Don’t let the curtain fall on our cinema heritage

In mid-April, Ster-Kinekor, with 395 screens, announced plans to cut nearly a third of its 728 employees and close up to nine cinemas in Western Cape, Gauteng and KZN.

Reports suggested more cinemas in other areas will close their doors later in the year as per the reviewed plan. Surely, an underperforming economy justifies the shedding of jobs by SterKinekor. We saw yearly retrenchments in the mining industry and lately, the Post Office is next on the line.

The unions are on the streets to save a few jobs left but industries’ bloodbath scenario seems to be on the horizon.

The creative sector, like many other industries, was not spared by the Covid-19 lockdown and recovering phase is a mammoth task. The current SA economic projections by experts paint a scary picture. Ster-Kinekor has a rich cinema history of more than 129 years in SA, and it can’t be discarded.

The film industry in SA was officially started in May 1806, according to historical records. The Anglo-Boer War was the first conflict to be captured in a motion picture film in 1899.

Then decades later, movies like Dingaka, eLollipop, The Cape Town Affairs, The Jackals, Joe Bullet, The Naked Pray, Boetie Gaan Border Toe, Shaka Zulu, etc. became the talk of town. The industry grew in leap and bounds with foreign productions filmed in SA.

The minister who will be tasked with the arts sector in the new government post elections must urgently work on an intervention strategy to save cinemas to create much-needed jobs. The movie cinemas should be included in township economy master plan.

Local investors with the department of trade and industry (DTI), the Industrial Development Corporation, Salga and other government agencies could be persuaded to lease such cinemas for film distribution deals.

The National Film & Video Foundation can be assigned by the Treasury to co-manage such business venture with a credible management company. Various reports show the film and TV sectors contributed billions of rand to the SA economy before the Covid lockdown. DTI indicates that film industry contributed an average of R7.18bn alone.

Surely, new jobs can be created sufficient investment injection. Jerry Tsie, Pretoria