Local movies are not lekker

It has been said that cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theatre, but South Africans are desperate to escape to a world that is pure Hollywood.

In this world exist mostly robots, destruction and apocalypses - a big-budget world the local film industry can only marvel at.

According to the latest box-office report from the National Film and Video Foundation, 57% of the 228 films released last year were Hollywood releases, and they accounted for 71% of the total R880-million revenue.

In comparison, the 23 South African films (including co-productions with other countries) released in that period accounted for just 6.3% of box-office revenue.

The total revenue was down by a slight 0.13% from 2013.

Only one South African film, the Afrikaans love story Pad Na Jou Hart, made the cut for the top 25 films releases last year, earning almost R11.6-million in 10 weeks on circuit.

Afrikaans films accounted for 66% of local box office revenue.

Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth instalment of the popular franchise, was the top-grossing film. In 12 weeks on circuit, the film, starring Mark Wahlberg, Jack Reynor and Kelsey Grammer, earned just over R27-million. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was the second-best performer, earning just over R25.2-million, followed by How to Train your Dragon 2 (R23.3-million), Amazing SpiderMan 2: Rise of Electro (R21.8-million) and Rio 2 (R21.1-million).

They are figures to make the local film industry shudder - not that times have ever been vastly better than now.

Film producer Ryan Haidarian (Vehicle 19) said the only way to grow the industry was to make cinema accessible to the "vast majority" of the population.

"I'm convinced if you had 30 sites in the townships, films like [locally produced] Hear Me Move would have done well. Until you have screens where the vast majority of the population is, things won't change," he said

He used the example of China, predicted to be the biggest market in five years' time, thanks to a commitment to build thousands more cinema screens annually.

Haidarian said Afrikaans films did well because cinemas existed where their market was.

Warren Holden, the editor of Screen Africa, said there were "deep-seated attitudes towards our own cultural product" that needed to be looked into.

"Even with mediocre foreign productions, South African consumers seem to feel that they know what they are going to get. Local productions, on the other hand, are either seen as unknown quantities and therefore not worth 'gambling' the price of admission on, or are disregarded outright as sure to be of a lower quality," Holden said.