By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
African film rebirth: not so fast
Reuters reports some glitches in increasing local auds for African films: “A tiny fraction of Africans visit the cinema and Hollywood glamour is pointless if the industry fails to build a local audience by taking distinctly African films to people… in townships, slums and villages… “We need to make films that speak to black people, not some nebulous international audience,” said Mark Dornford-May, director of award-winning South African film U-Carmen eKhayelitsha. “And we need to find alternatives to shopping mall cinemas in smart suburbs.” The director’s film, “a remake of Georges Bizet’s 19th century opera set in a tough South African township and translated into the African tongue-clicking language Xhosa [premiered] at a community center in Khayelitsha” and “was screened in townships across the country at less than a third of the price of a normal cinema ticket. In South Africa, the continent’s economic powerhouse that is driving its much-vaunted movie revival, the sprawling black townships on the edge of the big cities have virtually no cinemas.” Transportation to the “posher suburbs, whose vast shopping malls are home to almost all the country’s movie theaters are poor” as well. A local entrepreneur, 25-year-old Ryan Thwaits “was tired of battling tiny, mostly white, audiences and decided to create his own cinemas by converting township shacks. Thwaits lured 11,000 cinemagoers a month to watch Hollywood action and romantic comedy mixed with local films… “The community loved it,” said Thwaits, who aims to roll out 10 more shack cinemas in the townships surrounding Cape Town by the end of the year.”