A car chase too far: What SA film can’ t learn from Hollywood
CONTROVERSY by �����������
A scriptwriting system named Sediba has scuppered creativity in cinema in South Africa.
An American( played by Fast & Furious’ s Paul Walker) picks up a rental car on arrival in South Africa. He drives through ������������������������������������������� as a Mad Max movie, or District 9. A phone rings in his cubbyhole. He answers it. Shock! He has stumbled into some kind of intrigue. He’ s picked up the wrong car. The voice on the phone is Afrikaans, and the speaker is clearly about to become his adversary. The back seat pops down and a black woman, tied and gagged, rolls out. There it is: this American will have to save the black South African from the white Afrikaner. There will be car chases, there will be poverty as backdrop, there might even be room for an interracial romance.
������������������������������������������������������ ���������������������������������������������������������� roadkill would, perhaps, not be surprising had it come from American minds but Vehicle 19 is a South African product, and to examine its lineage is to see the false dichotomies and disingenuous representations that have been hampering the idea of cinema in South Africa since the National Film and Video Foundation’ s( NFVF’ s) development initiative, Sediba, was devised in 2005.
Vehicle 19 is produced by Ryan Haidarian and Eddie Mbalo is the executive producer. Both are formerly of the ���������������������������������������������������� in South Africa. Mbalo headed up the organisation ���������������������������������������������������� division, and then the new ventures division. Both left in 2011 to start a new venture, Forefront Media Group. And both are the subject of an interesting interview conducted during their time at the NFVF for a 2010 University of ������������������������������������������������������ The representation and mediation of national identity in ������������������������������������������������������
������������������ ������� ��� �� ���������� ����� ��� ���� state of cinema in South Africa. One of the main concerns she raises is the NFVF’ s emphasis on“ commercial success and economic sustainability, since as Haidarian notes, unlike the state system in France where the purpose is to develop culture, in South Africa, the state is investing in this sector of the economy because they think that this could be a real driver of the economy”.
She goes on to quote Mbalo as saying“ it is good for ����������������������������������������������������������� stories that can travel”. By“ stories that can travel”, Mbalo �����������������������������������������������������������
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Recently, the NFVF commissioned a report from ��������� ��� ���� ������ �������� ���� ���������� ������ outlines a number of positive developments. Much of the audited data in the report is taken from the department of trade and industry( DTI), which manages the rebates and incentives to the industry that are largely responsible for the fact that feature ������������������������������������������������������ The report notes that the industry contributes around ������������� ��� ��������������� ������ ��������� ��������� that it created more than 15 000 jobs last year and �����������������������������������������������������
What the report doesn’ t say is that many of the
28 | WGSA MAG June 2013