Dibakar Das Roy&nbsp;explores&nbsp;sensitive&nbsp;issues&nbsp;of&nbsp;race,&nbsp;color&nbsp;and Identity in his&nbsp;first&nbsp;feature&nbsp;film set&nbsp;in&nbsp;New&nbsp;Delhi starring Nigerian actor Samuel Abiola Robinson.



&#8220;You know, there’s a lot of common space that can be explored,” says Dibakar Das Roy, writer-director of the Indian film, Dilli Dark, that’s currently doing the rounds of international film festivals.



The space that he mentions and transcends with his new film is the one occupied by the two blockbuster behemoths – Nollywood and Bollywood – dominating screens, OTT platforms, box-offices and the cinematic conscience worldwide.



So even if it has been shot in India, in the narrow, dusty alleys and packed streets of New Delhi and Noida and the archeological sites of Mehrauli – away from the staple Chandni Chowk and Connaught Place locales of mainstream Bollywood cinema – there’s a tangible connection that could take the film to the lively lanes of Lagos. This link is a man named Samuel Abiola Robinson, the Nigerian actor who plays the lead in Dilli Dark, also Roy’s first feature film.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="684" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-with-the-lead-cast-image-supplied-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-62444" style="width:638px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-with-the-lead-cast-image-supplied-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-with-the-lead-cast-image-supplied-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-with-the-lead-cast-image-supplied-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-with-the-lead-cast-image-supplied-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-with-the-lead-cast-image-supplied-2048x1368.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Roy (left) with the lead cast; Image supplied</figcaption></figure></div>


The connection is also cultural, with a storyline profiling Michael Okeke, as one of the many Nigerians living in Delhi, studying for his



MBA and dreaming of a corporate career in India, but gets “hopelessly stuck”. He works as a small-time drug delivery guy to make ends meet, and it is “this job and his African identity which keeps his life coming back full circle; and his search for gainful employment lands him in the fringes of society, where the only person who takes him in is a sketchy godwoman”.



Robinson is well-placed to play Okeke. Like his character, he too, in fact, is a Nigerian living in Delhi, and so on many levels, was able to relate to the film’s storyline. Robinson has been based in Delhi, since his success playing the title role of a football star in Sudani From Nigeria, a 2018 hit film in the South Indian language of Malayalam, and now airing on Netflix. “He becomes the protagonist, a symbol of every person who is kind of going through the same othering that is happening,” says Roy of Robinson’s Okeke.



“There were two primary ideas behind the film; the first was the whole tendency to look at colorism in Indian society; and the second is a larger global theme, to look at identity and belonging, and issues of who is from what country and who belongs where, and what decides nationality, so on and so forth&#8230;” adds Roy, who left a career in advertising in the United States (U.S.) to return home to India to learn filmmaking “on the job”, in this case, interspersing historical and contemporary narratives.



“It’s the intersection of two cultures where the protagonist is a foreigner, who starts realizing there are connects that the two continents have had for a very long time. One of the things I wanted to do is look at the cosmopolitan nature of Delhi and how it was, say, centuries ago, and that the whole concept of Delhi being a global city is not a new one…. about 600-800 years ago, there were people from Ethiopia walking the streets of Delhi…”


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="684" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-on-set-with-Robinson-image-supplied-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-62442" style="width:732px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-on-set-with-Robinson-image-supplied-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-on-set-with-Robinson-image-supplied-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-on-set-with-Robinson-image-supplied-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-on-set-with-Robinson-image-supplied-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Roy-on-set-with-Robinson-image-supplied-2048x1368.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Roy on set with Robinson (left); Image supplied</figcaption></figure></div>


The inspiration for the film also stemmed from personal experience, of the time Roy spent in Delhi growing up, when he himself “faced a decent amount of bias and bullying for having darker skin”. In the long run, he came to terms with it but wanted to take “a fresh look” at the issue, reference history and this started his fascination for storytelling, and the film. 



Roy admits his primary intent is to create stories that bind India with the world. 



