Both the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) — principal providers of scarce funds to the film industry — turned down the Oscar-winning movie Tsotsi several times when approached by its producers, the Mail & Guardian has learned.
However, the producers’ bargaining position has been greatly strengthened by garnering the Academy Award.
The SABC’s head of content enterprises, Mvuzo Mbebe, denied claims that senior management was angry with his team for not acquiring the film at an earlier stage. The quest for production finance for Tsotsi would have started a few years ago, before the establishment of his division, he said.
He revealed that negotiations between Tsotsi’s producers and the SABC on the film’s acquisition began last year, but were not yet concluded. He expressed confidence that the talks would yield a ”win-win situation for the producers, the SABC and the South African public”.
Karen Son, chief financial officer of the NFVF, whose department handles funding applications, said the foundation might have asked Tsotsi’s producers to resubmit their application, but this was mainly because clarity was needed on whether they had the appropriate rights for the cinematic adaptation of Athol Fugard’s novel.
Son emphasised that in the end, the fund had financed the film to the tune of R1-million. Without this money, it might not have been made.
South African co-producer Paul Raleigh’s United Kingdom counterpart, film producer, Peter Fudakowski, recalled that a ”huge amount of effort” was required to convince the NFVF to provide funding.
Although its contribution formed a relatively small slice of the film’s R30-million budget, it enabled producers to unlock money from other sources.
It took Fudakowski and Raleigh nine months to put the finance together — which the American producers who previously held the rights had failed to do in almost 20 years.
Raleigh said he bore no grudges against the SABC. ”Being turned down is something that we’re very used to. All Oscar-nominated films probably have the same story to tell. The people that turned us down know who they are and how they feel about it. We’ve also never brought up the fact that the NFVF turned us down and are very pleased that they changed their minds.”
Fudakowski and Raleigh attribute their success to a large dose of serendipity that gave them ”the right script, the right project and the right financiers at the right time”.
Hard work on the filmmaking fundamentals also played a major role. There were 15 drafts of the script before production and 14 cuts of the film, which were screened before test audiences in various markets before the final cut was selected. Box office receipts in the UK and the United States are approaching $1-million.
The NFVF is now basking in Tsotsi’s critical acclaim. CEO Eddie Mbalo took on the role of ”convener of the reception committee,” which arranged the countrywide welcome for the cast and director on their return from Los Angeles.
At a lavish Oscar celebration party hosted by the SABC, CEO Dali Mpofu announced plans to create a dedicated film unit at the corporation, to be funded to the tune of R45-million in its first year.
Mbebe said his division was still formulating policy. By the end of May it expected to give the industry further details of the type of films it was looking for and how to secure funding.
The picture is not quite as rosy at the NFVF, which issued a statement earlier this month effectively confirming that tensions between it and the Department of Arts and Culture over funding cuts remain unresolved.
The foundation again called for the intervention of Parliament’s arts and culture committee, which agreed to help mediate the conflict in November last year, but has yet to do so.