Banned film ‘Joe Bullet’ shoots back to the screen
AN action adventure film, made in the 1970s and banned under apartheid, will be screened on SABC1 tonight.
It starred the late Ken Gampu in the title role of Joe Bullet, a James Bond-style hero working against soccer’s criminal underground. Other starring roles went to Abigail Kubeka, Cocky “Two Bull” Tlhotlhalemaje and Joe Lopez.
It was banned after only two screenings and faded into obscurity. Now an initiative by a Cape Town film company, Gravel Road African Film Legacy Project, has given the film a second run.
After tonight’s 8.30 screening, it is listed for the Durban Film Festival later this year.
For over 40 years the film lay in various garages of the homes of director Tonie van der Merwe. Part of the genre of films made specifically for black audiences in the 1970s, Joe Bullet was financed by Van der Merwe, who took the financial knock when it was banned.
“It was banned outright,” said Van der Merwe.
“Sometimes they would say: ‘Take this out or change that’, and it would be fine. They had ridiculous reasons. One of them was because Ken Gampu was carrying a gun.”
The film’s producers appealed against the ban and then communications minister Jimmy Kruger watched it at Cape Town’s Labia Theatre before
It was banned outright. They had ridiculous reasons
unbanning it. But with no way to distribute the film, and not wanting to throw “good money after bad”, the film was never shown again.
The reels grew dusty and scratched, mould infected it and faded into obscurity. Many of the stars have died.
Fast forward 43 years and the old reels have been cleaned up and digitised.
“I must watch it; that will be so funny,” said Kubeka, who barely remembers the movie
“I was just beginning then, I got into the industry in 1967 as a singer. It must have been one of my earliest films,” said the star who recently snapped up a lifetime achievement award at the South African Film and Television awards.
Ben Cowley, who heads the Gravel Road African Film Legacy Project, said in the 1980s, the government had introduced a B-subsidy for films that were aimed at black people “to keep them distracted from the realities of life”.
Anyone who could prove that 100 000 or more people had watched their film, would receive a 14c subsidy for every admission. This meant that a deluge of films were made in those years, financed mostly by the subsidy and shown across the country in road shows at schools, in townships and community centres.
Van der Merwe said he made about 300 films.
Cowley said the company had more than 160 films it would like to restore.
Six of Van der Merwe’s films have been restored and are part of the SABC1 Mayibuye film festival, airing two a night for three consecutive Sundays.
Tonight will not be the last that South Africa would be seeing of Joe Bullet. In between all the canisters sitting on a shelf in a temperature-controlled room at Gravel Road studios sits the film’s sequel, Joe Bullet: Bullet on the Run.