By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 18

A commission names sponsors in the headline. The people who decide whether it works are the thirteen producers.

The announcement of 6 July 2022 carried two familiar names at the top and thirteen less familiar ones beneath. The sponsors are a pay-television operator and the national broadcaster; the operators who actually have to deliver are the production houses chosen from more than two hundred submissions to make thirteen Namibian films.

Reading the slate as a set of people rather than a policy changes what it is. It is a bet on named film-makers – some established, some crossing into film for the first time – to turn a commission into finished, watchable work.

The two who convened it

The public sponsors are clear. Roger Gertze, Managing Director of MultiChoice Namibia, has framed the programme as a commitment to local production houses and to the actors, writers and film-makers behind them, while Stanley Benjamin Similo, Director-General of the national broadcaster, anchors the state side of the pairing. Between them they supply the money and the channels.

What the two cannot supply is the films. Their role is to convene and to distribute, which makes them necessary and not sufficient. The slate lives or dies a rung below them, among the producers who take the brief and shoot it.

The sponsors provide the money and the airtime; they cannot provide the films themselves.

Thirteen production houses, named

The chosen operators range across experience. They include Michael Pulse with Home is Where the Money Is, Knowledge Ipinge with Okalila, Obed Emvula with Tuli and Jessica, and Vickson Hangula, a familiar name in Namibian film, among the thirteen. The genres run from comedy to family drama, action and romantic comedy, each producer answering the same brief in a different register.

Some are crossing a threshold. The playwright Donald Matthys moves from stage to screen with The Funeral, a family drama set in Aranos in the Hardap region, an example of the commission pulling established storytellers into a new medium rather than only funding those already in it.

The slate mixes seasoned film-makers with first-time crossovers answering one brief in thirteen ways.

From a single gig to a going concern

A commission does more than fund a film; it asks a film-maker to run a small enterprise. Each producer must budget, hire and schedule a crew, direct actors, and see a project through post-production to a broadcast-ready cut. That is the difference between a creative and an operator, and the programme quietly demands the second from all thirteen.

The work created spreads well past the named producers. Camera crews, editors, sound teams and post-production houses all draw paid work from a slate of this size, which is part of why a commission registers as industrial development and not only as culture.

A commission turns a film-maker into an employer, with a crew and a schedule to carry.

What separates an operator from a one-off

The interesting question a year out is not who was announced but who is still producing. A single commission can either seed a durable production house that wins the next contract on its record, or amount to one film and a return to waiting for the following call. The operators who treat this as a business rather than a break are the ones who will still be here.

That is the honest frame for these thirteen. They are ordinary film-makers handed an unusual chance, and the measure of them will be continuity – whether the commission becomes a company or stays a credit.

The producers worth watching are the ones who turn one commission into a standing business.

For a funder, a broadcaster or a partner backing Namibian film, the thirteen producers are the real investment case, not the two sponsors who convened them. The decision the slate poses is whether to support the operators who must carry each film to air, so that a one-off commission grows into a set of production houses that can be commissioned again.

Sources: The Namibian; MultiChoice Namibia and NBC call for local film proposals; Namibia Film Commission aims to add value to local film-makers (nbc)