Originally published in Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film Video and Television. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2000.
Interview conducted by Mbye Cham for the African Women in the Cinema Project in October 1998, at the Southern African Film Festival (SAFF) in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Masepeke, you are the director of the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg, South Africa. Could you begin by talking a bit about your background, where you received your training and how you became interested in film and the general television and audiovisual media?
I was born in Soweto. When I was growing up, education was a very important aspect of everyone's life, the whole culture. In order to improve your life, in order for you to be a better person, you had to get education. By that, it meant having those kinds of formal secure jobs. If you are bright and doing well at school, you have to be a doctor, you have to be a scientist and all those kinds of things. When I was at school, during the Soweto uprisings in 1976, I was just about to finish my primary education. Due to that, our education was totally disrupted for two years. Some of us did not even finish our primarily education properly. A couple of churches initiated a project where young people could go and finish their schooling but it was mainly for the secondary level. Some of us just squeezed ourselves into the secondary level and started learning things. We learned that way. I did that through a couple of churches.
Politically things were tense, our parents trying to cope with us. Through ANC connections, some of us were able to go abroad. I worked in England for about a year and a half in community centers working with young people, with young people who were truant, who did not finish school. I was trying to find myself, asking what it was I wanted to do. I knew that I did not want to be a doctor. I wanted something in media. Before I left home, I had taken some classes in drama, in theater and even when I was working in this community center, we used to do drama classes, something was hooking me to media. I wanted to study communications.
I went to Middlesex Polytechnic, which is now called Middlesex University of Communications. It opened a whole area for me, television, radio, film and everything. Starting off, I was more interested in print media. Because you are so used to expressing yourself on pen and paper, everything had to be in writing. So I started out that way. I also loved photography, I was self-taught. I learned how to develop photographs myself. I started freelancing with Drum magazine in Johannesburg. A friend of mine was working for them and said, "get some of these stories in Drum." I started doing that. My main area was music so I developed show biz stuff. Then there was a whole political thing of consciousness-type music about apartheid. There were specific musicians that one targeted in order to get the anti-apartheid message across, like Third World, there was Missing Roots in England and all those who were sympathetic to anti-apartheid. One was doing a lot of stuff around them, photojournalism, and all that.
Through the experience of photography, I realized that there was something more effective. It was frustrating trying to capture the musicians movements on stage through still photography. I thought that there was a better way to capture these movements. I happened to hook up with a woman filmmaker in England who was a journalist before and who was also from South Africa. She was studying film. I talked with her and she said, "Yes, try film, let's take my Hi-8 camera and go do something." I thought, "Yes, filmmaking is the answer." I did my graduate program at Goldsmiths College in London. They had a full-time film program, I was very happy with that. Ever since then, I have never looked back and I still believe that the best way of capturing anything is through film. It can be the smallest movement. There is nowhere that you can get closer to anything without using film and video. That is where I came from.
Could you talk about the school that you direct, how it came about and what are some of the various aspects of the school, and what you envision?
The school's history started in the late eighties when a group of mainly white, anti-apartheid filmmakers had a vision of equipping young aspiring filmmakers with video-making tools. What was happening in the country then politically was that most of those filmmakers or videomakers were documenting a whole lot of political activism that was going on in the country and sending it out to the world. There were areas that they could not penetrate; that I think that only black people could actually get into. As people who lived within those communities, they were the ones mostly affected. The whole idea was also for black people to document what was going on in their own community. So, it started loosely like that and then became an informal project where they had weekly classes with the Alexandra Arts Center.
As the organization was growing, it started to have subcommittees, one of which was an education subcommittee. They drew a proposal, which was sent to Channel Four Television in the UK, proposing to actually set up a project, sort of a full-time program for training.
Fortunately, Channel Four liked the idea and gave seed funding for the project. In 1991 the project started off as the Community Video School (CVS) with twelve students from all over South Africa. The first students completed the program after two years, in 1993.
That is when I joined the school on a full-time basis. I got involved with the school very informally, just talking to people who were involved. After that, I got pulled in because I knew as someone who got her film and video training elsewhere in England, it was important for me to impart it. More importantly for me, because these were black people who were being trained, it was more important for us to be involved to determine what kind of vision should be put through for the training.
