Things are looking up for the local film industry, writes Andrew Worsdale
At this year’s Sithengi, Cape Town’s film and video market, Zimbabwean producer Joel Phiri said of South African cinema: “There’s a lot of cinema, but there’s not much on the screen.”
Sithengi is, of course, one of the many strong initiatives that have grown over the past few years to support the local film industry, which is now burgeoning.
Last year I said that the local industry was in a continual state of foreplay with no penetration. Well, I truly believe that perforation is imminent. The television industry is maturing remarkably.
Says Howard Thomas of Screen Africa, the leading publication for local film, television and audio-visual industries: “I think the industry has improved and matured enormously. African Media Entertainment [AME], Primedia, Kagiso Trust and New Africa Investment Limited’s [Nail] investment in Urban Brew Television is evidence we now have significant financial power blocks within the industry.”
Jeremy Nathan of Primovies agrees: “1998 has been a year for government and big business to lay the foundations, and I think 1999 will see that we’ve been creating great building blocks for the future.
“It’s apparent that the mindset of the status quo – from distributors to broadcasters – is changing in this more competitive environment; players are starting to realise that we are part of the global economy now and so we have to tell stories that can travel.”
The Financial Mail last year quoted Primedia’s entertainment director Jason Xenopolous as saying: “There will be demand for high- quality local content. Television and cinema are becoming increasingly parochial. The secret is to produce parochial or niche content that can travel. In this way it will be possible to enter into co-production deals with international companies.”
It’s rather depressing to report year after year that this is about to happen; but I believe the television industry is really proving itself. And with the release of feature films like Neal Sundstrom’s Inside Out, and Gavin Hood’s A Reasonable Man in post-production, the locally produced feature film is becoming more exportable.
In fact, in the case of A Reasonable Man, French company Pandora Films (which distributed Oscar-winners Shine, Kolya and Like Water for Chocolate) put up a 70% distribution guarantee. AME and Revolution Pictures helped raise the rest.
Pandora Films’s involvement is evidence of overseas faith in the local industry, especially considering the film has only one international star – Cape Town-born Nigel Hawthorne.
The television and film industry directly employs about 25 000 people and indirectly affects the working lives of more than 100 000 people. The Independent Producer’s Organisation of South Africa estimates the local industry is currently worth R7-billion.
While the film industry is progressing, most work is done in the television field. Meanwhile, the advertising industry is a landmark in achievement and prestige. (Local ad producer Velocity received several major awards at this year’s Cannes Advertising Awards Festival and is ranked the 10th best film and television commercial production house in the world).
The Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology continues to support the local film industry financially, providing a morale booster to film- makers, who in the past relied on fraudulent tax subsidy schemes to finance their films.
In the days of apartheid, cinema fell under the Department of Trade and Industry, while the Department of Foreign Affairs controlled the SABC.
With the new set-up, government and industry players are acknowledging that film and television is a culture and an industry, capable of making a profit, providing employment as well as reflecting the multi-cultural diversities that make up the nation.
To that end, the department doled out its second interim allocation of R10- million in support of local film and television production.
A large proportion of this is to be spent on the development of children’s programmes (R80 000), documentaries (R433 000), television pilots (R280 000), features (R1 325 000), short films (R110 000) and television dramas (R25 000).
For production, the department dished out R230 000 for animation, R2 292 000 for documentaries, R1,3-million for features, R180 000 for television pilots, R1 010 000 for short films, R695 000 for training, and R800 000 for institutions.
For projects like Sithengi and the department’s official visit to the Cannes Film Festival, a total of R1- million was awarded.
And finally, post-production of both features and documentaries received R140 000, which included R60 000 for Ramadan Suleman’s Fools (which won a prize at the Locarno Film Festival).
Themba Wakashe, chief director of the arts and culture department, is upbeat about the local film industry.
“In Cannes this year, for example,” he says, “festival director Gilles Jacob, British Screen’s Simon Perry and film people from Canada and Australia are feeling that there’s a move afoot in the South African film industry.”
Then again, he admits there is just so much public relations the department can do (and, believe me, it’s doing a whole lot).
He says the final evidence will lie in our product, now over-abundantly evident as television.
“If we do not deliver by next year then I firmly believe no one’s going to take us seriously. After all, you can only do so much PR. It’s up to the film- makers to deliver,” says Wakashe.
He adds that apartheid-driven dramas and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission features have their place, but South African movies should “reflect the whole span of social and historical culture”.
This year the department, in conjunction with the Canadian embassy, sent 10 film- makers to the Toronto Film Festival to follow up their projects in the light of the co-production deal signed with Canada last year. At least one project found interested financiers or co-producers.
The long-awaited Film and Video Foundation will be formed in 1999 to assist in financing, production, distribution, education, co- productions, training and development and stimulating exports and audience development.
One of the most important projects the department carried out this year was the Cultural Industries Growth Strategy, a 128-page report on the South African film and television industry. For the first time the industry has been mapped out and a plan has been made for tactics and growth strategies.
The report states that Merrill Lynch estimates the local entertainment industry will increase by 19% to 21% by the year 2000.
The estimate is based on, among other things, the new local content regulations, increased advertising expenditure, a growing commercial industry and more international co- productions.
The other major financial kick in the butt local film-makers can look forward to is the creation of The Film Rand Equity Fund, announced at Sithengi, which will invest between 20% and 50% of production budgets into a broad spread of films.
The fund is backed by the major corporate players including AME, Sasani and the new RevCo.
About 20 features were shot in South Africa this past year, including the five locally themed dramas After the Rain (a racial melodrama), Inside Out (a romantic comedy, currently playing), A Reasonable Man (the story of a muti murder and subsequent trial in KwaZulu- Natal), and the M-Net-produced films, Sexy Girls and Chickin Bizness.
Then there were the foreign pictures: Jackie Chan’s Who Am I? and Hugh Hudson’s I Dreamed of Africa starring Kim Basinger, Vincent Perez and a host of Anglophone local actors.
So far the new year promises, finally, Anant Singh’s production of The Long Walk to Freedom, The Amy Biehl Story, plus in conjunction with AME, RevCo and Bioskope Pictures, a movie called Pure Blood. And that’s just three.
With the new urges in the industry, and if e.tv get its act together next year regarding local content, we can look forward to a bumper cinematic ride of “local is lekker”. I hope.