More than R120 million in government transfers has flowed into the Gauteng Film Commission (GFC) over three financial years.
Hundreds of jobs have been reported. Dozens of film-industry businesses have received support. Equipment has been handed to emerging companies and schools. Productions have been funded.
But the film makers in Gauteng are asking the most basic question, where exactly did the money go?
The Gauteng Film Commission’s latest funding opportunity closed today, 13 August.
But before another rand is committed, Film makers in Gauteng have already expressed their concerns.
A filmmaker who asked to remain anonymous said:
“We’ve applied but we’re not hopeful. This is because their system has never been fair and transparent. We know they received over R50 million from the provincial government but we don’t know how they’re spending that money.”
“Over the years we’ve been asking GFC to give us answers. Specifically we wanted to know what happened to money committed in previous rounds,” she continued.
In an attempt to get answers, Africa Daily sent detailed questions to GFC and asked How many projects were actually delivered? How much money was recovered from the failed projects? Who were the beneficiaries?
How many received funding repeatedly?
Who sat on the panels deciding? Who got funded? What evidence supports the thousands of jobs the GFC says it created?
The reports show that the provincial Government transferred about R41.2 million in 2022/23 and R40.1 million in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25.
That is more than R120 million over three years.
But the figure should not be misunderstood as R120 million being handed directly to filmmakers.
The GFC uses its government allocation to fund its own operations as well as programmes designed to support the audiovisual sector.
In 2023/24, for example, the GFC’s Industry Support and Development programme spent approximately R14.5 million.
Of that, approximately R4.4 million went towards audiovisual production, R3.6 million towards audience development, R2.1 million towards television content, R1.9 million towards skills development and R1.3 million towards enterprise development.
The figures raise a simple question:
Of every rand allocated to the Commission, how much actually reaches the people it exists to support?
The film makers further complained about job opportunities at GFC.
“The purpose of this institution is also to create jobs in the film industry. But we don’t see these jobs because the funds are mismanaged. We feel that our money is spent on projects that are not related to the film industry,” complained another film maker.
In 2023/24, the Commission reported 583 jobs created, against a target of 800.
One year later, the number exploded to 1,870 jobs, against a target of 950.
The GFC attributed the increase to high crew recruitment from supported productions.
“We are aware of their figures but we want to know what exactly is a job according to GFC. If a production hires someone for three days, is that one job. If a person works on five separate productions funded by GFC, are those five jobs. If hundreds of people are employed temporarily during production and then return to unemployment when filming ends, does that constitute sustainable job creation?” asked the film maker.
“If taxpayers are being told that 1,870 jobs were created, they are also entitled to know what that number actually represents,” he continued.
The Gauteng Film Commission was given an opportunity to respond.
They initially referred this publication to its annual reports, stating that the information contained in them was audited and publicly available.
After receiving the follow-up questions, the GFC said: “Please note that we are still compiling responses to the questions and will share them once finalised.”