In 1993, there were a lot of changes that we proposed in terms of moving the project, and not only being seen as a project but having a more long-term vision of a school. We pulled away from the original organizers of the school and set up an education trust. We moved from the location where the project was based; it was getting too small for the kinds of activities that we wanted to get involved in. We moved to an area called Newtown Cultural Precinct where a lot of artists were based. We called ourselves Newtown Film and Television School. We set up a new vision of the school with a full-time program, internships, linking with other international film schools and having more qualified black practitioners to teach at the school.
The curriculum itself was under scrutiny in terms of the steps that had to be taken to ensure that students who come out of the school are not just technically competent but are people who understand the whole implication of cinema and video in terms of identity. In terms of them being a new generation that is going to come out of South Africa and start shaping a whole new way of seeing cinema, a whole new way of interpreting visual media itself; it was very important that in the curriculum we include those aspects of African Cinema, Black Cinema. So that students could actually have a broader base that is more relevant to them.
It is a two-year full-time program with a third-year internship. When people finished two years of the school, we placed them with various companies. We normally ask for a minimum of six months. They are there for six months for up to a year and based on their performance in the industry then they graduate.
So the areas that the are involved with are basically film and video...
Well, what has been happening is that when we started, even though the curriculum was film based, it was hard to work on film because of the expense. One, being the post-Mandela release and pre-new democracy, it was very hard—where you still find that in that era the political system itself was still within the control of the actual apartheid forces themselves. The school as it was, was something that made a big statement. Here we were training black people. For the first time, black people actually are being given those skills, of making films instead of being in front of the camera as actors.
It shook the white industry, so there was always that kind of antagonism towards the school from the industry before the new democracy, except for a few independents and progressive people. I remember when the first group of students was placed, you would find in various companies people even called them communists, because they came from the school. Visibly, Newtown was giving people power to actually have freedom of expression to write their own ideas, to know how it is done, to demystify the whole thing. Some of the big multi-nationals like Kodak—Kodak was not in South Africa then because of the sanctions—so Kodak did not have an office then at all, there were no ties. The film lab itself then, was very much state-owned in Pretoria. I remember one of our students when making his graduation film in 1994, decided to shoot it on film; we got some stock from AGFA. He went to the lab but the labs were not prepared to give any discount at all, they were not going to do it for us. Fortunately, the students had come to the Southern African Film Festival in 1993 and were introduced to a lab, CFL, in Harare. It occurred to him, "Why don't I go to Harare." So students got on one of these minibuses, traveled all the way, seventeen hours to come to CFL. For some reason, he had some misunderstanding with the owner of the lab then about the kind of arrangements that they would make for him. He thought it was free, but they gave him a sixty- percent discount. Later when I met the manager, he told me that he was so moved. This young man misunderstood the kind of discount he actually agreed with him, and there he is at his doorstep with his film under his arm and he has traveled all the way, he was very determined. He said he had to help him out.
Over the period of time that the school has been operating have you been trying to raise the number of women given the fact that in African cinema and audiovisual industry in general women are not that prominent in all positions?
That is one of the key policies, I think, of the school. The school itself has always been run by women. One of the key policies is to actively try to encourage women and promote women to come in. We have our selection criteria and at the top of that list is affirmative action for women. Every year we go out to make publicity about applications. Even within some of the women's magazines, though we may not agree with, we put an ad there. We do radio interviews, television interviews. We go to community groups that deal with women. To be honest, it has been a battle to get that kind of idea number of women. Because all the young women come, and when we start interviewing them, we find out that even when we have selected them for an interview, they do not want to do film. They don't want to. We run workshops before the selection, we do screenings, we start discussing how they are themselves perceived, certain ways that women have been represented in the movies. Then we go further than that in terms of behind the scenes: "here we are, this is what we do," and all those kinds of things. For some, it makes sense, and for some they just say, "No."
The first intake that the community school had, there were five women out of twelve. Of those five, about two dropped out before the end of the course, because they found out that it was not what they wanted to do after a year or so. The other three qualified and started working, two of which kept working up until two years ago. One of them said she has left the industry, it was just too much for her. She works for an insurance company; she just wanted a steady income. From that group, there is only one who is an editor now. She has worked for Transkei Television, SABC, and others. She is quite strong. The following year the intake was fourteen students and half the class was women. Out of that, the women who have made an impact, I think there have been about four of them. Four of them are still in the industry and are very strong. One of them was here at the Festival (SAFF); she is never out of work. Wherever she goes people just want her, she chooses. When jobs come she says, "Which one should I work with?" Another one is a production manager. They both are making an impact.
