Cinematic Sidestreams: A Political Economy of Small Cinemas in South Africa

Abstract

This article shifts the focus away from South Africa's mainstream film industry to present a critical political economy of “small cinemas” in South Africa. Comprising several vibrant but under-visible cinematic sidestreams which emerged in the first decade after the country's formal transition to a democratic political dispensation, the small cinema sector has elicited little scholarship and only occasional media attention. A key proposition offered in the article is that the small cinema phenomenon is ubiquitous within certain sectors of the South African population while remaining virtually unknown or unacknowledged within others. The article maps the broad contours of the small cinemas sector as a mode of micro-entrepreneurial film production, distribution and consumption, drawing on key theoretical concepts located in the scholarship on cultural production, micro-entrepreneurship, shadow economies, marginality and identity politics. It offers an analytical framework that delineates four key defining features anchoring the small cinema sector, each imbricated with issues of identity, access to resources, representation, policies, politics, and practices, arguing that these small cinemas are significant sites of cultural expression that frequently signal larger sociocultural shifts before they begin to seep into mainstream discourses. The four “pillars” of small cinemas in South Africa discussed are smallness of scale, fluidity in formality of operation, marginality within the formal cinematic landscape, and ethnolinguistic interpellation.