Mbabane– Soon enough, the country if not the world will come to appreciate the ingenuity and artistic craftsmanship of Swati filmmaker Samkeliso Nxumalo. The world of film is all the better with the kind of visionary talent Nxumalo possesses.
He is one of many creatives who are reigniting their purpose as storytellers.
With nearly two decades of experience, he is credited for creating cinematic magic in numerous film and TV shows such as drama series Ekhaya, short films, including ‘Batjele’, ‘Bloodline’ as well as TV shows that include ‘Wize Up’ and ‘Kanye Kanye’. Some of his work has gone on to receive special recognition including winning three National Tihlabani Awards for excellence in film whereas; the short film ‘Batjele’ was selected for screening at the African Diaspora Film Festival in New York. His touch has also been evident on silver-screen.
His TV work has become a regular feature on national TV since 2006 and the films he has directed have been broadcast on TV stations across the Southern African region (including SABC). He clearly has an impressive track record and his street cred is on 100. Very comfortable behind-the-scenes, he agrees to be in the spotlight for a change, letting us in on his journey. Born at Mliba, he did his primary school at St Marks and his Form I to Form IV at Manzini Nazarene High School and completed his Form Five at Mater Dolorosa High School.
After high school, he received a scholarship from the United World College (UWC) and went to the USA to study for his International Baccalaureate (IB). After IB, he went to Paris to study International Communications at the American University in Paris and graduated in 2002. Like all intriguing storylines, his own life-story is relatively unpredictable from the very beginning. It was never a clear-cut, predestined kind of fate for him.
Far from it, actually!! In fact, the film industry was way off the mark, an unlikely path for this holder of a Degree in International Communications attained at the American University in Paris. Even his academic pursuits were also totally unexpected as he was a top Math, Biology, Chemistry and Physics student in High School. He recalls raking in awards at the annual speech and prize giving day year after year. “All my life I had assumed that my career was destined to be in the field of science. In high school, I excelled in Maths, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, took home multiple awards in these subjects. As a result, it was always assumed by me, as well as everyone that knew me, including my parents, teachers, and peers, that I would somehow turn out to be a doctor or an engineer or something along those lines,” he says. He singles out the year 2000 as very pivotal in the course of his life.
It was in the year 2000 when he was pursuing his tertiary education in Paris that he had a vision. “It was when I was in varsity that I started having visions. I would see myself sitting in the backseat of a car, driving to the premiere of a film I had just made. In the vision, I would see a huge crowd of people waiting for my arrival at the venue, and a million more, across the African continent, sitting in their living rooms glued to their TV screens, anticipating the release of the production I was about to launch. This was all strange to me because all my life I had assumed that my career was destined to be in the field of science,” he explains.
He admits that when he first started to have these visions, his first instinct was to ignore them.
Disruptive
According to Nxumalo, the visions persisted to an extent that they became bothersome and disruptive to his studies.
“I wasn’t sure how to make them go away so I decided to take a year off from varsity to figure out what was happening to me and what I needed to do with the rest of my life. I backpacked around the world for a year, and eventually ended up back at home, at Selection Park, contemplating my next move,” he reveals.
After much reflection, he resolved to finish what he had started- go back to varsity and finish the Degree.
“I didn’t want the stigma of being a college dropout, so I felt it was only right that I fulfilled that obligation,” he further says.
Upon completion of his Degree, he was hell-bent on pursuing filmmaking.
His reason – peace of mind, as well as listening to and following the guidance of, what he came to embrace as the voice of God.
“Something out there in the vast universe wanted me to pursue filmmaking, and would not give me any peace unless I did that it is the first time I’ve ever spoken about it on a public platform,” he reveals. He also admits he has always avoided talking about it because it can sound a little crazy. However, he states that he is finally at a place where he doesn’t feel weird telling the world that he decided to be a filmmaker because he heard the voice of God telling me that is what he should do with his life.
. On his plans for the next quarter of 2020
One of our goals for the year is to secure a second season for the Ekhaya series. Therefore, most of our energy in the second quarter will be dedicated to securing the investment to produce the second season of Ekhaya.
