Page 56 - IDC

n eventful four-day journey from Cape
Town to Johannesburg with her family led
film maker Lwazi Mvusi to write and
ultimately direct her first feature film.
The road trip through the Karoo, which
A became a comedy of errors, prompted the
now 29-year-old to ponder whether she could write a script
in which the stark landscape featured as a character.
And so Farewell Ella Bella, now showing at selected
cinemas, was born. It was brought to life with the help of
funding from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC),
the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), and the
department of trade and industry. In Upcoming Free Women
“We had never driven through the Karoo before. We had Features productions:
always taken the Garden Route because we had family in partnership . Get Happiness, in development,
Durban and in the Eastern Cape. We wanted to get home as with Lwazi Mvusi writing and
quickly as possible, but ended up stopping in Beaufort West with the directing
and Kimberley for the craziest reasons,” Mvusi says. . Co-production with Myd88 films,
“All the characters and things that happened in the film, Wild is the Wind, with Fabian Medea
versions of them happened on the trip. Like before we got IDC writing and directing
to Kimberley, all the petrol just evaporated from the car and . French/SA co-production,
we were stranded on the side of the road. My stepdad had Ameeklan, is a drama for TV
to hitchhike to a petrol station. Then a sand storm went . Canadian/SA co-production, TUM,
through the garage. Insane things happened on this trip that John Barker directs
I thought only happened in movies.”
Mvusi says she had not seen many films that told stories
about that part of the country “that weren’t Afrikaans films;
that showed all the different sides of that landscape in terms
of geography, demographics, people, places and languages”.
“That was why we went to Beaufort West and Kimberley,
and shot that landscape and those parts,” she says.
Fast forward several years and Farewell Ella Bella –
starring seasoned actors Sello Maake Ka-Ncube, Katlego
Danke, Mary-Anne Barlow and Jay Anstey – is doing well on
circuit and receiving great reviews from audiences.
“It’s a very different kind of story that they’re seeing
compared to the usual stuff in cinemas for South African
audiences. They’re appreciating that and seeing the actors
they know from television in a different light,” Mvusi says.
Mvusi was in her mid-20s when she shot the film, her first
feature-length production, but she didn’t allow her youth
and relative inexperience to get the better of her on set.
“I don’t think about my age too much because, if you do,
you psych yourself out. You kind of think about the job that
needs to be done, and these are the people who are
entrusting themselves to you, and you need to show up and
you need to do your job. There isn’t a lot of space to have
lots of feelings about this,” she says.
Mvusi co-owns Free Women Features, the company that
produced the film, with producer Tsholo Mashile.
Mashile is also the business partner of Farewell Ella
Bella’s executive producer, Carolyn Carew, who says the
film’s stellar cast members were “extremely respectful of
Lwazi” and “the way she engaged with them”.
“They are very seasoned and, for a new director, this is
very intimidating. But they respected her hugely and
worked with her to get the performances she was looking
for,” says Carew. HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION NOW Lwazi Mvusi has worked as a writer for several sitcoms and dramas for South African television, and was a story editor for
Mvusi’s path to this point has taken almost five years. She the telenovela Broken Vows PHOTO: ELIZABETH SEJAKE
was introduced to Free Women Features in 2013 when the
NFVF put out a call to train women writer-directors, and
Carew and Mashile were given three of those productions to
oversee. The road trip
Mvusi’s ensuing short film, The State, travelled to New
York and showed at a few festivals.
Then, in late 2015, a call went out from the IDC and the
NFVF to submit proposals to the Emerging Black
Filmmakers Transformation Fund, and Carew and Mashile
asked Mvusi if she had a script. She gave them Farewell Ella
Bella, which she wrote for her master’s thesis.
Four months later, they were called to pitch the project to
the IDC, the department of trade and industry and film well travelled
distributors, and were given the go-ahead – and a
R5.2 million budget.
Carew says the IDC and the NFVF have worked out a
formula for South African low-budget films through which
they can recoup the money through cinema, license deals
and video-on-demand deals. A sum of R1.8 milion of the
total is a grant from the department. It took five years for Free Women Features’ Lwazi Mvusi to see
“You’re basically looking at R3.8 million that you have to
make back. But because of distribution and exhibition, you
actually have to make two and a half times your budget her debut feature film hit the big screen. However, the movie’s
before you break even; before you make money as a
producer. Then you’re also paying for print and advertising business journey is far from over, writes Nicki Gules
and a digital fee, at R8 500 per cinema,” Carew says.
