As part of M-Net’s New Directions programme, which enables young and emerging film-makers the opportunity to write or direct a short film,the organisation earlier this year announced plans to finance two feature films, using talent that had been involved in the “competition” before.
The first of the movies, Sexy Girls, written and directed by Russell Thompson, has just been completed and reliable sources say it has turned out well. The second picture was to be Struck by Lightning, an urban parable about a rich northern suburbs socialite and her friendship with a Zimbabwean immigrant. Written by Patrick Lee, it was to be directed by Martine de la Harpe, but M-Net producers Richard Green and Michael Chze decided to pull the plug on the project during pre-production.
At the time author Mututuzeli Matshoba had been fleshing out his script for Chicken Bizness, one of the short films from the 1995 series of New Directions, into a feature film. “I had always conceptualised it as a long piece,” he says. “working within the constraint of the half-hour format I thought the whole story hadn’t been told.” He showed the script to Green who, with Chze, decided to go with it as the replacement feature film.
Although Chze says the long version is a great script, the producer’s decision has drawn wide criticism. Khalo Matebane, director of the original short, is furious that he only heard on the grapevine that a full-length rendition was happening when he ran into a casting director quite by accident.
He rails against M-Net’s lack of respect and continuing autocracy. “Unfortunately M- Net, like most institutions, continues to disregard black people. They think they are acting honourably because they’re choosing another black person to direct it.”
Ironically, Matebane’s version, the rambunctious tale of a street hawker and his infidelities, won first prize in the short film category at the Fespaco festival earlier this year, an honour widely punted by M-Net’s PR people.
Young film-maker Nchavene Wa Luruli will be directing the feature, and although he hasn’t been involved in the new Directions projects until now, Matshoba is very happy with their working relationship, while admitting to having some disagreements with Matebane during production on the short.
Other film-makers said they weren’t surprised by M-Net’s decision. “they make up their own rules as they go along. I believe the budgets for these films come from the marketing department, so there you go.”
another source complained that M-Net sets
up the New Directions strand like a competition when in fact they are behaving like a major studio, “cut the bullshit about competing, if they want to behave like a studio and make a movie and identify the talent they have absolutely every right to do so. Anyway really no-one else is financing movies in this country.” In defence Ch(ze remarks that “It’s not really a competition. The competition idea has been totally blown out of proportion.” In the end the results will be judged by viewers alone, and the trials and tribulations and bitchiness of the process will be left for the proof of the pudding – do the movies work?