STRUGGLE OF A FILMMAKER

I can’t begin a day without a cup or two of coffee, am I an addict? I don’t know, but I love it. Like everyone who has an affair with coffee. My body only “wakes up” after having a cup. My coffee sessions come with a state of mind, either thinking about how I’m going to spend my day, anything needing my urgent attention and recalculating my journey, you know what I do for a living and how to reach my peak. Talking about what I do for a living I recently watched a film I lost myself in, which is a rare occasion. A good film should have that effect on a person, so after that I’m on a creative climax. I’m conceptualising a film that makes me get on a natural high, it’s an aftermath of watching a good film something happens to me quite often.

Unfortunately and fortunately filmmakers are usually lost in their own world and only they reside there, fortunately that’s when they are most creative and the unfortunate part of it is losing touch with reality, no! I’m not saying we act crazy and etc. Just that we find it difficult to snap out of that world in most cases. I’m one of a few lucky ones who can snap out of it at will, so I did exactly that and at that moment at hit me how much of a struggle it is to be a filmmaker, well anywhere in the world but even more difficult in my country (South Africa ).

About 80% of us are still struggling to get funds, l mean it’s ultimately about that in order for us to produce a film. So why do we struggle as filmmakers? There are a few reasons and different arguments. If you look at films produced in South Africa, none of them have been commercially successful, why? It’s because they ant the kind of films one would want to watch. So the ones who get funding should pave the way for us by producing a commercially viable films and they must master the business of filmmaking, so we (the next generation) learn from them. But it seems not to be the case, and the government should make more funds, not that they should spoon feed us but “kick start” the industry and we will take it from there, I estimate we would need about 1o billion for the next 10 years so we can be self sustainable. So that reality check suppresses my creative juices” but hey what can I say, it’s the price we pay for being a filmmaker. So why do you think filmmakers struggle so much?