Recently I was privy to a few snippets from a neighbourhood WhatsApp group chat. A minor classic of the genre, the conversation follows a recognisable format.
After a mysterious disruption to the night-time suburban quiet, theories are flighted as to what may be happening and how close the impending apocalypse is; terror prevails for a couple of minutes, but is followed by bathos and relief when it turns out there is an innocuous explanation.
In this case, the cause of concern to residents on the outskirts of Somerset West, looking out from the slopes of the Helderberg across the Cape Flats, was a series of loud bangs and flashing lights. Gunshots? A sudden thunderstorm? An explosion at the airport? Was this the much-feared revolution of the masses?
It turned out that the culprits were the good folk at Cape Town Film Studios, letting off fireworks during a shoot. The disturbance was forgiven. All in the name of making a good movie, right? There is something else at play here, however, something that goes deeper than cinephilia and our collective thrall to Hollywood glitz and glamour. Action at Cape Town Film Studios means dollars are being spent, jobs are being created, economic activity is being spurred, and brand SA is getting a global boost.
For the same reason, when you’re driving down the N2 highway and encounter the curious site of wooden ships floating on the horizon about 5km inland from the False Bay coast, you feel a patriotic pang. “They must be for that TV series about the pirates,” you think; you have not and probably never will watch it, but you’re strangely proud that they’re filming it here.
Putting a figure to the economic benefits of the film and TV industry in SA is tricky. In terms of content production, the National Film and Video Foundation calculated the contribution to GDP at about R7bn in 2019, and though Covid-19 subsequently hit the sector hard, by 2022 it had returned to this point.
With the surge in demand from streaming services generating their own content (the Netflix effect) and relative consistency in the volume of TV commercial production, the industry has remained fairly resilient. Are boom times ahead? It seems so. One useful marker is the number of film permits issued; in Cape Town alone, this has jumped 22% over the past year, with about 4,700 permits issued from July 2023 to June 2024.
Johannesburg has historically been the country’s film and TV hub. It used to be a commonly cited estimate that 70% of the sector, broadly defined — from pre-production to post-production, including research & development, support services, production companies, equipment, supplies and facilities, casting and crew — was based in Gauteng.
That dominance has decreased, partly because the film industry in Cape Town has become less seasonally dependent; with a growing animation subsector and improved studio capacity, spectacular geographical locations are not its only selling points. When the Gauteng Film Commission and the KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission signed a memorandum of understanding in 2022, you got the sense that their interprovincial partnership was spurred to some degree by a shared desire not to see the Western Cape eating any more of their lunch.
Ultimately, from a national perspective, this is all in the vein of healthy internal competition. And, regardless of the city they call home, local filmmakers share many of the same problems, especially in their relationship with the government and its various funding entities. Here, film and TV sit awkwardly between ministries.
The National Film and Video Foundation is an agency of the department of sport, arts & culture, where nomination season is in full swing. Forget the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes and Baftas — these nominations are not for artists but for arts councils.
In August, minister Gayton McKenzie released a raft of announcements calling for candidates to sit on the councils of all the major state-funded cultural and performing arts institutions, as well as the National Heritage Council, the National Arts Council and (you guessed it) the National Film and Video Foundation. McKenzie is certainly trying to convey the impression that he is a new broom who is sweeping clean after years of mediocrity and maladministration at the department.
Like their fellows in the broader arts sector, however, filmmakers would do well to exercise caution in their optimism about a new era at the department. As Khanya Mtshali has rightly affirmed in an article for Africa is a Country: “Given his track record of sowing division and making empty promises, South Africans should be wary of treating the new minister of sports, arts & culture as a lovable buffoon.” The Gayton McKenzie show — which Mtshali characterises as “PR stunts that are often mistaken for good governance” — is primarily there to promote its eponymous star.
