The Film Industry South African cinema is on the boil, with quality films on the way. Southern African film and television producers have been capitalising on a world-wide interest in dramas and documentaries with African themes. The film subsidy policies of the past which were frequently abused by tax freeloaders nonetheless promoted the establishment of a large pool of skilled technicians and crew. The same applies to Canadian productions that use South Africans.
Discussions are under way with France, Australia and Britain.
The treaty was signed at a ceremony in Cape Town during South Africa's second annual Film and Television Market, a major initiative in developing the local industry. The past year has seen much remarkable groundwork laid for a viable future for local film and television production. And most industry players agree, or fervently hope, that by the millennium South Africa will have a self-supporting film industry producing quality films that international audiences want to see. The two became the first companies investing heavily in film and television production to be listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The government is firmly behind a viable local movie industry, allocating more than R10-million in the past few months to projects ranging from script development to documentary and feature production.