. His take of the Eswatini film industry and its challenges
The Eswatini film industry is still young and significantly underdeveloped. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to transform it into a professionally organized sector that offers viable careers to anyone who has a Degree in Film and TV Production and wishes to pursue a career in the field. Currently, that is not happening. Each year, Limkokwing University produces around 50 film and TV graduates, but less than 10% end up with a career in the industry. A majority of these film and TV graduates end up rusting away at home or doing other jobs like working at a retail store or joining the security forces. Why can’t they find work in a field they are qualified to work in? It’s not because the industry is so saturated it cannot take any-more people. In fact, the industry is drastically underperforming and needs more people to achieve important national policy goals like the 40% local content quota that the national broadcaster must meet. Currently, local channels carry less than 15% of local content.
Therefore, there is an obvious need for the industry to grow in order to generate more local content. However, the industry is currently beset with a number of shortcomings that hinder growth and make it impossible for the industry to absorb Swazi talent and subsequently increase local content production. The most significant challenges are lack of finance, lack of high volume infrastructure like content hubs, and lack of professional regulation and standards. Swazi filmmakers cannot produce local content without finance. That is just common sense. After all, films and other types of content like drama series, or reality series, are simply products that require cash to be made. In the Kingdom of Eswatini, there is very little cash being invested in creating local content. Normally, as is the case in South Africa, the UK, and elsewhere the broadcaster commissions content from local producers, and provides them with the cash to create that content. In Eswatini, there is very little commissioning taking place. The broadcasters claim they do not have sufficient finances, and as a result there is very little local content on screens, especially professional quality local content. The shortage of finance therefore stifles local content production, and makes it difficult for the industry to create work opportunities for film and TV graduates.
The lack of high volume infrastructure, such as content hubs, also negatively affects the industry’s productivity. Content hubs allow filmmakers to create large volumes of content at low cost. For example, producing a soapie in a studio is much cheaper than producing the same soapie using real locations. Furthermore, the time it takes to produce content in studio is often much shorter than the time required to produce the same content in in the field. Fundamentally, content hubs assist with lowering the cost of production, increasing quantity of content, and shortening turn-around times. The lack of such infrastructure makes it difficult for the country to scale up production and increase, significantly, its current local content output.
Finally, the lack of professional regulation and standards to promote the production of professional quality has also played a significant role in stifling the industry’s growth.
At its core, no viewer cares to watch a poor quality local production when they can simply switch to another channel on their DSTV and catch something more professional and attractive.
Furthermore, no business wants to associate its brand with poor quality, and hence there is no incentive to support local productions if there is no guarantee the quality will attract the desired audience.
Point is, poor quality keeps away viewers and investment.
Currently, there is no mechanism in place to regulate the industry and ensure quality and professionalism.
This has cost the industry dearly in terms of being able to attract investment and grow.
. On what changes in policy would create an enabling environment for the film industry to thrive
Finance
To produce content, the industry needs finance. Interventions that could help in this regard include increased TV license fee payment by locals. The country has previously struggled to get people to pay their annual TV license fees, yet the money collected from these fees is what the national broadcaster needs to commission local content. Therefore, increased payment of TV license fees would go a long way towards increasing local content production and creating more job opportunities for film and TV graduates.
Secondly, government also has a responsibility to provide finance for the creation of local content in order to achieve the digital migration goals, and local content goals; the government has set out for itself in the digital migration policy. I mean, what is the point of setting policy goals and then not providing the finance to achieve those goals. No one benefits from that and it is just a waste of ink. As an industry, we would be glad to see government providing ESTVA with finance to commission local content as an accompaniment to the subvention the authority already receives from the government. This would show that government is truly committed to achieving the goals she has set out in her policies. Furthermore, it would also show that government is doing something to develop an industry to absorb the more than 300 young Swazis who have been graduating with film and TV degrees from Limkokwing University since 2014. Currently government is engaged in an exercise of collecting scholarship money from all Swazis who ever received a scholarship from government. Without an industry to absorb them, how are the Swazis who received scholarships to study film and TV supposed to pay back the money? It is a catastrophe. Government therefore has a role to play to ensure that the investment she makes educating film and TV talent, gets to be ploughed back into the country’s economy through the creation of much needed local content.