“Even when I’m looking at telling cross-cultural stories, I feel I want to start off with India as a base, because India has had an intersection with so many different cultures, and so many different nationalities through its history, whether we’re trying to do a period drama, or something contemporary, and that is the one thing that really fascinates me – the interaction of characters from different backgrounds, coming together,” says Roy. “&#8230;It’s a beautiful dichotomy that exists, and here’s this character [Okeke] who comes in to contemporary India, in the 2020s, and he’s also from the African continent, but he’s not seeming to find a place for himself in a time that is supposed to be more open…” 



Keen on a theatrical release for Dilli Dark, Roy says his “self-funded” 93-minute dark comedy (in Hindi/English but “anyone can understand it”) has already received “great responses” at film festivals in Mumbai, Estonia, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, the U.S. and other cities. He is also hoping to find the right distribution channels on the African continent. Other than that, he has a great love for the cinema and series’ coming out of Nollywood. 



“Nollywood is a massive industry. There’s a lot of love for Bollywood there&#8230; And what really strikes me as strange is that there haven’t been many collaborations between the two industries,” says Roy. 



Perhaps Dilli Dark is a start.

Untitledss

‘Nollywood Is Massive; Lot Of Love For Bollywood There’: Indian Filmmaker On The Intersection Of Cultures

Kene Okwuosa continues to make profit selling the immersive cinema experience across movie halls
in Nigeria.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



If trailers of Simon Kinberg’s upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix have whetted your appetite for more action-packed cinema, you could take your pick from the likes of Hobbs &amp; Shaw, John Wick 3: Parabellum or Avengers: End game. But as any film buff would tell you, watching these adrenaline rushes on DVD or TV is no match for a full-throttle cinema experience. 



Kene Okwuosa is bullish about letting Nigeria’s 190 million
population experience the thrilling excitement of the celluloid world. Using
the theater to extract a sizeable profit from the Nigerian culture of
socializing and communal engagement, his Filmhouse Cinemas has grown from just
three screens to multiple locations across the country.



As part of the company’s strategic expansion plans, Okwuosa signed a pioneer deal to bring IMAX, the world’s most immersive cinematic experience, to West Africa in 2016. In doing so, Filmhouse has flipped a switch not just to beat competition from other local cinema chains, but also become one of the fastest-growing IMAX businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 



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Quite a feat considering Okwuosa’s first stint at the cinema
business did not have a happy ending. 



The year was 2008 and Okwuosa and his partner at the time,
also named Kene, were desperately looking for greener pastures beyond the borders
of the United Kingdom (UK), where they were both employed as assistant general
manager and general manager respectively at Odeon Cinemas.



“I had a conversation with Kene on the first of December
2008 and he was saying there is an opportunity with a friend of his who was an
investor in Nigeria and we could go back, set up a company and create a great
product in Nigeria. I resigned from my job on the second of December, I saw my
family on the third of December and I caught a flight on the fourth of December
after not being back in Nigeria for 11 years,” says Okwuosa.



And their voyage back home was favored by lady luck. A South African company at the time was exiting the Nigerian market and their assets were up for grabs. With the help of their investor, the pair bought up the assets and just like that, Genesis Deluxe Cinemas was born. It was a magical moment in the lives of the newly-minted entrepreneurs. 



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With three chains of Genesis Cinemas under their belt, the
pair were ready to reap the profits of their entrepreneurial pursuits until
everything went belly up.



“A year later, that deal went so bad we had to exit. Myself
and Kene exited the company to our dismay.&nbsp;
The private investor owned most of the business and there were issues
between the investor and my partner relating to a slight misalignment of the
company. We were torn between either staying in Lagos or going back to the UK.
We decided to stay and tug it out,” says Okwuosa.



The pair had to downsize from the guest house they were
staying in to a smaller flat and survived on noodles, while they hatched their
next plan. They turned their living room into an office and went back to the
drawing board. 



Okwuosa believed there was still a market in the cinema theater business and he was not wrong. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Nigerian film industry is globally recognized as the second-largest film producer in the world. Total cinema revenue is set to reach $22 million in 2021, rising at 8.6% CAGR over the forecast period. 



