The film industry has accused the Department of Trade and Industry of reneging on a pledge of R250-million to promote South African film.
In a recent letter, the Independent Producers Organisation (IPO) wrote to acting Director General of Trade and Industry Tsidiso Matona complaining that a motion-picture rebate scheme “launched with much fanfare” last year has not materialised.
Filmmakers belonging to the IPO and the state-funded National Film and Video Foundation have decided to register their protest by boycotting a department consultation scheduled for this Friday.
On the department’s website in January, filmmakers were promised a rebate of 15% for foreign productions or 25% for local productions in terms of the department’s large-budget film and television production rebate scheme.
An independent movie producer, who asked to remain anonymous, said the department “made a huge noise in telling the world that South Africa was open for business. A year later it is an administrative nightmare. One is pushed from pillar to post, and no one is able to function.”
The producer said that in the first round of rebate applications, from August to September last year, 15 applications were submitted. It took the department up to six months to inform the seven successful applicants that they were eligible for rebate certificates, but no money has materialised.
The producer complained that the two department sections set up to design and administer the scheme — trade investment and the enterprise organisation — are “like hands on two different bodies”.
The IPO letter to Matona says the department’s reputation is on the line.
“The international industry has become sceptical that the Department of Trade and Industry can deliver on its promises,” it says, adding that certain international film productions preparing to shoot in South Africa “have decided to go to other countries due to the uncertainty around the rebate scheme”.
Mustapha Adams, who works with the cultural industries directorate of the department, said there is a consultative meeting scheduled for Friday June 3 that will include all 11 sectors that the government has identified as having growth potential.
He was not aware of any boycott of the meeting being staged by the National Film and Video Foundation or the IPO.
Adams said he was aware that a letter had been addressed by the IPO to Matona.
Tumelo Chipfupa, chief director of department’s enterprise organisation responsible for the reimbursement of filmmakers under the film-incentive scheme, claimed he had no knowledge of the matter.
National Film and Video Foundation CEO Kalipha Eddie Mbalo said the department “had made decisions above the head of the industry. But we have written to the director general requesting that we sit down and deal with broader issues that affect us.”