Talks with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) over the future of the film industry have broken down for the third time, the Save SA Film and TV Jobs Coalition has confirmed.
At issue is the DTIC’s Film and Television Production Incentive, which seemingly remains dormant.
The Coalition is now calling on the Presidency to intervene, saying correspondence to Minister Parks Tau remains unanswered.
It also plans to report the breakdown in talks to Parliament.
The organisation, an alliance of 18 industry bodies representing the organised film and TV sector, reports that the seven-day window it gave the Minister to remedy the situation, has now expired.
“The industry is left to ask how a working relationship with the Department is to be maintained when its correspondence is not responded to”, the Coalition says in a statement.
It refers to an agreement it signed with the Department on 10 August, which outlined the way forward for the two parties to work together to reopen the film incentive programme and address a backlog of applications.
Stephen Grootes speaks to a member of the Coalition, Michael Auret, who is MD of Spier Films.
Auret points out that countries all over the world have this kind of film incentive, which provides a certain percentage of spend back to producers when they spend that money in a particular country.
“So, when people from London, Paris, Los Angeles or wherever they are, look where they’re going to spend their money in production, they can take their choice of multiple incentives around the world and they go for the ones that match, that also have crews and locations.”
“Also for local people who do international co-production, it means that they can go to local investors and say, ‘we’ve got 30% of the finance raised’ and then we add maybe money from the National Film and Video Foundation or from MultiChoice, and you can begin to start to finance productions.”
Auret says South Africa’s incentive scheme ran effectively with a very competitive rebate from the early 2000s until about 2019, when it stalled.
“The wheels just fell off and, honestly, haven’t been put back on.”
As a result, local productions that once drew international investment have shrunk dramatically, with an estimated R3.8 billion in foreign funding lost since the Covid pandemic.
The uncertainty also threatens thousands of jobs across the industry.
To hear more detail from Auret, listen to the interview audio at the top of the article
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