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The cinema industry is one of the priority sectors identified in the economic recovery growth plan of the federal government of Nigeria with a planned $1 billion in export revenue by 2020. Furthermore, the National Film and Video Censors Board estimates the Nigerian movie industry needs at least 774 cinemas across the country for it to tackle the menace of piracy. 



“So, for two years, I was literally waking up and going to
every single office trying to pitch and raise money. We didn’t know anybody and
we are not sons of rich men, we had already failed with Genesis, we had no
assets or collateral. We were literally telling people we were going to
modernize Nigeria’s entertainment scene and everybody was looking at us like we
were crazy.”



In 2009, the Intervention Funds, created by then president
Goodluck Jonathan to boost the Nigerian creative industry, would prove to be
the lifeline Okwuosa and his partner so badly needed.



“I am proud to say we were the very first to access that fund in 2012, which was about N200 million at the time which, when you look back is not that much but considering the exchange rate, it was over $1 million. It was enough to help us kickstart Filmhouse. We had nothing, so that particular facility was largely uncollateralized,” says Okwuosa.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">The fund took a bet on Okuwosa and his partner and it paid off. The loan was used to open their first three-screen cinema in Surulere, Lagos. </blockquote>



“It had a slow start but ultimately grew to be one of the
biggest locations in the country and that organic growth led us to open two
more cinemas prior to our second round of investors, which was private equity
money from African Capital Alliance.” 



The investment helped Okwuosa to scale to 10 operational
locations across six states. The original vision when Okwuosa started Filmhouse
was to be the biggest and best cinema and create an amazing space where people
could escape into a different world. 



Two years after, the company set up the production and
distribution part of the business. 



Filmhouse now represents about 50% of tickets sold in Nigerian cinemas, according to Okwuosa. With just a dream to conquer the Nigerian market, today, Filmhouse has a vision to become a media entertainment company. 



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In addition to IMAX, the company represents other
international brands like Warner Bros and Lionsgate. With the institutional
investment, Okwuosa has strengthened his core team, which no longer includes
his former partner, as well as providing the company the impetus to scale with
the right mind and right trajectory. 



With a GDP of $375 billion making the Nigerian economy the
30th largest economy in the world, Okwuosa believes there is still a big chunk
of money to be made from the entertainment and media space.



“I think we haven’t even scratched the surface of this
industry and we want to position ourselves at the forefront of Nigerian
entertainment.”

