By David Jenkin

We’re still an attractive destination for foreign film-makers, I perceive. Do you think government is doing enough from their side to ensure that remains the case?

South Africa is a very attractive destination for film-makers and for film-making and that is evident by the number of inter-independent and big Hollywood films being shot in South Africa. I think South Africa or the South African government continues to provide film incentives both for local film-makers and for people wanting to do co-productions in South Africa. I think that more could be done from a positioning perspective around the film commissions and how they market the incentives and South Africa as a destination, as a whole.

How big a problem is the brain-drain for our local industry? What sort of skills are easily snapped up overseas?

The brain-drain, like most industries, can be a problem. The weak Rand obviously makes it easy for people to want to go overseas and earn foreign currency. I think that South Africa’s film crews are highly skilled and a number of technical and production crew and people can be snapped up overseas. I don’t think that’s always a bad thing because it’s important that people get as much exposure as possible as long as they come back and then invest that back into the local film-making economy.

Overall, what is the most glaring challenge we face and is there any kind of solution in the works?

The most glaring challenge is a lack of audience development, in a sense that very few South Africans watch South African films and South African content. It makes it very difficult for local films to be financed if there’s in fact no audience to watch it.

So a lot of effort has to be put into developing audiences in South Africa and trying to change the narrative and the brand positioning of what local films are within the South African film audiences’ mind.

It’s commonly perceived that South African films are unfairly under-publicized – do you agree?

Yes, it’s very hard for South African films to find their voice and to be publicised in the same way that international films are.

It’s important that we try to interact with global players in the media industry and the film industry to try and create as much publicity as we can around these films, and local film makers need to think about shooting films, and scripts and stories that can resonate with audiences all over the world and not just South African audiences. Think that will help to grow the pool of media coverage that they are able to achieve.

As race and language in SA fragments the market, it must be a challenge to tell a “South African” story and achieve the widest appeal – what are your thoughts on that? Is there a tendency to play it safe and focus on those smaller, almost captive audiences, or is that just what the market dictates?

The Afrikaans film industry does a very good job of understanding its audience and producing films and content that is easily consumed by that Afrikaans audience. The Afrikaans audience supports them internally and it becomes a virtual circle in that respect.

As a film producer, you need to think hard and fast about finding a - I wouldn’t necessarily say a niche market for your film or a fragmented market - but I think there are things that make us similar beyond language, race and nationality. I think there are a number of sub-cultures within a global world that people from many different backgrounds all share and tapping into those sub-cultures that transcend boundaries of race, class, culture and even nationality will mean a successful film or a not successful film.

So I think it is important that people have to think differently around their audiences.

What is your hope for the future of the SA film industry – there’s cause for optimism, right?

Yes, there is a lot of cause for optimism. We are producing more and more films. We are producing high quality films and we are an attractive film destination for other people. The opportunity for us is to produce films and use the incentives and the opportunities that we have in the South African film industry to produce films for the rest of the world, and not only ourselves.

As a creative content and production agency, we position ourselves as storytellers for a connected world because I think that the multitude of distribution platforms make it more and more fragmented but also more and more easy to connect with audiences all over the world.

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