The Opening of South Africa and the Future of African Film

Abstract

The Opening of South Africa and the Future of African Film Mahir Şaul (bio) The newest development in African cinema is the eruption of South Africa, previously isolated from the rest of the continent, as a film industry giant. In 2005, South Africa made a strong showing at FESPACO, with a large number of visitors and four feature films in the competition, one of which (Drum, dir. Zola Maseko, 2004) took the grand prize. In 2006, South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture hosted an African Film Summit in Pretoria-Tshwane, including a congress held by FEPACI. At this meeting, the members voted for the creation of a full-time secretariat in South Africa, though the headquarters remains in Ouagadougou, and elected Seipati Bulane Hopa, a South African woman producer, as Secretary General. The decision was hailed as a watershed in the history of FEPACI, and no doubt it serves as an emblem of the shifting center of gravity for the African film world. On the commercial front, the South African media company M-Net, already broadcasting to the rest of the continent via satellite and a subscription-based online TV service, began compiling its African Film Library by purchasing exclusive electronic rights to the films of the major francophone and anglophone directors. M-Net's pay-per-view entertainment channel, Africa Magic, airs daily Nollywood dramas and is starting to have an impact on both the finances and technical services of Nigerian video production.1 Another South African company, Nu Metro, operates theaters in several African countries, produces and distributes films and TV programs, and sells videos, DVDs, and video games for home entertainment. This new configuration is strengthened by two different imperatives stemming from South Africa: the local film industry's desire to reach a new market and the struggle of the formerly disadvantaged groups within the country to find proportional representation in post-apartheid society. The South African film industry, one of the oldest in the world, intermittently produces features that triumph at the international box office—for example, Academy Award winner Tsotsi (dir. Gavin Hood, 2005) and District 9 (dir. Neill Blomkamp, 2009)—but suffers from a narrow domestic market, which [End Page 315] observers attribute in part to the lack of exhibition theaters and filmgoing habits in the Black townships. Adjustment to the realities of majority rule after the 1994 elections created a temporary lull in production, which was softened but not totally offset by the small flurry of anti-apartheid films. At the same time, the Cape Town World Cinema Festival and the simultaneous Sithengi Film and Television Market, promoted by the South African film industry, have now become major showcases for African cinema, on a par with FESPACO and Carthage.2 The rise of a new generation of young Black South African producers and directors is the second crucial element in the opening of South Africa. The latest crop of filmmakers is different from the small numbers who matured in the underground film scene during apartheid. Young filmmaker Carmen Sangion distinguishes "two generations of filmmakers, the younger generation that is focused on fantasy, entertainment, and commercial work, and the group from the old school with political and social baggage about the country."3 The younger cineastes may wish for work in a normalized commercial film sector, but they find it hard to break into the existing professional circuits. The studios around Johannesburg, and the major broadcast companies and distributors as well, are dominated by white capital and employ an old coterie of producers, directors, and technical personnel. Government aid administered through the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) prods this establishment to integrate the new Black professionals, but progress has been slow. Policy debates turn around a contrast, the independent filmmakers on one side, who establish start-up companies or operate informally, and industry organization on the other. During the 2008 Gauteng Film Commission conference, which was an "industry" event, Bulane Hopa said that "ten percent of the population continue to determine the nature of cultural content production … only by creating and sustaining more opportunities for Black filmmakers will the industry be able to meet the changing demands of South Africa."4...