What about the other ministry that is crucial to the film and TV sector: the department of trade, industry & competition? Two decades ago, the department established a rebate scheme to incentivise film production in SA. At first, this was chiefly successful in luring foreign companies to shoot in the country; over time local producers took advantage of the incentives. Theoretically, SA filmmakers stand to benefit from 30%-50% cost rebates, but the department retains its prerogative to repudiate claims — in some cases, even when these have been preapproved — and payment of the rebates is a common sticking point.
In 2021, Jahmil XT Qubeka and Layla Swart of production house Yellowbone Entertainment took the department and then-minister Ebrahim Patel to court. In 2023, producer Malcolm Scerri-Ferrante asserted that the rebate scheme “has almost collapsed”. Even allowing for some rhetorical licence, this kind of distrust on the part of filmmakers should be a worry to those in the department of trade, industry & competition who wish to see the sector thrive. It remains to be seen if this will be a priority for the ministry under Parks Tau.
Freedom of speech
There is a third state department with power in SA’s film and TV sector: the ministry of communications & digital technologies, via entities such as the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa), the SABC as the national broadcaster, and the Film and Publications Board.
Though the latter of these three focuses almost entirely on a mandate to “protect children” through its age-appropriacy rating system, when it makes headlines this is usually because of a controversy about freedom of speech and censorship. Such was the case when, immediately before its premiere at the Durban International Film Festival in July, Craig Tanner’s documentary The Showerhead was given an age restriction of 16 because of “offensive language, nudity, prejudice, sex and violence”.
The film does contain all these things, of course, but that is because it focuses on Jacob Zuma — or, rather, Zuma’s attempts to litigate against the sharp satire issuing from the pen of cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro). The Showerhead is about much more than this; it gives an overview of Shapiro’s life and work, and situates Zapiro’s cartoons as an influence on SA’s post-apartheid national discourse. Yet Shapiro’s battle with Zuma, from which the artist emerged triumphant despite the former president’s attempts to intimidate him, is the pivot around which the narrative turns.
Richard Poplak, reviewing the documentary for Daily Maverick, has argued that its major shortcoming is hagiography (“all veneration and zero shredding”). In other words, by delivering an “encomium” about Shapiro, Tanner does his subject a disservice. Zapiro’s job has been to criticise, more or less fairly, and he deserves fair criticism in return. Race is one of the elephants in the cinematic room. Poplak asks: “Why don’t we hear more [in the film] about what it means to be a white cartoonist in a majority-black country, where most of the politicians and power players are black, and where the depiction of black people has had, shall we say, problematic connotations?”
The other big question relates to Zapiro’s famous “Rape of Lady Justice” cartoon and its afterlives. What are the considerations that should be brought to bear on the use of rape as a metaphor, especially in a country where sexual violence is a daily reality among its citizens? To suggest that the ethical water is muddy here is not, however, to say that we should not be debating it.
Indeed, it is precisely because Zapiro’s satire provokes strong responses that his cartoons are so often used by teachers to facilitate discussion about difficult but vital topics. Herein lies the irony: whether acting out of naiveté or puritanical zest, by giving The Showerhead a 16 rating the Film and Publications Board is basically saying that SA schoolchildren shouldn’t engage with Zapiro’s iconic cartoons (or the subject matter they tackle) until grade 10 or 11.
What world, one wonders, do the wise heads at the Film and Publications Board think young people inhabit? Far more “dangerous” content is readily available to them on phone and TV screens every day. They are surrounded not just by words or images conveying nudity, prejudice, sex and violence; most of them experience these things long before they turn 16. Schoolchildren don’t need to be — can’t be — shielded from them. Rather, they need the tools to reflect personally on, and engage intellectually with, these phenomena.
Lest we forget, the chief offence lies with Zuma and his cronies, not to mention the members of the government and the ruling party who emboldened him through their silence. The Film and Publications Board is not a tool of political censorship like the apartheid-era Publications Control Board, but this is not the first time that its actions have been interpreted as restricting free speech and having a cooling effect on criticism of the state.