Professional regulation of sector
To thrive, the sector also needs to develop rules and standards that would ensure that the industry operates professionally and produces content that meets international broadcast standards. This is important to attract investment, especially corporate investment, into the sector. We should note that more than 50% of SABC’s revenue comes from advertising. This simply illustrates that attracting corporate advertising, and investment, increases the finances available to create local content. The sector will be more viable economically, once it starts to produce content that is attractive to advertisers. So professional regulation of the sector is important to in order to increase investment for the industry.
. On his definition of success
To me, success is achieving whatever goals you set for yourself, no matter how small or insignificant those goals may be to others. When I was younger, I yearned to be celebrated, and decorated with awards, in order feel successful. However, in my more mature years, I have come to realize that if possessing all those awards does not help you to feel any happier with the life you are living, then you are not successful at all. At this moment in my life, my definition of success would be independence and happiness. Independent enough to adequately sustain myself and my family doing something I love (which is making films), and feeling happy with the job I am doing as a father, a husband, a brother, and a son. Do I feel successful? Not yet. However, things are moving in the right direction and I’m definitely in a happy place.
. On his career highlights
I have been in the Eswatini film industry for around 15 years, and there is a lot I have done and accomplished. However, out of all the things I have done, there are only two moments that I would consider to be career highlights.
The first one is the production of my first “professional” film which went on to be selected for screening at the African Diaspora film festival in New York in 2009. At the time, I was a young indie filmmaker who had never worked on a professional set before. Most of the work I had done prior to this moment were music videos, documentaries, and TV magazine shows wherein I was often the entire crew (writer, director, cinematographer, editor). So I had no experience working with a team of professionals who understood different aspects of the production process better than I do. Secondly, prior to this moment, I had never directed an actual movie before, and my work had never been accepted, and broadcast, by any internationally recognized broadcaster or film exhibition platform. As a result, I wasn’t really “a professional filmmaker” who could serve international broadcasters. I was just a young hustler bursting with creativity and enthusiasm (even though I thought of myself otherwise).
The opportunity to make my first professional film and thus become a world class filmmaker was presented to me by Soul City. At the time, Soul City had a program that sought to discover new filmmaking talent in the Southern African region. As a result, they were looking for capable directors from ten countries in the SADC region, to direct ten short films touching on the topic of HIV. The short films were to be broadcast on SABC and the best of these short films would be submitted for screening at the African Diaspora film festival in New York. I was lucky enough to be chosen to direct the short film from Swaziland, titled “Batjele.”. However, most significant to me was that my film was chosen as the best amongst all the films in the region and was selected for screening at the film festival in New York. This moment stands out as a career highlight to me because it represents the first time I felt I could claim the titles “professional filmmaker” and “world class filmmaker.” It represented the first time I felt validated as a filmmaker, and could look in the mirror and see an actual filmmaker and not just a young man trying to become one.
The second career highlight for me has been the production of the drama series “EKHAYA” which will be broadcast on Eswatini TV in May 2020. Whereas making Batjele,” represented my affirmation as a professional filmmaker, the making of “EKHAYA” was all about opening up a new world of possibilities, and opportunities for Swazi filmmakers. For the longest time there was no local drama series on local screens. Thousands of Swazis with acting talent have been sitting idle at home, wasting away while the rest of Africa, especially our South African neighbours, seemed to be releasing a new drama series each month. It felt like we were being left behind and at times that we were born in the wrong country.
Eswatini didn’t seem to want us or have a place for us. So EKHAYA for me was about kicking down doors and creating space, in our own country, and our own TV channels, for Swazis like me. Swazis who want to wake up every-day and make films for a living, whether as actors, or writers, or directors, or cinematographers, or editors. For the longest time, the local TV space has been dominated by foreign content, be it South African, or American, or Asian. In fact, if a tourist visiting Eswatini were to turn on Eswatini TV; they would struggle to identify anything Swazi about the content offered on local channels. Ekhaya therefore represents Emaswati establishing their presence, and claiming ground, on their own TV stations.
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