kene

The Movie Buff With A  Happy Ending  In Business

When the battle against the Portuguese ended, Samora Machel was aware of the importance of image. The first Mozambican president saw strategic power in film and how it helped him promote national unity. His government established the National Institution of Audiovisual and Cinema (INAC), one of its first cultural initiatives, in 1976. It produced more than 300 documentaries the following decade, in an initiative dubbed Kuxa Kanema, which showed how the newborn nation took its first steps. With Machel’s death in 1986, and Mozambique’s turn towards the West, the small industry almost became extinct.
“It is true that there was a decline, especially when the country opened up to the market economy with the arrival of the IMF,” says Djalma Lourenço, director of INAC.
Producers began to emerge in Maputo due to private initiatives. The production of documentaries and advertisements for the innumerable NGOs that work in the country are their bread and butter. While short films are emerging, nobody dares speak of a Mozambican film industry.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31175" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/cine_africa_20121016_9.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“An industry presupposes a value chain, that we yet to have in Mozambique,” says João Ribeiro, director of The Last Flight of the Flamingo, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.
Cinematic legislation forces international producers to establish partnerships with local producers, who are often unable to survive on their artistic ambitions.
“The fundamental structure of a Mozambican producer is to produce institutional documentaries and advertisements in order to fundraise to be able to produce their own work,” says Renato Chagas, a Portuguese director, who moved to Mozambique six years ago during the country’s boom years due to American and European investments.
In April 2006, Maputo was brought to a standstill with the filming of Blood Diamond, directed by Edward Zwick. The film, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, had an estimated budget of $100 million, according to IMDb.
“In four months, eight million dollars was spent in Mozambique in hard cash. Just downtown, in the capital, a million was spent on renting out stores and closing down streets,” says Ribeiro, who worked as executive director on the film.
Yet, the millions Hollywood brought to Mozambique had a perverse effect. The costs of production elevated exponentially once local authorities, such as the Maputo municipality, grossly increased the prices of road rental. Mozambican producers are also all too familiar with excessive bureaucracy as a result.
“Filming in Mozambique is a headache. Before we begin filming, we have to fulfill a series of requirements with the different organizations, like INAC or the Ministry of Interior,” says producer Mickey Fonseca.
“Mozambique is not film friendly,” added his colleague Pipas Forjaz.
The two men, who have won numerous international awards for their documentaries, established a production company, Mahla Filmes, in 2009. Both were recently involved in the production of Caught in a Flight, by Oliver Hirschbiegel. Due to Mozambique’s appeal to cinematographers, the biographical film, which cost $32 million, lends its landscapes to Angola to tell the story of Princess Diana’s final years.
“We have a unique reality: architecture from the ’50s and ’60s that, still today, is hard to find in other cities. Furthermore, we have virgin landscapes and social stability,” says Ribeiro.
The Mozambican Law of Cinema, which will be voted on this year, continues to lack consensus. According to INAC, Mozambique produces around 25 works, either documentaries or films, annually. Finding a way to bring long-term sustainability to these productions is the key to creating a Mozambican film industry. But, how to achieve it?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31174" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/joao_ribeiro-44.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Mônica Monteiro of Cinevideo, a Brazilian production company with an annual profit of nearly $23 million, says that Mozambique is a commercial bridge for the rest of Africa because it caters for the Lusophone market, which has close to 250 million speakers. Cinevideo’s aims are to produce films that allow consumers to identify with Mozambican productions. She believes that financing should be sought in Europe.
“The Old World consumes lots of Africa, as a result of their historic relationship.”
A taste of the money available from Europe is the program ACP Cultures+, which is destined to cultural sectors in countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, to the value of €30 million ($40 million). Funds are available until 2013, but with the current financial crisis in the Old World, it is at the brink of extinction, unless someone puts in some legwork, and quick, the diamond could lose its luster.   FL