We have had an interesting situation, in my current second year group, we had sixteen and eight were women. Three were South Africans and the others came from the region. We had two women from Zambia, and also one from Botswana and one from Zimbabwe. They are quite a strong unit, out of the group of women only one has actually dropped out.
We still have a bigger challenge of making sure that we find somehow a right approach of getting the women in. It is a bigger issue of the society. Because now even though a lot of women, and young women especially, are interested in television, they want to see themselves there, on the screens. That is what it is all about, they want to be presented. We have had people that we tried to teach and have talked to. They say, "No, I don't want that, I want to be a presenter, I want to be seen on television."
Among the ones that you have trained, what specific areas are they trained in, camera, editing, sound, producing, or is it a combination of all of those?
Basically, all the students are trained in everything at the school. The first year they have to learn everything, how to develop an idea, writing, etc. Every student is required to learn all the areas. So in their second year they are strong. It actually shows who is strong in what, who is capable of doing what. When they finish that first year, before they come back for the second year they have an internship for three months. They are placed within various companies bearing in mind what they are strong in. If someone has shown strength in directing then he or she will be a director's intern somewhere, or in editing, and so forth. But what I have observed now is that a lot of our women students seem to have the capabilities for producing and editing and writing, they are very strong in those areas for some reason, I don't know why. Writing, editing and producing, we got the women there.
I notice that one of the students that you have in your current class, I think in the second-year class, actually played the lead role in the Zimbabwean film Flame. Are these the kinds of students that you are getting now, people who have already been exposed to some aspect of the industry, and as a result of that they want to go further?
Of the type of students who come to the school there is a whole mixture. Some people had no clue. We take them in for affirmative action, there are very few who have had exposure. From what I have actually experienced, those who have exposure we usually have a problem with them because they think they know. For some reason, it takes them a long time to actually learn, because they have this blocking mechanism. Personally, I like the ones who don't know, because they are humble, they are open. The minute that they actually get in tuned with what is going on, they go far ahead of those who actually had some kind of exposure, it is very interesting.
Especially the women students that we take in. We realize that we have a very small number of women applicants. Last year we had about three hundred applications and out of those, you would not believe how many women applied, only about twelve. So we make sure we interview all of them. When going through the applications it already indicates that they had no film experience at all. So we make sure that that is not going to be the criteria for the interview, for us to talk about the industry or whatever. We want to find out more about the person, what is it that they want to bring in to the course. What is it they want to bring in to the film industry. Have you got a story to tell? Tell us about your story. What really attracted you to film? Sometimes people cannot really express themselves properly to say "I have this thing within." But you can just see it, that this person has got something. But due to the lack of exposure, they cannot express it. We have had good experiences with those kind people. You take them in, and quietly the first few months they find their way, you find they are more practical people. As I said earlier, the ones who turn out to be far ahead later are not the ones who have already been there and are under the impression that they know what it is all about.
You said that the school has always been run by women. What is the composition of you staff? How many people do you have actually running the school and what percentage of that is women?
We are not really a big school. There are four full-time positions, and one part-time, the bookkeeper. Of these four, it has always been women. The director, the program coordinator, the education programmer who does the library and extra-curricular activities for the students, like festivals, visiting filmmakers, seminars, and our administrator and the reception, it has always been all women. We had one man before who was among the women, he was there to do fundraising and things like that, but there has always been women who have been doing it.
We do not have a full-time teaching staff who is there every day. All our instructors are on contractual basis; they are all industry practitioners. They come in for their special area per semester. Most of the time we have a pool of people who ensure the continuity for the students. These people commit themselves; even when there are productions, they do it around the students programs. Each instructor has three hours per week, whether their class is directing, editing, etc., they come three hours per week. When students are on production, depending on who supervises them, they will be there with them for two weeks. The way we contract people, we look at their area of specialization. If for instance, we are looking for a directing teacher, we want to know if this person is a director of television, documentaries, drama, or performance. We want to make sure that the students get the most out of it. Not everyone who is a filmmaker is good in everything.
How is the school funded? Is it through student tuition, government funds or other agencies?
Funding has always been a kind of continuous handicap for the school. What was envisaged was that Channel Four would put up this seed funding with the hope that by the time that contract runs out there would be a new government. There has always been that kind of idea that "it is our government which is going to help us." That has really, I think, hurt the school in terms of its long-term sustenance. I think currently we are suffering from funding strategies that were based on international donors. Since the new government has been in place we get a quarter of the budget from the Department of Art and Culture, but then with that there is no commitment for the long term.
