Andrew Worsdale sampled some of the products and ideas on offer at the Second Film and TV Market, held in Cape Town
If a tidal wave had hit Cape Town’s Long Street last week, most of the South African movie industry would have been wiped out. More than 1 500 local producers, directors, professional schmoozers and wannabes descended on the Second Film and TV Market, and even if there were complaints that not enough buyers or major overseas players were there, most of the participants seemed satisfied.
This year’s do was more focused than the event last year and one felt that this time the organisers were on top of the inevitable chaos. It was still obligatorily hectic, with bits of events from the co- production seminars, pitching sessions, workshops and loads of screenings. There were also the endless launch cocktail parties, making everyone feel slightly liverish by the end of the week.
Compared to last year’s market, this year’s event promised more than just foreplay. Finally in the local movie and TV industry there was a sense of penetration.
With the Film and Video Foundation Bill approved by a parliamentary portfolio committee and the signing of a co- production deal with Canada, film-makers are feeling that the much-anticipated blossoming of local movies is about to happen.
The co-production treaty was signed by Minister of Culture Lionel Mtshali and Canadian high commissioner Arthur Perron at a ceremony at the National Gallery. South African-themed films that involve a certain amount of Canadian expertise will be regarded as local content and will be eligible for Canadian tax incentives and/or grants. The same applies to Canadian productions that use South Africans.
This is South Africa’s first such agreement but discussions are under way with France, Australia and Britain. Perron, an affable guy whose favourite film is Warren Beatty’s Reds, told me: “A movie industry is going to be vibrant only if there’s confidence; if it takes its place in the economic life of a country. In Canada it’s a $2-billion a year industry and has created lots of jobs. Our government wants to allow it to expand even more. We’re in a low-budget league as well, so it’s better for us to work together if we’re going to have any hope of competing with Hollywood.”
The inspiration for the agreement came from film-makers themselves, with the productions of Sinbad and Molo Fish leading the way for co-operation between the two countries.
At a co-production seminar held earlier in the week Simon Perry of British Screen cautioned against the polyglot mess that can come from co-productions, noting that Eurimages, a funding body that makes films across the European community, hasn’t really produced a good film. rather it has invented a new genre -“europudding”.
But the mere fact that people of Perry’s calibre and Pierre Ressient of Ciby 2000 (producer of The Piano) were attending, emphasised the new confidence in the local industry. That was also reflected by M- Net’s presence – it premired three new South African features: Russell Thompson’s gangland thriller Sexy Girls, Bernard Joffe’s intense love story Letting Go and the low-budget drama, The Ghost at the Window, by 26-year-old newcomer Robert Benjamin.
Shot on video in just 10 days, Benjamin’s film was financed through his personal savings and deferred deals with facility houses. He approached M-Net with the finished product and it was snapped up.
As part of its increasing commitment to local feature production, M-Net’s film commissioning arm Magic Works announced it would be part-financing the movie Poison, based on the award-winning stage play by David Kramer and Taliep Peterson.
Melanie Chait, head of co-production at the corporation was refreshingly candid. “Too often the SABC has gone for pedestrian programming. There’s a need for us to expand our identity and the scope of all the channels.”
Addressing Neville Sing, director of film at the department of culture, she said the Department of Trade and Industry should provide export incentives for the film industry. But Sing was cautious about government funding. “The word subsidy has a dubious history in South Africa,” he said. “The up-coming foundation will offer grants up to 25% of a film’s budget and up to another 25% in the form of a loan. producers will have to find money from other parties. We cannot survive unless there is a relationship between the public and the private sector. If you’re just waiting for the government to pour money into films, you’re wrong.”
Adhering to the department’s aims, the market had a strong training component. The British Film School, a three-day programme held before the market started, was a great success. It involved workshops on the process of film-making – from development to marketing.
Another training initiative, called Shooting for the Millennium, a British/South African student co-production that arose from the success of last year’s film students’ laboratory, was also launched this year. Co-sponsored by Leeds Metropolitan University, the British Council, The Department of Arts and Culture, the SABC, the Movie Camera Company and Videovision, the project hopes to shoot a 15-minute film in the next year and plans to create a feature film from the shorts over the next five years. Team leader and project director Denise Mockler York, a Durban- born United Kingdom-based film- maker said: “We’re not here to promote a hybrid; we’re here for collaboration.”
The SABC also showcased its training programmes, with former education director Carolyn Carew previewing 10 short films made by emerging film-makers from the Western Cape. All the projects were shot on Robben Island, which served as a movie studio for short narratives about anything from Hindu spiritualism to domestic violence.
Another important initiative launched at the market was Scrawl – the south African Screenwriters Laboratory – to be held next year. It is an intensive script development workshop using tutors from the United Kingdom and Africa.
For all the young aspirant film-makers at this year’s market and the support the event gave them, the three most inspiring people I encountered were in their 60s. Pierre Rissient, of Ciby 2000, who said the South African productions he’d seen were “interesting, but there’s a weak point with your acting,. It’s all too emphatic … there’s a lack of confidence.”
Perry Henzel, director of reggae classic The Harder They Come, who claimed to have smoked our country’s finest weed, said: “so far, so good.”
and David Hannay, Australian-born producer of Oliver Schmitz’s cult pic Mapantsula, said, in his usual amusing yet pragmatic way: “I think anyone working in film should expect no support for their movie, in any way whatsoever.”
With government and the industry in a serious state of foreplay, Hannay’s advice is seemingly being discarded in favour of a pro-active industry that can create art and make business at the same time. And the market has done a lot of good work in getting a cinematic notion of practicality and fervour on to the table.
For information about Scrawl, please call Gillian Jones on (011) 442 6379.
Sing, who admitted to having to say the same thing at so many different places, said: ” We almost need a Marshall plan to get a new structure for our film industry. We’ve got into consultation fatigue so training has become a specific and tangible thing in order to build our industry. Our instruction from cabinet is that training is the thing. we’re ready, in our meagre capacity, to provide the finance and the infrastructure but it’s now to see if there’s any talent out there, and if so they must provide it.”