The implication of the Film and Publications Board’s rating for The Showerhead is that Zuma’s behaviour is “something we shouldn’t talk about”, or that moral rectitude requires us to discuss it euphemistically. That way lies a return to state capture via the MK party.
Discouraging young people from watching local content — in an educational setting or otherwise — is a further blow to an industry that already faces numerous challenges in terms of audience development. YouTube shorts and TikTok do not cultivate the capacity to engage with film and TV in a sustained, imaginative fashion. But who knows? By making The Showerhead “banned material” for under-16s, the Film and Publications Board may just have increased the number of teens who want to watch it.
Tanner and his co-producer Anant Singh have lodged an appeal, requesting that their documentary’s age restriction be lowered to 13. While the outcome is still pending, the film will be released in Johannesburg and Cape Town this week.
French connection
The controversy over The Showerhead — which extended into the premiere event itself, as the film was interrupted by singing and protesting shouts of “Zuma is my president!” — somewhat overshadowed other aspects of the Durban International Film Festival. This is a pity as, in addition to a plethora of screenings, the festival (SA’s biggest and oldest, with 2024 being the 45th iteration of the event) brings valuable networking opportunities for film industry players, running in conjunction with the Durban FilmMart.
This year there was a strong French presence in Durban — along with a suite of French co-productions on the festival programme, the FilmMart was attended by a high-level delegation representing the film sector in France and French territories like Réunion. Earlier in 2024, an SA delegation visited the Series Mania Forum in Lille (the biggest series market in Europe).
The French-SA filmic love fest is no coincidence. It follows the signing in 2023 of an extended co-production agreement between the two countries, designed to “encourage the creation of new content and narratives by expanding and stimulating co-productions”, according to French ambassador David Martinon: “It is a crucial step forward for new shared stories to be invented and for reciprocal investment and partnership.”
This treaty is an expansion of a 2010 agreement between the two countries, and promises to promote the co-production of feature films and series, including animation and documentary, whether these are designed for cinema screening, TV broadcast or on-demand and streaming services. With official co-production status, these projects will have full access to funding schemes in both countries, as well as distribution support.
The French Institute of SA has been leading the rollout of this initiative. Long a supporter of arts and culture collaborations between the two countries, the institute has focused on audiovisual production in recent years. With the Durban FilmMart, it has also facilitated pitching sessions, mentorship programmes and the pan-African Jumpstart incubator for aspiring filmmakers.
Why the renewed emphasis on film and TV? And what do the French stand to gain? Lower production costs in SA? Access to new markets for French content? African content for French viewers? Or is all of this about the operation of “soft power”? I put these questions to Emmanuelle Denavit-Feller, regional head of new media, film and music at the institute and the French embassy.
Denavit-Feller notes that, since 2015, the flourishing of broadcast and streamer series has “changed the landscape”, and has also changed global audience tastes — there is greater appetite in each market for a combination of local and international content. That applies both to European and African markets.
But the key driver over the past two years has been “a change in France’s agenda or approach with regard to Africa: it’s about partnership, an equal relationship. This is the main principle. Our mission is co-operation”. This applies to “the business of film” as much as it does to other activity in the cultural sector, creating “large, small and micro business ecosystems” that support the economy and act as “a holistic driver for growth, inclusivity and capacity building”.
A curious further benefit to SA is that this transnational co-operation offers a chance to participate more fully in the African film sector. Historically, SA has been slow to position itself within continent-wide cultural networks.
“It’s not only cinema — the difficulty has been bigger than that, in the creative industries more generally. The French Institute of SA and the French mission are glad to enable these connections,” says Denavit-Feller. “Durban FilmMart is a great space for people from across the African continent to meet, but we can do more to strengthen the sector in a pan-African way.”
Fireworks on the horizon for SA’s film industry? You bet.
• ‘The Showerhead’ will show on September 13-14 in Johannesburg at The Bioscope, Movies@ Monte Casino and Rosebank Nouveau, and in Cape Town at The Labia and Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront.
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