Okuhle Media has partnered with newcomers, Dumile Films, to eventually try and tell new and better, black Cape Town stories as part of a new TV and film production partnership, as well as to help with further, much-needed transformation of South Africa's and Cape Town's TV and film industry.
As the need for local South African TV and film productions continue to grow, Okuhle Media decided to partner with Dumile Films to help with the proactive development of black stories and story tellers in South Africa and Cape Town.
The partnership is starting out by including team members of Dumile Films into the Okhule Media-produced youth show, Hectic Nine-9, done for the SABC's SABC2 channel, as part of the core crew and content development teams.
Through this the Dumile Film's team gets consistent practical experience working on a daily TV production.
Okuhle Media and Dumile Films are looking to create a joint skills development programme, and are also making plans to try and partner with an institution of higher education within Cape Town.
Dumile Films produced Nkululeko for Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) that had its first season in 2018.
The lack of thorough representation and executive transformation within South Africa's TV and film production industry has been an ongoing challenge faced by the industry for close to 3 decades, and while the call for various policies and talent amendments have been pointed out, limited focus has been placed on the sustainable transformation and meaningful skills transfer within the industry.
"We started our production company to curb the accepted practice of 'guessed culture' when it comes to the creation and production of black stories, especially in Cape Town," says Sibulele Siko-Shosha, the founder and creative director and producer at Dumile Films.
"The partnership with Okuhle Media provides us with the support, resources and opportunities to create and produce content that is authentic and of quintessential quality."
"The brain-drain within Cape Town's creative sector, especially TV and film production is a huge concern for us as most creatives end up opting to search for career opportunities in Johannesburg and Durban as those provinces have positioned themselves well as being friendly to the development and production of black stories," says Sibulele Siko-Shosha.
Prejlin Naidoo, Okuhle Media's group managing executive says "Consistent hands-on industry experience is the most important ingredient to ensure that there is sustainable transformation in any industry."
"Authentic cultural representation in content does much more than just entertain – it instills a sense of pride and empowering sense of social responsibility in those being represented; this is why a partnership such as this is important. It encourages the owners of the stories to be responsible for telling them and become direct recipients from the various value chains within production."
"Transformation-influenced partnerships have a reputation of being taken at face value as it is seldom that the participants follow through," says Prejlin Naidoo.
"Our commitment with Dumile Films holds us both accountable to our promise and passion for transformation in the industry. Our promise to them is to provide them with access to resources and support to help them grow to become the production powerhouse that their potential indicates that they can be."
