The Nigerian method of low-budget movie-making is set to take off in South Africa if an upcoming producer has his way. Percy Zvomuya speaks to Leonard Ashu about his feature titled Rainbow Love.
In the movie Rainbow Love, directed by Sechaba Ramotoai, a Matatiele-born man called Simphiwe falls for a white girl. The low-budget, amateurish movie is yet another take on the well-explored rainbow nation concept. But its use of non-actors playing out the roles they play in real life gives it an authenticity that is quite empowering.
Dubbed Jollywood, the concept is being championed by Cameroonian-born Leonard Ashu, founder of Brain Africa Films, a Johannesburg movie production company. The concept envisages a movie village whose objective is the production of ‘lots of movies in South Africa”, as Ashu puts it.
He came up with the concept after a year-long stint in Nigeria, home to the continent’s biggest movie-making, billion-dollar industry. There, Ashu raised the finance to produce two movies. One is called Welcome to Johannesburg and is about a young Nigerian man who migrates in search of South Africa’s proverbial gold.
Ashu says movies don’t have to cost a lot and, at about R46 000, Rainbow Love shows what can be achieved on the cheap. The producer notes that in Nigeria up to 50 movies are delivered to the market every week. Now, in comparison to the slow turn-over in the mainstream industry here, he claims, ‘we envisage making more than 10 movies each week in Jollywood. We’ll be focusing on low-budget production and on stories based on things happening in the South African society.”
Aside from its fascination with love across the colour line, Rainbow Love also looks at black South Africa’s family support networks. Overcome by Johannesburg’s glare, Simphiwe neglects to send money to his siblings back home. ‘We’ll be focusing on little things happening in our society, to try as much as we can to educate and entertain South Africa and the world,” Ashu says.
He explains that his company intends selling its movies door-to-door as South Africa doesn’t have distribution facilities for the non-mainstream movie industry. ‘We don’t have distribution facilities and we would like government to get in and help set up marketing and distribution points in four parts of the country.”
They have divided the country into four zones. The first comprises Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, North West, Limpopo and the Northern Cape. The second zone is KwaZulu-Natal, the third is the Eastern Cape and the fourth the Western Cape. Ashu points out that zoning the country will help to identify and work with the actors from these regions. This will be crucial in developing distribution networks.
When the Mail & Guardian spoke to Ashu he was in the company of actor Sipho Manzini, who has a minor role in Rainbow Love. Manzini confesses that breaking into the local movie industry was difficult, but his day job as a correctional officer should toughen him up. He quips that being an actor helps him deal with inmates of various hues. ‘The inmates like me very much and it helps me with being flexible.” Manzini, who has also appeared in Isidingo as an extra, will feature later this year in Brothers in Law, a new series on SABC1.
Ashu says ideally his company would want government to help build the movie markets he has identified in these four zones. The firm has already entered into an arrangement with M-Net’s channel 107, dedicated to Africanmade movies. The channel will broadcast movies when the producer believes a sufficient number of copies have been sold. He says they are looking at a minimum of 50 000 copies.
Jollywood’s simple production process could, indeed, have come from a Movie Making Made Easy manual. ‘Productions will take between six and 15 days to complete, then editing can take a week and the duplication of DVDs/VCDs another two weeks,” says Ashu. ‘Within a month DVDs/VCDs can be on the market.” He says actors will initially earn between R500 and R5 000, but could work their way up to earning as much as R40 000.
He calls on aspiring entrepreneurs to register movie production companies with the department of trade and industry and the Film and Publications Board and then join the movie village as executive producers.
‘We have working relationships with costume companies, clothing and food outlets and other technical partners,” he says.
Ashu is also calling on aspirant filmmakers to come forward with scripts. ‘They do not really need to know how to make movies because we can always employ producers and directors. All they need is capital of about R70 000 for a first production, including the cost of duplicating about 5 000 DVDs.”
Ashu says the company already has several movie companies working in the village.
Although more could have been done technically to make Rainbow Love a solid production, the initiative is bold and should be attractive to upcoming filmmakers.
The plus factor is the film’s optimism — taking its inspiration from more positive aspects of the Rainbow Nation.