South Africa has produced numerous internationally acclaimed documentaries that tell the stories of people and communities facing social injustice. These documentaries are made by South African filmmakers that are seeking to make a difference through their passion for film and storytelling. Yet, these films are not widely known, nor are their makers. 

 

Mainstream media is overlooking these locally made impact films, and consequently, the important issues - that range from poverty to displacement to inequality and many other injustices - that are being showcased through real people's stories, go unnoticed by the public. 

 

Don Edkins, Cape Town-born international documentary filmmaker and producer, agrees. 

 

“It’s a big problem,” the respected filmmaker says, “because impact films have the ability to reach the viewer’s emotions and it addresses issues in a way that reporting or writing cannot.”

 

“Good documentaries take a lot of time and money, as it is well-researched. You spend years making a film, and when it doesn't get picked up by the media people don’t know about it and won’t see it,” he explained.

 

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) used to support local filmmakers by airing their impact documentaries and exposing the social justice stories to large audiences. Things have changed, according to Miki Redlinghuys, prominent South African filmmaker and co-chair of the Documentary Filmmakers Association (DFA).

 

“After 1994 there was a ‘honeymoon phase’ for local filmmakers,” Redelinghuys explains, “we had a national broadcaster that supported all these great films coming out of a newly democratic state, and there were plenty of opportunities to learn as filmmakers.”

 

“Now, we have lost the national broadcaster.”

 

Edkins reiterates Redelinghuys’s sentiments that the downfall of the national broadcaster is a big problem facing the South African documentary industry.

 

“During the early 2000s, the commissioning editors of SABC 1 especially understood the power of documentary films. Our films had huge audiences and got huge responses. Things have definitely changed,” the award-winning producer states. 

 

Redelinghuys, who used to make a living from making TV documentaries that would be aired on SABC, also elaborated on the effect it had on receiving funding to make a documentary.

 

“Fundraising has always been one of the biggest challenges in this industry, and in retrospect, it has become a lot harder over the last 10 years,” she says.

 

Tessa Barlin graduated from the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film & Media Studies in 2017 and has been trying to break into the industry as a freelance documentary filmmaker.

 

“The problem, in my opinion, is that there are so many stories to be told in South Africa, which documentary can do effectively, but there is not enough funding.”

 

Barlin says that one of her main goals is to build relationships with overseas companies where funding might be more readily available.

 

“I have a passion and want to make an impact, but it’s been hard to make money trying to do that,” the young filmmaker explains. 

 

Barlin also believes that there exists a lack of media coverage of local impact documentaries and that it has a negative effect on the industry: “Perhaps if there was more of a spotlight on documentaries, there would be more investment into the industry.”

 

The lack of media coverage of local documentaries results in filmmakers struggling during post-production to market their work and the social justice stories they portray in their film. 

 

“Filmmakers don’t want to do that. They want to go out there and make another film,” Edkins says.

 

Redelinghuys, who has over 20 years of experience in the industry, is familiar with this issue and says that the hardest part of making an impact film is after production is done. 

 

“If you want your film to have an impact and bring change, you have got to make that film work.” 

 

Even local film festivals, which are designed to expose the best new films to the media and the public, are being overlooked by the mainstream media.

 

“Film festivals are really important because it is the platform where you first screen your film to an audience, which is what a filmmaker wants,” Edkins says, “but they are not well attended and there are no media follow-throughs after the festival of independent films and the issues they showcase.”

 

Francois Verster, award-winning South African filmmaker and co-director of the acclaimed documentary short about the Cape Town drought, Scenes from a Dry City, provides a different outlook on the lack of reportage of impact films in the mainstream media. 

 

“Many of what I consider the best South African documentaries of the past years have received relatively little media attention, but I am not sure whether that is necessarily the fault of the media - it likely has more to do with cinema culture, cinema education and literacy, access and so on,” he explains.

 

He does, however, agree that the lack of funding in South Africa has decreased the space for creative documentary, as filmmakers must turn to commercial documentaries, like NGO films, and sacrifice creative freedom in order to earn a living. 

 

“One of the many difficult paradoxes in documentary filmmaking is that often the films that get a lot of funding are less close to the truth in a broader sense - because they are necessarily invested in clear outcomes, conclusions or messages - than films that take a more cinematic, subjective approach.” 

 

Charl Blignaut, former arts editor at City Press, made it his mission to win over new art lovers and continuously gave space for local documentaries in the paper.

 

“We ran hundreds of stories on local documentaries, giving Encounters Film Festival a cover of the lifestyle section and a spread every year, also Durban International Film Festival and then select films. I'd take investigative documentaries and splash them in news pages, often working with the filmmakers before they'd even finished shooting,” the experienced reporter says.

 

Edkins testifies to Blignaut’s “sheer force of will” to get more people interested in the arts and local documentaries through City Press, which Blignaut recently left due to burnout.

 

“It truly is astounding that at a time that SA documentaries are so popular at international festivals they are ignored in the media.”

 

Blignaut continues, “Radio rarely looks at documentaries and TV shows about films are only covering what's on circuit, seldom anything else. Even those TV shows have died out. The problem is mainly one of resources. Jobs are being cut. But the less we cover, the fewer experts exist. This bodes poorly. The only solution is for digital platforms to take the lead.”

 

Both Redelinghuys and Edkins have launched initiatives to try to redress the lack of attention that social justice documentaries are facing. Edkins serves on the board of STEPS, a non-profit organisation that facilitates not only the making but also the distributing of documentaries around social and environmental issues. Redelinghuys has  recently relaunched the docLOVE initiative, which aims to give a platform for filmmakers to screen their documentaries and to provide access to viewers to local documentaries that tell important stories.

 

“Because documentaries are not seen as commercial enterprises for television and broadcasters don’t believe that documentaries bring in revenue, people don’t know how or where to access good documentaries,” Edkins says.

 

STEPS launched a project called AfriDocs, an online platform where award-winning documentaries are available for free in all 54 African countries.

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AfriDocs and docLOVE aims to fill the gap left by the SABC, but without other media sources informing the public about these initiatives, documentaries and the stories they tell still go largely unnoticed. 

 

According to Edkins, the “ecosystem is broken”. “In South Africa, we don’t have all the components working together properly that should allow a film to get out there and have an impact. There is a lack of institutional support.”

 

“The documentary is unparalleled as a medium for journalistic query and investigation.

 

"It takes you into the space it's exploring and we have a good history of this in our news documentary shows on TV,” Blignaut says.

“New Frame, Ground Up, Bubblegum Club, Shadow and Act, The Daily Vox. We are going to need digital platforms like these to continue our coverage of documentaries.”