djalma_lourenco_20121011_57-Edit-2

Lights,  Camera,  Mozambique

When the chilling images of Ernesto Nhamuave burning to death on the streets of South Africa were flashed around the world in May 2008 there were howls of pain and outrage. While the wounds are still fresh, a group of African filmmakers has risked controversy to take the harrowing story to the cinema in a film titled Man on Ground.
An unexpected hand in this project came from Rosie Motene—a lifestyle TV presenter more at home with holiday homes and cocktails on the beach than violence on the streets.
“As soon as my stint with Studio 53 was done and dusted, I approached film director Akin Omotoso of T.O.M Pictures about my interest in film production,” she says.
<div id="attachment_990" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-990" class="size-large wp-image-990" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Hakeem-and-I-682x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="712" />Hakeem and Omotoso</div>
“Akin told me about Man on Ground; the fact that he had put it on ice due to a lack of funding and asked me if I had an appetite for this kind of project and whether I’d be keen to find a way of making sure the film happened. He felt strongly about telling that story and seeing the project to completion.”
Omotoso, a Nigerian working in the South African TV and film industry, was made for the telling of filming the story of Nhamuave having endured a good deal of xenophobia himself.
“Akin and a few other colleagues had already done extensive research for Man on Ground. The storyline was done, the wish list cast had already been identified and all that was missing was funding to get the production started. We agreed that the only people that were going to get paid were the cast and crew, so we went ahead and started sourcing money to get the ball rolling,” explains Motene.
Man on Ground, a tale of terror and violence, was never going to be a box office money-spinner so Motene realized they were going to have to be creative when it came to raising money.
“We decided to try out the new ‘crowd funding’ method, despite the fact that it had never been done locally before. Crowd funding basically means that you approach the everyday man on the street, ask them to make a donation and instead of them getting a return on investment they get a credit in the movie and get to attend the premiere event once the movie is released,” she explains.
South African low budget movies cost between R3-R5 million ($366,925-$611,540) to make; Motene and her team managed to raise only R1.9 million ($232,390) through crowd funding and a few generous corporate sponsors.
“Our budget was practically a joke, considering it cost about R20 million ($2.4 million) to produce (Oscar-winning movie) Tsotsi, but we decided to start production anyway with what we had and hope for the best. We had to call in a lot of favors from family and friends, and we had to think outside the box with regard to how we were going to make the movie look like a quality production despite our obvious financial restraints,” says Motene.
“We used friends’ houses for some scenes, family members as extras and for the fire scenes we went to a place in Lenasia (South of Johannesburg), where firemen do their training by blowing up things and putting out fires.
The film took 22 days to shoot. Even though Man on Ground did not get a big cinema release, it still fared well in the accolades department. Man on Ground picked up three awards from many nominations at the African Movie Awards in Nigeria in April. It was also screened at the Cannes, Dubai and Berlin film festivals as well as at Washington University. Motene and the team have partnered with the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) and have embarked on a mission to take the movie to all corners of Africa.
“The NFVF has a very cool distribution model where they take smaller films into independent film cinemas. As soon as we are done taking the film into South African communities through screenings at churches and community halls, we will also utilize the NFVF’s resources to take it into the mining communities and other remote areas using a mobile unit that can go into the deepest and most rural of areas,” says Motene.
Man on Ground tells a story of a Nigerian investment banker living in Britain. His mother begs him to go to South Africa to look for his step-brother. He manages to overcome his hesitancy, due to some personal issues he had with his brother, to go on a journey to find him. He is caught up in xenophobic violence that results in him being burnt alive. The film stars solid actors such as Hakeem Kae-Kazeem, Fana Mokoena and Bubu Mazibuko.
