Saftas rocked by scandal hours before gala event
● A South African Film & Television Awards (Safta) scandal has erupted that could be the subject of a Carte Blanche exposé — except Carte Blanche is at the centre of the controversy.
Just hours before the 13th annual Saftas ceremony was due to begin on March 2, the best documentary short award was withdrawn, leaving two of the nominees outraged and the third, Carte Blanche’s Follow the Guns, ducking for cover.
It had taken director Enver Samuel two days to travel from Samoa, where he had been working on the latest Survivor series, to the prestigious award ceremony at the Sun City Superbowl.
He had been nominated for his documentary, Someone to Blame: The Ahmed Timol Inquest, which followed the reopening of the inquiry into the death in police custody of the anti-apartheid activist in 1971.
But less than an hour and a half before the ceremony began, Samuel received an e-mail from Shadrack Bokaba, acting CEO of the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), informing him the best documentary short category had been pulled due to a dispute over the “ownership of the content” of Follow the Guns ,a rhino-poaching investigation.
Samuel said: “I had been looking forward to that moment the announcer says: ‘And the nominees are …’ And even if I didn’t win I was pleased to be recognised by my peers and receive the accolade of a nomination. Because the category was cancelled that didn’t happen.”
The incident also left Simon Wood, who was nominated for Scenes From A Dry City, about Cape Town’s water crisis, upset.
The Documentary Filmmakers Association (DFA), of which Samuel and Wood are both members, sent a letter of grievance to Bokaba, demanding to know why the category was withdrawn.
The association said Samuel and Wood were at the ceremony at significant personal expense, and to be denied their moment of achievement in such an offhand way was unacceptable. The association said Safta rules indicate that the primary producer of a submission must be South African and the main producer of Follow the Guns “is clearly the American Kathi Lynn Austin”.
“We have attached the opening three minutes of the film where she identifies herself as the author of the piece,” the DFA wrote, adding that the submission was made by an American, with an American point of view and subjectivity, and that the purpose of the Saftas was to celebrate South African film and TV talent.
Carte Blanche CEO Wynand Grobbelaar said the fallout was a misunderstanding and the allegations against it were not true.
“Kathi Lynn Austin wasn’t the producer; she was the arms trafficking investigator. Sasha Schwendenwein, a South African who works for Carte Blanche, produced it.”
Grobbelaar said he had met the NFVF to resolve the dispute. “They asked for clarification and I have given them more information and they will make a ruling,” he said.
Bokaba said the NFVF would not disclose details of the dispute “as they are private and of a commercially sensitive nature”, and said the foundation was consulting its lawyers.