Actors’ bills move closer to adoption

Bid to ensure fair distribution of royalties

EARLIER this week, the first step was taken for actors in this country to truly own their craft.

The National Council of Provinces on Tuesday voted to adopt the Performers Protection Amendment Bill and the Copyright Amendment Bill after the SA Guild of Actors (Saga) lobbied the government to effect changes to the existing act, which dates back to 1967 and fails to protect the rights of actors.

Jack Devnarain, Saga’s chairman, said the most important thing about the bills was that they levelled the negotiating playing field between actors and producers and broadcasters.

“As things stand right now, actors as freelancers don’t have any negotiating power, and when they are going into a production, all they ever get is a performance fee,” he said.

Devnarain said that what the bills were trying to do was to align the South African statute with the international global practice that says actors should earn a sustainable living over the course of their careers.

“An actor may have a 20- to 30-year career. If that actor can only earn a performance fee, they will reach a point very quickly that by the time they are 50 to 60 years old, the roles they get will decline and they will earn less and less money.

“So the veterans of the industry, ironically, will actually earn less and less year after year.”

Devnarain said that as it stood, actors did not earn any royalties.

“You will have an actor who is working on the most incredible productions that made them hugely famous, and those productions will be viewed around the world on television, in cinemas and on the internet, and only the producers and the broadcasters would have made enormous amounts of money.”

The bills guarantee that actors will be able to sustain themselves with income from their work. Jack Devnarain Saga chairman

He said that the actors only got the money that they earned when they shot the production.

Devnarain said the bills guaranteed that the actors would be able to sustain themselves with the residual income from all the work they had done.

“In addition to that, when an actor negotiates a contract, there will be certain statutory guarantees placed in that contract.

“This means the actors rights cannot simply be signed away and do not automatically transfer to the producer or broadcaster.”

Devnarain said the next step was to hear objections to the bills.