“Even though there was not going to be any financial gain on my part, or anyone else who invested in the film, I felt I had to be part of this project as my way of doing something about xenophobia. I find it pathetic that even though that particular uprising was said to have been started by South Africans, the majority of the 62 lives that were lost were mainly innocent people from South Africa,” says Motene.
“What’s even more disheartening is the fact that as South Africans, we were basically turning against the very people whose countries helped us fight apartheid.”
Twenty-two days of shooting could yield food for thought for years to come.

A Shocker On A Shoestring

&nbsp;
I will go to school and study hard. I’ll be a success. I promise mama,” vows 10-year-old Lucky, at his mother’s grave. Lucky (Sihle Dlamini) gathers his few belongings, and like so many other South Africans leaves his rural Zulu village to the city.
Lucky (2011) is a poignant depiction of contemporary South African society and its problems. It explores the complex cross-cultural and racial relationships. It steers away from well-worn depictions of relations between black and white South Africans as depicted in archetypal post-apartheid South African films. The film explores the rainbow nation through relations between black and Indian South Africans. The film is in Zulu and Hindi with English subtitles.
Lucky’s arrival in the city is overshadowed by his uncle, Jabulani, (James Ngcobo) who has spent the schooling money—from the boy’s mother—on alcohol and women. He hands the boy an audio cassette with a final message from his mother. Jabulani says the youngster should make himself useful by finding a job instead. The boy sleeps hungry on the doorstep.
The film tracks the relationship between Lucky and Padma (Jayashree Basavaraj) who lives in the same building as Jabulani. She is his only hope of listening to the audio cassette. The Brahminic Indian widow, receives him with caution. She does not disguise her racial prejudices when she handles the audio cassette with a cloth and uses her walking stick to prod Lucky. The boy sleeps on her balcony, behind locked doors and drawn curtains, in a manner adopted by many South Africans in the face of poverty and guilt; Lucky is shut ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
Padma cares for the boy, but what seems to be a sudden change of heart, is actually a façade to receive a R200 government grant allocated for AIDS orphans. In return for cleaning her house, she sends him to school.
Together they undertake an emotional journey to Lucky’s village to escape from his neglectful uncle. Here they are met with the deeply-ingrained stigmas associated with AIDS, the disease which took Lucky’s mother. “Mother told me not to share food with you because you will spread the disease,” he is told by a girl from his village. Together with Padma, he goes in search of Dumisani (Vusi Kunene), a man who was believed to be dead and who might be his father. Dumisani, a funeral singer, is a constant reminder that in the midst of life we encounter death. The musical score, written by Phillip Miller, features African instruments and allows Kunene to explore his musical range.
Over time Padma’s maternal instincts overcome her Brahminic racism when she sells her belongings to help the boy. In a heart-warming scene, their bond transcends the language barrier when they talk about family, over Padma’s open family photo album.
This is award-winning writer and director, Avie Luthra’s, second feature film. It is based on the 2005 short film, by the same name, which won 47 awards. “Improvisation made the scenes and relations between the actors appear real and believable,” he says.
Willie Nel was well cast as the director of photography. The hand-held nature of the cinematography gives the film an authentic feel, allowing for a sense of voyeurism. “We wanted to strike a balance between documenting the story moments, and creating an intimate connection with our characters,” Luthra says. The camera attempts to go unnoticed, it hides behind grass, balconies, window panes and burglar bars. By doing so it simultaneously delineates the divide between characters to illustrate that understanding and compassion are needed for real reconciliation and to break down prejudice.
The film will be released on July 21 in South Africa; and is expected to be released in other parts of Africa in the coming months.

