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during 2006 South Africa won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for Tsotsi . Gavin Hood’s multi-award winning drama about a township gangster has been the climax of the South African New Wave that started in 2004 and to date resulted in more than 40 international awards for local features, documentaries and shorts. Sadly the non-renewal of a special feature film fund by the Department of Arts and Culture has stifled the South African New Wave and as a result feature film production has declined remarkably. As the most important national institution for the development and promotion of the South African film and video industry, the South African National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) currently needs about R325 million per year to do a proper job. Unfortunately its annual allocation is a mere R24 million with which it has to cover its administrative expenditure, as well as funding obligations. As a result of limited government funding many exciting new and veteran filmmakers have to rely on themselves to finalise projects.

In an interview with the academic Mayke Vermeren acclaimed film maker Darrell Roodt made the following pessimistic statement about the current state of South African cinema: “ Tsotsi is the end of the wave. I think South African film is finished now. It will sleep for the next ten years”. The reality is that some of the most significant films during the past year or more have been made without NFVF support. Winner of Best South African feature at the 2006 Apollo Film Festival Faith’s Corner is one example. The film follows the life of Faith, a homeless beggar and a single mother of two young sons. They live in an abandoned car in an alleyway of central Johannesburg. Faith spends her days begging for money from disinterested commuters on the streets. Darrell Roodt’s experimentation with film form is remarkable: Shot in the style of the silent cinema, complete with intertitles to capture the dialogue, the film sensitively confronts social issues of poverty and joblessness in South Africa. It is a vivid combination of social concern and formal experimentation. By using the silent format it almost makes a statement that social conditions for the poor haven’t changed over the decades. Several other award-winning features also received no NFVF funding: Khalo Matabane’s innovative blending of documentary and fiction in Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon deals with refugees and xenophobia. Gustav Kuhn’s Ouma se Slim Kind examines relationships during the 1940s and how the dominant Afrikaner culture at the time destroyed any hope of non-racialism. Winner of Best Feature at the 2007 Apollo Film Festival Son of Man is a refreshing retelling of the Gospels within the setting of a South African township. Zulfah Otto-Sallies explores conflict in a Muslim family in the neo-realist Don’t Touch . Darrell Roodt’s Meisie (Girl) is a slice of life about a girl in a rural community that is prevented to school by her dad who believes that she should spend her days tending goats instead. Shot in the style of neorealism the film features wonderful natural performances by non-professional actors from the remote community of Riemvasmaak, on the edge of the Kalahari. Sadly, the funding crisis impacts on our most acclaimed directors. Ross Devenish, who received international awards for The Guest and Marigolds in August , has been in a constant struggle since his return to South Africa in 2002 to finalise new film projects. His script based on a novel by Zakes Mda, Ways of Dying , has been rejected twice by the NFVF. Devenish’s second project, Nothing but the Truth , based on actor John Kani’s play, has thus far met with even more problems. The film deals with the relationship between those black South Africans who stayed behind during the apartheid struggle and those who went into exile. After many problems regarding funding the film has been completed – but Devenish has removed his name from the film’s credits.

In the current financial climate auteur directors such as Dumisani Phakati (Waiting for Valdez ), Tebogo Mahlatsi, Aryan Kaganof (Western 4.33) and Garth Meyer (Bitter Water ) are struggling to create innovative work. Sadly the talent among young film makers is there, but financial constraints are a major challenge. If Devenish struggles one could imagine the challenges faced by a new generation of young voices. In last year’s NFVF report the former chair of the Council, Mfundi Vundla, stated that the institution has failed a new generation of filmmakers. He admit to “Failing outstanding directing talent such as Tebogo Mahlatsi, Thabang Moleya, Zola Maseko, Catherine Stewart, Dumisani Phakathi, Revel Fox, and Khalo Matabane and many others in not granting them maximum opportunities to sharpen their skills and thereby position our country as a film producing and exporting country.” Some of these voices such as Tebogo Mahlatsi and Garth Meyer have brilliantly explored oral narrative structures in their recent short films. They are following in the tradition of great African masters such as Ousmane Sembene and Med Hondo, who rejected the classical narrative structure. For decades South African filmmakers and scriptwriters were isolated from the developments in cinemas elsewhere on the African continent. While we are celebrating the genius of Sembene this year one hopes that scriptwriting training programmes such as SEDIBA and the various funding agencies will be flexible to allow orality in narrative structures by our South African storytellers.. 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 our multiplexes. It seems that among local distributors and some funders, the Hollywood-style, commercial film is preferred. Since the advent of democracy in 1994, the industry has seen much change and development. The newly elected government recognised the potential role that cinema could play in democratic transformation and decided to set up a number of economic incentives and government bodies to foster the growth of the local industry. The success of a number of South African productions on the international market has encouraged the signing of a number of international co-production treaties. However, despite governmental and international support, the majority of South African filmmakers are still struggling to cover basic production costs and many films fail to reach their intended audience. The reasons behind these economic / distribution difficulties are highly complex and the resultant impact on the creative self-expression of filmmakers is most significant. It is a fragile industry, especially in the face of globalisation.

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