The forthcoming book, Marginal Lives and Painful Pasts: SA Cinema of Apartheid, edited by Martin Botha, a collaboration between Genugtig! Uitgewers and the University of Cape Town’s new African Cinema Unit, is one of the first to explore an overview of local cinema in the new South Africa.
The opening chapter, Botha’s “Post-apartheid Cinema: Policy, Structures, Themes and a New Aesthetics”, examines the connection between the current industry and that of the apartheid era. The context of the old industry creates the context for the new one.
Under apartheid, there were filmmakers such as Ross Devenish, Manie van Rensburg, Jans Rautenbach and Katinka Heyns, who were, to differing degrees, critical of the establishment. While much of the work at the time supported the status quo, the various contexts of the film industry were too complex to reduce all creative products to a blanket acceptance of the then-oppressive regime.
Botha writes that for decades the South African film industry existed in isolation while, especially from the 1950s to the 1980s, world cinema enjoyed a revival, with innovative films made in Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Asian countries.
The revival continues, with world cinema probably being at its most exciting at present, a creative flux from which we’re excluded because of the nature of our commercial distribution patterns and an overemphasis on Hollywood films.
In the old days, we were excluded through official moral and political censorship. An important development was the establishment of the Film Resources Unit (FRU) in 1986. Its audience development programmes and film distribution systems made material available that, without the organisation, would have been suppressed and unseen.
The formation of the Film and Allied Workers Organisation was an attempt to normalise the industry, although the more radically political component of our industry was seen overseas rather than here.
Later, post-apartheid, the establishment of the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), and other financial initiatives, led to the creation of a mini-industry with a variety of films. Our films started winning awards. Product was ideologically and thematically varied.
Movies such as Wooden Camera, Proteus, Max and Mona, Forgiveness, The Flyer, U-Carmen eKayalitsha, Soldiers of the Rock, Crazy Monkey: Straight Outta Benoni, Bunny Chow and, more recently, the first Afrikaans film in 10 years, Ouma se Slim Kind, were shown alongside the yearly Leon Schuster comedy that cleans up at the box office. His films, whatever their merits or demerits, define the South African commercial audience crowd-pleaser.
This phase culminated with Tsotsi, which won the Oscar as best foreign film in 2006. At last year’s Sithengi Market and Cape Film Festival, various overseas guests I spoke to seemed surprised that Tsotsi was a one-off, not the norm.
Two key developments in post-apartheid cinema were the Out in Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which gave queer film, both indigenous and international, a visible presence, and the rise of the documentary film.
The latter has developed into a rich, innovative filmmaking that uses documentary techniques — including personal, objective and progressive approaches — to connect to South African realities.
Despite all these changes, one has to ask whether the industry has become a matter of a promise unfulfilled.
On the plus side, the director Michael Raeburn is filming Triomf, based on Marlene van Niekerk’s novel, which would have been impossible before transformation. Co-productions, always a strong if contentious component of the industry, continue.
And indications are that South Africa will continue as a service industry for films from other countries — in Ask the Dust, Cape Town stood in for Los Angeles, a throwback to the old Hollyveld days, but at least the films are of better quality.
The FRU, though, recently announced its demise because of financial problems. Money lodged by United States funders with the FRU for editing Ross Devenish’s recently filmed Nothing but the Truth was not available because of a short-term loan of half the funder’s amount negotiated by the producer, Richard Green.
Contentiously, the other half is still outstanding. The FRU’s downfall means that Devenish is unable to complete the film.
Funding granted to the NFVF has diminished considerably. The stream of films released last year is down to a trickle.
There is concern about the fact that the NFVF seems unable to appoint a new council.
Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan has requested the outgoing council to remain until a new one is agreed upon — eight members have decided to remain. Nine council members are needed for the NFVF to function.
The fate of the NFVF-funded showcase for South African films and students’ work, the Apollo Film Festival, also hangs in the balance because of internal problems.
Furthermore, one hears that, among distributors and some funders, the Hollywood-style, commercial film is preferred.
Distributors can refuse to distribute certain films — for example, they were unable to create a business case for releasing a post-modern film such as Proteus, which is analysed in-depth in Botha’s anthology and in international magazines.
Film is changing too.
We’re apparently in the digitised post-film age — digital, both in making product and its distribution has, according to the American commentator Wheeler Winston Dixon, “liberated the visual from the ‘tyranny’ of the imperfect medium of film”. How will this impact on our industry?
This creates a monolith around which independent filmmakers must work if they seek another means of expression.
There isn’t an audience for South African movies, either, and audience development should be a priority. So should the development of a film culture.
There are now numerous film schools teaching people how to make films, but hardly any to teach the public how to look at them, also an important part of the growth of a film culture.
We could learn from a cultural organisation such as Open Doek in Belgium, which organises large and small film festivals throughout the year and, importantly, makes a vital selection of world cinema available on DVD.
This generates an appreciation of film that counters the all-pervasive Hollywood influence.
The Cape Town group Amarabelle is researching ways of distributing films in townships. Initial research indicates that cinemas of the same standards as those in urban shopping malls, with the same first-release product, are desired.
Peet Louw of Humble Pie Entertainment has created a distribution system that caters for platteland audiences.
At the moment, the industry seems to be a series of challenges and of things falling apart.
Are they deep-seated structural problems within the industry that need to be urgently addressed, or glitches? Time will tell.
Sadly William Pretorius died on June 26. He was one of the first arts writers at The Weekly Mail