What is happening now in South Africa, is that next year we are going to set up a Film and Video Foundation. It will be sort of a body that is going to look into the film industry, in the areas of training, production, co-production, marketing, South African products.
So yes, funding has always been sort of our handicap. The students pay minimum fees, but it does not even make up a quarter of the expenses that have to go into their training. We adopted the fees just as a matter of principle for people to actually take responsibility, not to expect that it is just going to be a handout for them. Even though it is minimal, they have a problem paying those fees. Our fees are now 7,000 rands. It costs us 40,000 rands per year per student. For them to get that 7,000 is a big deal. Their parents are earning how much? 2,000, or 1,000? So now, we have a new strategy where we are going to the corporate world and industry to have them set up a scholarship fund. That seems to be working at the moment. A number of people have committed themselves for the scholarship fund, the Video Lab was the first one. Now we have Times Media Ltd. (TML), and others, as well as various individuals. We also monitor that because we feel that students should not automatically qualify. Because we never know whether they are going to drop out, so first they have to put up a deposit like 2,000 rands and after a semester, it is easy for us to sort out where they are. A lot of times we prefer to go for the second year because by then we know the students. We know their strengths, we know they are committed people.
Because the thing is, if we were to raise the fees to realistic figures that other film schools in South Africa are actually charging, like 20,000 or 22,000. What it does automatically is exclude black people and then it contradicts the mission of the school, which is to open access to black people in the most important areas of filmmaking, the creative decision-making. If we don't do it, no one else is going to be committed in South Africa. That is the truth, no one else would be committed to make sure that black people get in and that they are well qualified and well trained.
How do you see the situation of women in African cinema in general and in South African cinema in particular, how would you assess that? In terms of their participation at all levels?
I think that a lot of times the perception of separating women in cinema for me personally is problematic. Because I think that all the problems that women go through, men need to be part of those discussions. Men need to be made aware of their attitude and their approach. As fellow filmmakers, African filmmakers, I think they also have to question themselves, a lot has to be confronted by our fellow African filmmakers to actually make sure that they support the women. They take it upon themselves as a matter of principle, that, "I want to see more African women participate in the cinema."
I always say that women are the best storytellers in Africa. That is where I start, and in trying to encourage young women I say to them, "It does not matter whether you call those stories gossip or chit chat or whatever." Women have them; they have those stories. Then you move further than storytelling. Women are producers, they control the budget at home, they direct. When they come they have those natural skills, they have those skills already and our men should recognize that. They should know it, and help us in this battle to insure that there are more women. When women are here, they are given that opportunity to use those skills that they have.
This whole thing of mystifying the difficulties of making films, I think that it is all male games, it is about power, basically. Men just like to be in a position of power all the time, to mystify everything. They have to sort of confront themselves to say, "We know how women are, I know my mother, I know my sister, I know the kinds of skills that they have, and so I have to make sure the opportunities are there for women."
What are some of the prospects that you see for women and South African women in particular? Do you have any women filmmakers now coming up? I know you have some of them because they are coming through you, actually, at the Newtown Film School. With the situation in place right now, how would you assess it generally speaking?
I don't want to be very pessimistic or dismissive. I think we have started somewhere. We have started somewhere, at Newtown we are training young women. Outside of Newtown there are very few individuals that I know that are out there trying to make a mark, trying to negotiate for their space. I think what we need is a strong network, this is what I am always saying to the sisters. I say, "Look, we should have a strong network to know who is actually good in what area and make sure that those particular persons impart their skills, they go themselves further." With the involvement of men, as well. To some extent, we still have a lot of work to do. You also look in television; a few women have also been given powerful positions. The head of Channel 2 in SABC is a woman, at the head of the radio there is a woman, on the board there are women. I think we are making headway somewhere. Because we have started, all we have to do is to make sure that we will intensify and actually recognize that we are there.
I think the other problem is that we don't really recognize and feel confident that we are there. We need to be even very vocal about it, to say, yes we have made headway, we have started. Now strategically, what is it we need to do to insure that other people are further developed and other people are coming in? As I said, I think that men have to be more involved in terms of insuring that women are moving forward. I don't want to get into the whole rhetoric and emotional issues, like, "as women we are marginalized." I just want to see us practically, identifying where we are, how do we get there, and making sure that we are working together with men to insure that there are more women in the industry.
