news

Oct. 30, 2020

ADVOCATE MOTHEPA NDUMO

7 min read

Diversifying Lesotho’s Economy Through Film and Television

Diversifying Lesotho’s Economy Through Film and Television

Metro Audio Articles

Catch our weekly audio news daily only on Metro Radio Podcast News.

listen now

PATRONELLA Diedricks is an award winning 26-year veteran of the film and television industry. Through hard work, dedication and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about all aspects of the television industry, she has produced, written, directed and performed in a wide range of programmes and genres including film, reality, drama, soap, documentaries, game shows and current affairs.

Through her broad scope of work, Ms Diedricks (PD) has developed a strong understanding of viewer trends and dynamics, which has reflected in her producing programmes that rate highly with audiences. Ms Diedricks has been nominated for several South African Film and Television Awards across multiple programmes and genres and has received an Afro Heritage Broadcasting and Entertainment Award (Houston, USA) for Excellence. She is an internationally respected industry expert and has been a juror and jury host of the Banff International Media Festival (Canada) for six years, juror for the International Emmy Awards twice and has sat as either a juror or panel co-chair across different panels for the SAFTAs since 2010. This week, Advocate Mothepa Ndumo (MN) discusses how to diversify Lesotho’s economy through film and television with the veteran actress.

MN: Would you agree with the view that Lesotho’s TV and Film industry is an untapped economic resource?

PD: Heartbreakingly so. Until there is political will to actually understand this amazing industry and the potential it holds for Lesotho’s economic diversification and growth, we are not going to get anywhere. How might we have taken advantage of Seanamarena being featured in Black Panther for example? The question is, is this even truly a cultural icon ea Basotho? Why is our culture tied to symbols that we do not own? Basotho are desperately clinging onto what no longer serves us. Especially commercially. We missed the opportunity for a claim that would have made Basotho millions. The Seanamarena is a copyrighted design. They are not Basotho owned or even a locally registered company. Aranda must be making tons of money off these prints being copied across Disney figurines, cartoons, etc.

Machabeng High School alum, Geoffrey Thorne, was the Black Panther comic book author who first included elements of Lesotho into the comic book. He lived in Lesotho in the 1970s. Geoffrey advised Black Panther movie director Ryan Coogler to visit Lesotho. There is a Time Magazine article where Coogler speaks about it. The imagery in the film was unmistakable. Lesotho got nothing out of it then. Geoffrey still wants to come and do some proper work here. We have spoken and even yelled but are not heard. The problem is that there is no macro-economic understanding of what we are doing or its value.  Government is happy to just let this opportunity pass us by. It is tragic.

MN: How would you describe this sector and its prospects for significance in our economic development matrix?

PD: In 2012 the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) in South Africa conducted a study into the economic impact of the SA industry. The direct contribution of the formal industry was measured at R3.5 billion. And the equivalent of 25 000 full time jobs created. That year I alone ran a project for Mzansi Magic, and we were employing about 500 people a week, of which about 150 were full time employees.

However, our reach is beyond that. Besides salaries, wages, etc. our industry has a lot of spillover. Shooting a movie, you hire and buy several diverse products and services ranging from catering or food, clothing and engaging fashion designers and seamstresses, toilets, locations, security, etc. When we shoot an international movie and they bring Anthony Anderson to come and shoot, he will stay in a hotel and want to experience the country he is in when he is off.

When they repeated the study in 2015/16 with broadened parameters, they realised that we had jumped to a R12.2 billion contribution to the economy, of which only R4.4 billion (note the rapid and huge increase) was a direct contribution, including salaries, of the industry. Countries that have taken their creative industries seriously have seen massive benefits to their economies. We do not need tourists to sell our content. There are dozens of studies across the world that show that investment in film means a direct increase in the economy through tourism and even investment.

MN: What moves have you made to try and address some of the issues besetting our TV and film industry?

PD: For about three years, I was active with MPALE – the Motion Picture Association of Lesotho. I think we had gained traction. We were involved in the drafting of the section of the creative industries in the NSDP II and had been lobbying for legislation and policy changes. I stepped away and over the past two years, that seems to have ground to a halt. The last workshop I attended was a regurgitation of what had been discussed a million times before, two years ago. There is no continuation or stability from government, which needs to be leading this process. When the associations, or people heading them, do not work together for the development of the industry, things come to a standstill. In Lesotho, we fight stomach politics, which just makes it harder to get anything done. I understand that government cannot deal with a million individuals and only works with endorsed associations.  But we need a different way of doing things that will actually help us move forward.

Enjoy our daily newsletter from today

Access exclusive newsletters, along with previews of new media releases.

MN: If you were to be given an opportunity to design a policy for this sector what would the main planks of your policy platform be?

PD: The cost of us not having enforceable policies and legislation in place is staggering. I have met with the Deputy Vice President of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). She represented the top seven studios in the United States and some of the smaller ones – Studio Universal, Disney, 20th Century Fox, and HBO. She said that the only thing keeping her members from shooting in Lesotho was the lack of policy. At the time, Black Panther had just been released. They wanted to do a film screening in Lesotho, but how could they when there were pirate screenings happening every weekend? Copyright infringement is theft and hurts us all!

I met their South African representative. He says he came to Lesotho with some of his members. His wife is a Mosotho. He holidayed here with some of these execs and told me we were considered as a possible location for Game of Thrones. This is a series that spent 55 days and millions of US dollars shooting one scene. They go into a country, hire actors, extras, carpenters, bricklayers, seamstresses, drivers, etc. But what would happen when they arrive with hundreds of millions of Maloti of equipment at the border? LRA would demand they pay VAT on everything. Despite the equipment not being available in-country. This has made me personally, and so many others, lose work. It is not the global industry standard. Filming in Lesotho is too hard and does not make economic sense.

In terms of film, there are two major pieces of legislation that we need in place. The Copyright Order 1989 is defunct. The police and courts do not understand its value. It is frustrating. I have been home for four years and they were talking about it years before then. It is agreed that it must be reviewed, repealed, and replaced. Why this has not happened, when EVERYONE agrees it must be done is baffling.

The other is a Film Law. This covers everything from WHO is allowed to film, labour conditions on sets, training and local industry development, setting up a Film Commission/Office and importantly, rebates and tax breaks, among other things. Internationally, the industry relies on these. Countries or regions that have strong tax breaks have seen phenomenal increases in their content production and are enjoying the benefits thereof. The more organised the industry becomes, the more people will be employed, and the more money government will make. This includes revenue from the use of parks and public spaces. We film in schools, clinics, on the street. In Johannesburg, you need a permit from the JMPD permit office – there is a Film Division – and they have a formula that includes how many vehicles will be parked on the street (even residential areas and squatter camps), for how many days, if you need police support, streets closed off, etc. It is revenue.

There are plenty of options in terms of countries with functional laws, that we could benchmark from. In fact, MPALE drafted a film law – cut, pasted and cobbled together from other countries and what we thought would work in a local context and supplied it to the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Culture, which is the responsible Ministry in March last year. Nothing has happened. They said we need a consultant. Why spend the money when we know what we need and there are so many legal officers employed by government and so many practitioners who have constantly stepped up before and definitely would again for this, to sit and go through this line by line? We waste time and resources.

So, the industry is left in limbo. And Basotho and Lesotho continue to be exploited by filmmakers who enter the country on tourist visas and shoot entire series and movies without leaving anything behind.  

 

Share the story

METRO WEATHER FORECAST