africa had to offer. Thankfully the same can't be said of our industry's current output with the advent of films such as Bunny Chow and Tsotsi.

Africa as hell

Globalisation is reducing diversity to a minimum of conservative, standardised products: homogenised, predigested, regurgitated, slickly packaged goods for universal, easy, unthinking consumption. That's happening all over the world. But closer to home, and to our hearts, is the problem that there is less space for African filmmakers to be seen or heard.

Double impact

Film tourism might be an ambiguous term, but it refers to the idea that every time a specific location or destination is used in a film, the film indirectly promotes the destination to its viewers. "This has been evident within the Bollywood film market," says Mark Visser of the Cape Film Commission.

Practical guide to the law

"When I attended film school, it dawned on me and my fellow students that the key to a successful pitch lay in addressing the salient issues of distribution," writes lawyer and film aficionado Charl Groenewald in the introduction to his book The Laws of Movie-Making.

Painful past, present and future?

The forthcoming book, Marginal Lives and Painful Pasts: SA Cinema of Apartheid, edited by Martin Botha, a collaboration between Genugtig! Uitgewers and the University of Cape Town's new African Cinema Unit, is one of the first to explore an overview of local cinema in the new South Africa.

The business of show business

Thirteen years into our fledgling democracy, our film industry has much to celebrate. In terms of awards, available finance, positive government and industry goodwill and incoming service productions, the film industry has been bathing in a particularly positive light. However, things needs to be turned up a notch. We need to examine a tough question -- that of our commerciality -- and start to look at the business side of show business.