This work began taking shape in 1992 as my chosen career as a film archivist at the National Film, Video and Sound Archives began to step up a gear with me starting to assist the public with enquiries. While I was busy with that, both our local film industry and apartheid were busy dying: the former due to the subsidy film scandal which had torn our film industry apart and South Africa’s apartheid system which was thankfully destroying itself from within.
I then decided to start compiling a history of our film industry, first in long hand, then on a typewriter and finally on a computer in order to supply clients with accurate and up to date information on the film releases and events in our history: what I started then is in your hands now.
I make no apologies for my dislike of certain film genres – e.g., the anti-South African genre of films made by foreign filmmakers who chose to ignore issues in their own countries and focus on South Africa instead – and I make no apologies for the fact that my favourite movies chapter ignores most of the films written about ad nauseum by other writers and instead focuses on films I actually liked even though three of them – Laser Mission, The Demon and Mercenary For Justice – are notoriously bad.
I make no apologies for not being an author having the talents of people like Dr Martin Botha, Leon Van Nierop and Prof Keyan Tomaselli – writers who, aside from being good people, are amazing authors who can use an entire book’s chapter to expound on a certain scene in a film. No: for me, a movie is either good or bad, no gray area in-between and I am simply a person who likes movies, nothing more. Always have liked them, always will.
I certainly do not apologize for my intense dislike of the productions of the chaotic subsidy film years of the 1980s, as well as for the few filmmakers and writers who mistreated me in my three decades as a film archivist: one of those mistreaters was an Academy Award winner who point blank refused to answer my sincere questions concerning that deeply emotional and hard-hitting award-winning documentary. The other was a South African film distributor who threatened me with my then director general and Minister if they did not get what they wanted.
The other mis-treater was a very famous South African writer who unfairly criticized me over my inclusion of a Canadian made film starring Sylvester Stallone in my manuscript concerning the South African film industry without first reading further and seeing why the film “First Blood” was included in the first place. I will not name the writer other than to say that it isn’t any of the three South African writers mentioned previously.
For thirty years, the South African film industry was my life, film developer ran in my veins and promotion of that industry encompassed my every waking moment: I lived that history, I assisted on more than five hundred productions, I screened films throughout the length and breadth of South Africa, I assisted many people, I was proud of the job I did – myriad hiccups and serious personal issues notwithstanding - and I was proud to be a public servant.
The South African film industry was my life: welcome to it, the history of it and my memories of it.