Sometimes Luck Has To Be Filmed

It takes a lot of passion and persistence to make a film in Africa. Very few succeed; many more fall by the wayside in a tough game.
Carolyn Carew, CEO and executive producer of Born Free Media (BFM), is one of the survivors with 25 hard years in the film business. It has been a lifelong love affair with film, which began when she was a child.
“We’d put up a little white sheet in the sitting room and watch movies on our 16mm projector. Around the World in 80 Days and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were among my favorite movies. We also had a local cinema in Krugersdorp, where I grew up, called the Vordet, and we used to go there every Saturday—it was like an outing for all the girls and boys.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-373" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RZ8F7858.jpg" alt="" width="784" height="768" />
Carew’s path into working in movies was more difficult. She left the University of Cape Town with a post-graduate degree and worked for 10 months as a social worker. Through her sister, Carew snuck into the film industry in 1987, as a driver on a film called African Farm.
“I would also observe on set what the first and second assistant directors did; and from there I went and applied for other jobs. I then worked as an assistant director for a few years—and that’s basically how I got in,” she says.
Carew is now established, but life on set is far from easy.
“SA is one of those countries on the continent where you get the patriarchal attitude. I think sometimes people don’t really like to take advice or take direction from a woman—so that can be quite challenging. For me it wasn’t so much the gender issue that was challenging, but the amount of hours. When I look back on my 25-year career, I think I’ve worked an average of 14 to 15 hours a day, a good six to seven days a week. It’s been an incredible commitment that one has had to put into it. SA’s has got a competitive edge; we’ve got very good crews here, very good locations and we’ve got very good equipment. On average per year, we service at least 10 to 15 feature films—big ones; and about five or six co-productions,” she says.
Money remains the industry’s greatest problem.
“It would be the most amazing thing if we could get local individuals, people who have money and want to invest in cinema, to invest in the film industry. I think a lot of the time, the risks can outweigh the profits, so people don’t really want to invest in film. It’s quite a challenge,” says Carew.
Taking advantage of the Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) relationship is another way to build and grow SA’s film industry, Carew says. South Africa already has a co-production treaty with India, but not with China and Brazil. “I think if we could find a way even within those four countries to exploit our content, we’d be able to achieve a lot because therein lies a huge industry.”
She reckons the markets where South African or African products could do better are Europe, some parts of Asia, India and Latin America.
Carew is at the legacy stage of her career.  She helped to found the Newtown Film School in Johannesburg in 1992, and has won several awards. Her most memorable achievement was in 2007, when BFM won Best Director for the TV drama series, When We Were Black, at the South African Film and TV awards. Recently, BFM won the Amnesty International Award for Human Rights for a documentary called The Life and Times of Robert Sobukwe.
Despite the industry being so tough, Carew says she would encourage her son to follow in her footsteps.
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With three feature films in the pipeline, her life’s work is film, and with it, the hope that one day an Oscar for Africa will shine through the financial worries and long hours.
Many drift into making movies, including Carew, but for Kutlwano Ditsele, it was all he ever wanted to do.
“My mother says she stopped watching television with me when I was about nine years old because I was already spotting things that people wouldn’t normally see. By the time I was 11, I had more VHS tapes than I had toys; I even started building towers with my tapes, that’s how many I had,” he says.
It was also tough getting his mother to support his choice of career.
“My mom knew how difficult the industry was, so she didn’t want me to pin all my hopes on film knowing that a lot of people don’t make it; she wanted me to have security,” Ditsele says.
First he went to study public relations at Varsity College, and media at Boston Media House. But because his heart wasn’t in it, it wasn’t long before he applied to the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles to follow his dream. Ditsele then worked at a Johannesburg production company before co-founding Ripple Films in December 2010. He believes it can tell the great untold African stories.
“The first stories were told in Africa; we love telling and hearing stories. We no longer sit around fires and tell stories; the fires have now become the screens. I think we’ll be telling stories for a very long time to come in Africa; filmmakers will always have jobs. The main thing is finding a way to get the original stories out there.”
But this is proving to be difficult. For many people, African stories live in soap operas, where the viewership figures are high.
“The key is to get those people who are sitting and watching soap operas to sit in the cinema. South Africa doesn’t have a cinema-going culture and due to our small industry, our institutions don’t have the liberty to take as much risk as Hollywood.”
Ditsele says the African film industry needs to take more risks, but all too often creative freedom is choked by cautious investors.
“Our biggest problem here is we have too many people telling us what the audiences want and what we should do. They say, ‘This guy made a movie like this and it did well; you should make a movie like that guy too.’ No variety will come out of that and audiences will end up watching the same thing over and over again.”
“I still have the opportunity to live and make films in Los Angeles, but I choose to stay here because of the promise and the talent that the South African industry has. I think we have what it takes to get to the Nolly, Bolly or Hollywood level. Sticking to our guns, knowing exactly what we want to do and not giving up is what will get us there. You also need to find mentors – and don’t be arrogant; take notes.”
Ditsele believes it is also all about distribution.
“You can make the next City of God or Avatar, but if you don’t have distribution, it means nothing. Our own distributers don’t play our films enough because of quality control. But as it is, we don’t have enough films, and the two or so films that we do make are screened for a week and then taken off because X-Men is coming out,” he says.
For Ditsele the challenge is to make an African film that is better than X-Men.