You talked about networking, how would you see that working in terms of relations between South African women filmmakers in particular with other women filmmakers on the continent as well as in the African Diaspora. Do you see any potential in those linkages, in that kind of networking?
The potential is there, but what has been the obstacle is the lack of information. As you know, South Africa has been isolated for so many years. The few women who are in the industry hardly know other African women who are in the film industry. Through some of us, and through the school in terms of our network, we are seeing the awareness coming out. I think we still are at a very early stage where I think people are searching, inquiring, "How do we start to network, now we have heard there are other women, how do we get in touch with them?" I get those kinds of questions from people all the time, who ask, "How do we get in touch, how do we insure that we can talk to other women about their experiences?"
In the region itself institutions like SAFF, the Market, which have initiated those kinds of venues for people, are opening up the borders for people to start talking. FESPACO itself is a very important institution, I think that we have a long way to go to actually insure that a lot of women especially from South Africa participate more in the continent. On the other hand, you get this feeling that FESPACO is a big body and it is just too overwhelming for people. For some reason, it needs to be demystified for a lot of people who don't know what it is. In terms of its profile before the festival actually happens there is a lot of work that has to be done within my country. To say this is FESPACO, this is what we stand for; there are definitely some mystifying things about.
There is a lot of discussion about gender issues particularly about the notion of a female sensibility. Do you feel that there is a female sensibility that comes out in a woman's film? In the process of training your students, especially by the fact that the school is run mostly by women, does this issue come out, especially with the young women that you are training?
For me it is very difficult. Even with the experience of working with the young women in the school, people have different personalities, to sort of generalize and see it that way is very dangerous. You see young men who are very, very sensitive. You look at the films that they have made, and if you want to generalize you may say, that film was made by a woman, and it turns out that it was a man. What I would personally recognize is that for me there are definitely different ways that men and women see things. There is definitely a difference in the way that we see things, the way that we solve problems. There is some sort of idea around this issue where you find maybe somewhere, somehow women have not adequately expressed their womanhood in their films, due to the whole production process of the filmmaking itself. Perhaps, due to the inhibitions that they actually come with or carry with them, actually being touched with this medium. Knowing what the camera is saying. Knowing when you edit. How do you freely express yourself as a woman in that medium? As opposed to those principles which have basically been set by men, the principles of making movies. I would like to see it on a higher level than that as well; the principles of filmmaking itself have been basically defined by men.
Now maybe things have changed. I know some of the things that have always been kind of scary to women is equipment. They see these big cameras, these big machines. They are big, they are heavy, you need a certain strength to carry these things, if you push your finger through there, this will happen. All of those things, I think they have been very intimidating—"How am I going to carry this thing?" I think women have all the energy, the power. They put buckets on their heads and all those things. The invention of the equipment was made through the male's eye and the male perception. When we want to get into that issue, I would like to look at those things as well.
What are some of your own film projects?
Since I have been at the school, it has been very hard for me to work in the film industry. The last time I did a documentary was in 1995, which was a piece I did on African music for SABC. Now I am working with Joyce Makwenda in Zimbabwe, we are doing a series on the role of women in politics in the Southern African region. We are not just looking at hardcore politicians, but we are looking at all those other areas where women have been active to make sure that the politics of the region are happening. My personal favorite story is of the shebeen queens in the township. When the whole resettlement happened they refused to go to be housemaids. They refused to be nannies. They carried the whole economic independence. This is why, as in the case of South Africa, they were permanently raided by police. Because the whites did not understand why this one did not want to be their nanny. What we have today is that She-bins are the tourist attraction, people come to see them. At least they are given a bit more respect.
Is this going to be a documentary series?
Yes, will be a documentary series. I am also working on another project, which is at the very elementary stages. I am working with Godwin Mawuru, as well, on the story of Nehanda. I was attracted to it also, while we were growing up during the struggle we used to hear about this woman, Nehanda. When we switched on Radio Freedom, the combat theme was, "Forward Nehanda", but we did not know what it was at the time. I am doing research on this woman who was so strong, and through her spiritual medium gave guidance to all the guerilla forces in the region. She actually single-handedly stood up to the colonialists. She was the first one to actually be executed, they beheaded her. At the point when she was there with another man and they were both ordered to be baptized to be forgiven; she refused. The man gave in to be baptized and she refused.