“About R5.2 million is a good budget. Obviously, it is
always nice to have a bit more. It’s tight, so you can only
shoot for 24 days. That’s why the stories must be fairly
contained. All the interiors of Farewell Ella Bella were
filmed in Joburg. We spent three weeks in Joburg and one
week on the road.”
Carew says the local film industry generates R4.2 billion
for the country’s gross domestic product and the indirect
expenditure amounts to R15.9 billion.
“South Africa has a very vibrant industry and the IDC
recognises that. The IDC partnering with the NFVF and the
department of trade and industry on the Emerging Black
Filmmakers Transformation Fund allows new voices to
come into the industry and new films to be seen,” she says.
“To raise finance to make a feature film takes a long time.
It is considered high risk, so you don’t have venture
capitalists or people in the financial sector who invest. The
IDC and the role it is playing here with the NFVF and the
department in terms of the black emerging scheme is very,
very critical. It has also allowed black women directors to
come out of it, which there haven’t been before in cinema.”
Unlike the film industry in Nigeria, a country with a
population of 170 million, South African producers, with an
“incredibly small cinema-going audience”, must rely on
sales in international markets to break even, says Carew.
“We have an international sales agent and they will take
the film to festivals and to markets, like Cannes and
Toronto, and sell it on to the rest of the world. That is
where you make your money back,” she says, adding that it
will take at least a year for Mvusi and Mashile to begin to
turn a profit. IN CHARGE Lwazi Mvusi with Sello Maake Ka-Ncube and Jay Anstey during the filming of Farewell Ella Bella (left), and talking about her passion for making movies
Mvusi says being a 50% stakeholder in the company that
produced the film made her a lot more conscious about the MVUSI’S ADVICE FOR YOUNG “I wasn’t the most likely to succeed coming out of
costs involved: “It has taught me a lot. I’m involved in every Don’t stop. BLACK WOMEN DIRECTORS film school, but I refused to let that be my story. Take
phase of this film’s life.” everything that comes along. Don’t turn up your nose
Mvusi, who fell in love with cinema as a four-year-old “People look at me and think that,for this to happen at things because you don’t know where they’re going
watching The Lion King, has other projects in the pipeline, this quickly, I got everything I applied. There were a to lead you.
including a romantic comedy and a daring women-centred Don’t stop lot of things that I applied for that I did not get. There “There were many people with me at film school
action comedy, both of which she is writing and will direct. were many rejections along the way. I learnt in film who would say, ‘I’m not doing that. That’s not enough
How do her parents – mum Nosipho and stepfather Eddie school that you give people the ability to stop you money for me’, or ‘That’s not good enough’, but I
– feel about the fact that the film inspired by their disastrous trying from getting what you want. would take it and it led to this film. I can literally
road trip has made it to the big screen? “If someone tells you that you are not meant for draw a line of how it happened. Those classmates are
“They’re excited. They get very shiny every time I talk something, but you know you are, keep going. Keep now doing advertising. Or supervising things.
about it and say that’s where it came from,” Mvusi says. fighting, because someone will take it from you if you “The film industry is so not glamorous, but I wanted
let them. They will go and live your dream for you. it. It’s not easy, but there’s nothing else I’d rather do.”
The IDC financing process in 5 s teps 4 5 The SBU undertakes a d ue

R1 million or more for entrepreneurs for new businesses or expansions diligence process. If the plan
Appli- meets all the requirements,
The potential 1 All business 2 If it falls within 3 cations the money is transferred
client drops off plans are the mandate, the that Agroprocessing Industrial Chemicals Textiles Heavy Light manufacturing The rest of
their business registered PIBC allocates pass and agriculture infrastructure and clothing manufacturing and tourism Africa
plan at the IDC's by the it to a m anager the
Pre-Investment records to begin basic assessment
Business Centre (PIBC) at departement screening as process are forwarded
19 Friedman Ave, Sandown, and part o f t he basic for review to one of
or at one of the IDC's r egional screened for assessment the 13 strategic Metals and New Automotive a nd Media and
Chemical
provincial offices a m andate process business units (SBU's) mining industries transport audiovisual Machinery a nd products and
capital
equipment equipment pharmaceuticals Graphics24