Lights, camera...action

Capetonians have never had it so good. Those homeowners who swallow hard and rent their homes out to foreign film crews can earn three months' mortgage payments for suffering a week's occupation by sparks, gaffers, best boys, clappers and loaders. It's the price they pay for jumping on the filmmaking bandwagon that grows more crowded by the day as directors and producers from Singapore to New York flock to South Africa to cash in on the weak rand, the country's spectacular locations and the local industry's technical proficiency.

It started in Cape Town, but foreign filmmakers are now also discovering the benefits of South Africa's other centres, and Durban and Johannesburg are quickly finding favour with location directors the world over.

Co-ordinating the wave of filmmakers wanting to use the city and its environs for commercials, features and documentaries is the Cape Town Film Office. They have granted over 2,000 licenses so far this season to such productions as the Swedish version of Fear Factor that called for low-flying helicopters and cars being blown up on a main city street, a music video for British pop group Atomic Kittens and a slew of documentaries.

Why the rush to make movies and commercials in South Africa? "Everything's so cheap here, and it seems to be getting cheaper," says Reggie Chew, Singapore CEO of Euro RSCG Partnership, a production house specialising in high-budget commercials. Chew first tried Cape Town as a shooting location three years ago and since then his company has returned 15 times, so impressed was he with the "very professional" South African film crews.

RAND GIVES SA THE EDGE

Of course, the carrot that draws foreign movie-makers to South Africa is the way pounds and dollars translate into many rands and makes making movies unbelievably cheap. Much of the production budget can be paid in local currency: equipment hire, processing and some post-production, crew and cast accommodation, extras and locations.

"Being part of the New York-based Havas Group, (a $13bn turnover communications operation) we can make commercials wherever we want," says Chew. "But Cape Town offers superior service in all elements, despite being a long-haul destination. New Zealand and Australia are equally competitive and very attractive, but the rand has given South Africa the edge."

Meiki Laesch, owner of the local Navigator film house, insists that the weak rand is only part of South Africa's appeal to the international movie industry. "The SA industry offers excellent sites, experienced crews and world-class production," he maintains. "And South African directors are in demand world-wide. What our clients like is our ability to handle absolutely everything from visa applications before they arrive, to every local need and a safari holiday at the end of the shoot."

JUMP IN REVENUE

The foreign film boom has a welcome spin-off for the elderly. Pensioners are crowding casting agencies to register as extras and can earn upwards of 8500 a day simply for being in the crowd scenes. Cape Town model agencies are having a field day, their revenue having jumped from R40m a year in 1997 to over R100m this year. Although hard and fast data is hard to come by, industry heads reckon that revenue accruing to Cape Town film businesses alone will top R2bn this year.

Boom time for the movie business means excitement, work and healthy bank balances for local models. Paola de Vito, spokeswoman for SAs National Association of Model Agencies, says her industry has grown from obscurity to one of Cape Town's biggest in 10 years. "The stream of international clients coming here in summer to make films, advertisements and so on has tremendous benefits for our local talent and gives them wonderful exposure," she says.

Martin Cuff of the Cape Film Commission agrees. "An indication is that turnover for the 15 members of the SA Association of Still Producers has jumped from R40m a year to R100m annually in the past five years. But the inflow of foreign capital goes much further. For example, every SAASP member spends about Rl.6m a year on hotel accommodation, 8650,000 on car hire and 8620,000 on restaurants and catering." The average expenditure on a small photographic shoot is about 8350,000.

The filmmaker's world is much larger than life and they revel in hype. What you see is not necessarily what you get. Illusions are the name of the game.

"Precisely," says Sandra Gordon, former head of Sasani Studios in Cape Town. She is on record as saying that although the industry has massive potential, it is still "small and parochial", facing competition from outside and problems from within. She concedes that the city is experiencing a boom in producing advertising commercials, but it is stagnating in the bigger, more important feature work. "South Africa has not seen a major feature film produced here since mid1998," she says. "We have seen a stagnant smaller feature film market since then. This applies to local and international feature film work:"

Gordon's views were backed by the judges at the recent Apollo Awards, South Africa's version of the Cannes Film Festival. A distinguished local adjudicating panel agreed that feature-length films are not yet South Africa's strong point and that its strengths lie in the genre of short film and documentary. Accordingly, the panel made no award for Best Feature Film, 2002. "This is a symptom of the fact that making a feature film takes time," the judges said, "and next year could look quite different."

