In a circular to its stakeholders, the organisation’s executive officers, Dorothy Brislin and Tsikani Mthembu, wrote: “Unless a rescue injection of funds occurs within the next few days, the board’s decision to liquidate FRU will proceed.”
By Tuesday, the pair had already made a desperate plea to Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan for urgent intervention to prevent liquidation, as well as applying to the National Heritage Council and others for financial assistance.
Now it appears that the organisation’s creditors will be left in the lurch. This will have an immediate effect on veteran film director Ross Devenish’s film Nothing but the Truth, starring John Kani.
Jazz Spirit, the production company currently completing the movie, is owed R300Â 000 by the FRU, the balance from funds paid to the organisation by United States-based donor agencies intended for the production.
The FRU holds the distribution rights to more than 800 films. Producers now have little possibility of generating returns on their work.
The demise of the organisation means, too, that there will no longer be a distribution agent for independently produced films in South Africa.
The demise of the FRU will also end its successful audience development programme in townships and rural areas, and in five countries of the region.
More than R5-million in grants project money that cannot be used to pay off debts — will have to be returned to funders. The future of the FRU archive, a considerable national heritage, now also hangs in the balance.
Brislin explained the implications: “An estimated 15-million African audience members will no longer have the benefit of seeing 42 years of African films — some classics, some features, many documentaries carrying important educational, informational and developmental messages.
“The titles of activist filmmakers who were the vanguard of the transition to democracy will disappear into oblivion.”
Brislin said the FRU’s problems had been caused by an interregnum between April 2005 and October last year without leadership.
“No restraint of trade was placed on the management who exited, and no handover was given to new managers, who were appointed in October 2006.
“Debts and other organisational anomalies were uncovered in November/December 2006 after an internal audit instituted by FRU’s new management.”
Unpaid debts to the South African Revenue Service dating back to 2001 were also recently uncovered by an internal audit instigated by the new management.
To compound matters, there were delays in obtaining donor funds.
Nothing but the Truth should have gone to the Cannes Film Festival, but there was no money to edit it in time.
However, the film has been accepted by the International Durban Film Festival, based on the rough cut, an indication of its quality.
The FRU began in 1986 as a community video library for banned and anti-apartheid films. Later, under the leadership of the late Richard Ishmail, it became a key player in distribution and audience development.