Growing A Film Service Culture
This year marks the 15-year anniversary of the establishment of the Durban Film Office (DFO), the eThekwini Municipality’s film industry development unit.
“The film industry is not merely about the creative process and end product, there is an entire value chain that benefits from it: from locations and infrastructure, logistics and services, hospitality and catering, post production and distribution amongst other things,†said Toni Monty, Head of the Durban Film Office.
The DFO was established in 2003 by the eThekwini Municipality as a sector development office is mandated to promote and support the development of local film and television industry in Durban. The DFO has spearheaded several developmental programmes to build capacity and awareness of the local industry, one of these being the Ethekwini Filmmakers Association (EFA) in 2011.
A Micro Budget Film Fund was established in 2012 and provides emerging filmmakers with an opportunity to produce their first film within a mentoring environment. The DFO has supported 25 micro-budget producers, and 12 films have been completed with others still in production.
The DFO established its Development Fund, designed to assist intermediate and professional filmmakers to package film projects for the broader market and increase capacity to attract production funding from provincial and national funding agencies and private investors. The programme has worked with eight projects, two of which are completed and the other six are still in development.
The DFO has developed a Location Scout Service, to further incentivise local and foreign productions to scout Durban as a potential location for their next project. ‘SCOUT’ is a programme to provide and develop local location scouts and expose young and previously disadvantaged filmmakers to the business of location scouting and eventually full location management.
In 2009, the DFO established a highly successful market access programme, the Durban FilmMart (DFM), in partnership with the Durban International Film Festival. The DFM is an African co-production market that aims to promote collaboration between Durban-South Africa, Durban-Africa and the global markets.
The market provides opportunities for emerging, intermediate and professional level filmmakers, and this year celebrates its 10th edition in July 2019 alongside the celebration of 40 years of the Durban International Film Festival.
The DFM has worked with more than 200 projects in development with countless success stories such as Five Fingers For Marseilles, Alison, Inxeba (The Wound), Train of Salt and Sugar (the latter two were SA’s and Mozambique’s official selection for Oscar consideration) amongst many others.
The DFO and DFM has formed strong partnerships with “sister city†festivals in Nantes (3 Continent Festival) and the International Film Festival of Rotterdam; festivals and markets such as Berlinale, Hotdocs Canada and Caribbean Tales Canada, Sundance Film Festival (USA), International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (Netherlands), and funding and investment agencies such as National Film and Video Foundation, Westgro and Department of Trade and Industry. Going forward the DFM has upcoming relations with the Motion Picture Association and in 2018 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the DFO and the KZN Film Commission to ensure good intergovernmental cooperation and programme synergies.