The fact that few big budget films are being made in South Africa skews the real picture, according to Cuff. "A number of international features are finished in South Africa, many of them in Cape Town. We get few total productions; we tend to get the second unit stuff here, and smaller films. We don't get the $100m productions, we get the $4m ones. We fit very nicely into the movie of the week niche. The rest will come."

Eddie Mbalo, CEO of the SA National Film and Video Foundation is another player in the industry who avoids looking through a rose-- coloured viewfinder. He maintains that South Africa's film and video industry, despite its more than 100 years of existence, has not established itself as an international force and source of national pride.

"Our film past is riddled with shaky schemes and strategies conceived by coarse thinkers and viewed through crusty lenses," he says. The Foundation is a statutory body set up by the government to broadly promote and develop the film and video industry.

INDIA'S MOVIE MOGULS EYEING DURBAN

Bollywood, South African style, is just around the corner promises one of India's foremost actor/producers, Amitabh Bachchan. Known as "Mr Bollywood", Bachchan is leading a star-studded troupe of India's best-known singers and actors for a onenight concert in Durban and this, he says, will set the trend for large-scale movie investment in the province of KwaZuluNatal, of which Durban is the biggest city. In Bachchan's entourage to take a first hand look at Durban as a movie Mecca are superstars Hrihik Roshan, Aamir Khan, Sha Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Karishma Kapoor.

The idea of promoting the province for filmmaking has the blessing and support of KwaZulu-Natal's Department of Economic Development and Tourism and is negotiating the possibility of opening an office in India to develop and sustain the initiative. South Africa filmmakers and suppliers have arrived in Mumbai to secure potential movie projects for the region and establish links with the Indian film industry.

The recent Indian Film Festival in Mumbai, however, has come under fire from critics for what they say is the blatant plagiarism of Hollywood hits. Movie industry watchers Debashine Thangevelo and Farook Khan report that the Hindi film Awara Pagala Deewana appears based on The Whole Nine Yards, Humaraaz seems a version of A Perfect Murder while Chor Machaaye Shor is a Blue Streak look alike.

Indian filmmakers defend such adaptations. "The talented director is one who can adapt a Hollywood film video into a successful Hindi movie," maintains director Kundan Shah. "We imbibe ideas from one of the most crassly commercial places in the world." Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt agrees. "It's only entertainment, for heaven's sake," he says. "It's not some high art form to be worshipped with incense and hymns."

Karina Malan, a director in the Johannesburg-based intellectual property rights law firm, DM Kisch, says South Africans should avoid being so cavalier with other people's scripts. "All works of this kind are protected in terms of the copyright act;' she points out. "Any translation or adaptation of a film script may render someone liable for copyright infringement. Nobody can legally simply take a script, translate it and produce it as their own. Copyright encompasses a bundle of rights and a script would qualify for protection as a literary work."

Local producers, directors and writers say South Africa need not follow the copycat trend. "There's plenty of original, creative talent here;' they say. One such is Durban's Prialoshini Pillay, who made her writing and directorial debut with the box-office pleaser, Naalai, South Africa's first Tamil movie. Pillay is now working on her second production, The Lost City, and hopes to sign up such Hollywood veterans as Bruce Willis and Nicholas Cage. "It's an action and comedy movie," she discloses, "and I'm writing it with Willis and Cage in mind!

There's little doubt that the government is beginning to see the financial advantages that could flow to the exchequer from a vigorous movie industry.

Tax expert Doelie de Bruin maintains moviemaking in South Africa is casting aside its reputation as a doubtful risk, thanks in large measure to the SA Revenue Service. Several film investments that went sour in the 1980s subsequently made finding money difficult. The "very generous income tax allowances that the tax laws then permitted" were flagrantly abused and this inevitably resulted in a crackdown by tax authorities that sent investors scurrying. Twenty years later, the situation in the industry has changed for the better and the tax man is once again looking kindly on the way that investment and return in the movie business is taxed. New tax laws are offering a number of attractive benefits for people who invest in stage and movie projects.