Film In Africa? Be Ready To Strive And Suffer

This is the story of businessman Ronnie Apteker, his money and his expensive passion. A man sharp enough to get in early on the internet boom in Africa’s biggest economy; a man wise enough to have sold out before the market became crowded, three years later, for $55 million. He doesn’t know how much he is worth, but does admit he never has to work again.
This is also a man who has lost nearly $7 million in 11 years, chasing the elusive dream of fathering a blockbuster movie.
“I would be far wealthier if I had done nothing for the last 11 years, but my life has been richer for the risks I have taken… I love story telling. I love magic and I love trying to inspire people,” he says.
This month will see the release of a film he thinks is a winner that will compensate for the years of pain and losses. It is a low-budget film called Material, set in the gritty inner-city district of Fordsburg in Johannesburg and starring South African stand-up comedian Riaad Moosa. He says it could be a cheap and cheerful international hit like Bend it Like Beckham or Billy Elliot.
It all started in the early 1970s in Cape Town, when Apteker’s father won a 16mm film projector in a game of backgammon. From then on, Sunday night was film night at the Aptekers.
“The whole neighbourhood in Cape Town used to come in and see them. You remember those leather cases with the handles. In our rented house we used to watch Dirty Harry, The Dirty Dozen, The Guns of Navarone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I grew up in a movie-watching home. I watched more movies by the time I was 13 than most people watch by the time they are 30,” he says.
Apteker’s working life took a different turn. It was the internet, not movies, that became his bread and butter. In 1993, he founded Internet Solutions in the days when 99.9% of South Africans didn’t know even what it was.
“People used to phone us and say the internet is broken, or they used to ask who they can email. I used to give them my email address and they used to email me because they had no one else to email!” he laughs.
The internet made Apteker a fortune before he was 30. Then he tried a much harsher business—movies.
“If you build a cheap house, you can sell it for half price and get some money back. If you make a bad movie, you may not sell one ticket and lose everything. You can even end up owing money. It is not a normal business, it’s like a casino.”
Apteker started writing scripts in 1996 and the first film came in 2000—a 95-minute movie shot in Los Angeles called Purpose, the tale of the battle for the soul of a young entrepreneur working in California’s Silicon Valley.
“A lot of people said it reminded them of The Social Network, but sadly, it wasn’t as good,” says Apteker.
The film didn’t do well. It cost $8 million and Apteker was lucky enough to claw back $3 million by selling it to distributors Lakeshore International.
A string of homegrown movies with limited success followed, including: Jerusalema, The Flyer and Crazy Monkey: Straight Outta Benoni.
Fast forward to the latest offering, Material, starring South African comic flavor-of-the-month, Moosa. In many ways, the film mirrors his own life. In a nutshell, Material is the story of a father who wants his son to stick to his day job—that is, running the family store—instead of telling jokes on stage.
In real life, Moosa also gave his day job the slip. He trained as a doctor at the University of Cape Town and carried out his internship at Natalspruit Hospital, near Johannesburg, before settling down to practise as a GP in Cape Town for a couple of years.
The draw of the stage proved too strong and in the evenings, Moosa was cracking around the small theatres of the Western Cape. He had no illusions and already knew what it felt like to “die”—as the actors say—on stage.
“It used to happen a lot when I was younger. The most difficult time was when I was doing magic in high school. It was comedy magic. I had studied at the College of Magic in Cape Town. I was supposed to make a ball fly across the stage—there was a wire involved. There was a dude taking photos with flash and every time the flash went off, you could see the washing line across the stage. I was trying to make it dramatic and it was obvious. I heard one little girl say: ‘There is a wire there, mum!’ At that moment, I thought ‘I had another eight minutes to go of this sham.”
Material is Moosa’s first foray into film and he identifies with his character. “I am really proud of it. I think when people watch, they will laugh and cry. They will be challenged.”
So what happens if Moosa makes it to Hollywood and the big time? He pledges not to let success go to his head.
“What is this fame thing? One minute you are normal, the next minute you are shaving your head on the cover of Heat magazine. One minute you are normal, the next you are getting an 18-year-old pregnant. I prefer driving home at night and getting shouted at by my wife… I shouldn’t let it go to my head; I think through medicine you face reality head on.”
Apteker believes any success would be a good thing and refuses to give up his movie quest, whatever the cost.
“It is an obsession. I have got to get this right. It is like you either get this right or die trying. There is no middle ground in love, there is no middle ground in art. There is no middle ground when you are an entrepreneur—you either win or go home in a coffin,”  he says.
<h3>Well, Is It Any Good?</h3>
There is mistrust when it comes to homegrown cinema. Everyone has waited long for the great African movie—maybe, just maybe, Material is it. So says Rea Bantseke, who went to the preview screening in Sandton, near Johannesburg.
The story is simple. A young Muslim man wants to become a stand-up comedian, but has to do it behind his family’s back because it clashes with their culture. The movie examines clearly the struggle of a Muslim family to uphold its traditions in 21st century South Africa.
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I was looking for the mistakes and the glitches, but there was nothing. The movie is shot beautifully and it makes you feel like you are part of the family. The story flows and is well told.
Everyone will have something that they can identify with in this movie. It will make you laugh, it will make you question, it will bring a tear to your eye.
This unique movie is hard to classify as a genre because it fuses drama, romance and comedy. It is likely to appeal to all ages. Material will leave you with hope that if this story can see the light of day, there must be many more.
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Tag: cinema

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