A short History of 
released in Southern Africa Greetings Dramatards :marseywave2:
I've had this idea of covering a large deal of controversial South African films, but none of them had any large enough substance to make a worthwhile Longpost on their own. So after about having collected about 10 of them which separately all felt mediocre, I had the :wolfidea: why not combine them all into a collection of short stories :marseyexcited::marseyfsjal:
South Africa has had a pretty controversial relationship with films, especially regarding the censorship of religion, race mixing, and the suppression of any Anti-Apartheid sentiment during the National Party regime, and especially ESPECIALLY anything regarding the Red Menace of communism. So compared to the cultural titan Burgerland and its Hollywood, we have always been insignificant and inconsequential regarding international fame for films, but that doesn't mean we don't have our fair share of turbo drama all the way since 70 years ago, regarding what Films were considered appropriate by puritan proto-boomers, and actual unironic fascist Afrikaner-supremacists having their influence on our tiny film industry's history.
In order of their appearance throughout history:
1899 - THE VERY FIRST PROPAGANDA FILMS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA (ANGLO-BOER WAR):
To understand what an electric theatre is, we 1st need to go back all the way to when the very 1st movies were introduced to South Africa, or at least the very 1st time when inventions which could reasonably be construed as counting as films or movies began in SA, because during this analogue to electricity transitional period there were a lot of weird-as-shit inventions going around from europe - where determining the boundary of what counted as a film from various types of moving picture devices counted as films, whether for entertainment or education was blurred.
But for South Africans, so far away from europe where the majority of these post-industrial marvels were springing up all over, the definitive 1st motion picture device provably used to portray motion pictures within South Africa itself was the Kinetoscope. The Kinetoscope (invented by Thomas Edison) is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. :marseytv::marseywatchingtv: That's right dramatards! Hope you strags appreciate our modern 170 inch OLED Plasma HDTVs because back in 1895, the earliest motion picture devices were these wooden boxed with binoculars welded, in which the users looked to see the short 30seconds - 1 minute fast spinning reels of incrementally changing pictures, through which a projector shed light straight into the eyeballz of the user.
And the pictures were tiny! And the machine had to be placed within a darkened room to properly function, and the moviegoer had to bend over hunchback like to view this. Yet, even still these type of devices were instantly world wide popular.
The first Kinetescopes in South Africa were opened to the public on 19 April 1895 in Herwoods Arcade on Pritchard and President Streets in Johannesburg - then a small town only nine years old. Despite its incredibly isolated location, SA was one first countries in the world to see and hear sound motion pictures.
https://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/97/227102.html
Lingards Waxworks in Durban, who exhibited a number of mechanical novelties of the penny-in-the-slot variety, first showed them in August 1895. One of these was a Kinetophone. The Kinetophone was basically a Kinetescope, but WITH SOUND!
I mention all this to showcase that despite being isolated from the "civilized" world of europe, asia and burgerland, SA always found a way to have access to the earliest film and projection technology, mostly a result of all the powerful and wealthy Bongs residing in the Cape of Good Hope, and using their influence to import comforts and deluxe items from overseas. Thus South Africa would always be technologically capable of making films just as technically competent as their betters from Burgerland and eurolandia
https://thebioscope.net/2012/02/26/the-bioscope-guide-to-south-africa/
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The next evolution of motion pictures to hit South Africa, was the Mutoscope. Essentially it was the exact same type of device as the Kinetescope, but was cheaper, lighter (to transport), simpler to built than the Kinetoscope, and marketed by the American Mutoscope Company, the quickly dominated the "Motion Pictures Market" and "coin-in-the-slot peep-show business", and ended the short 5 year reign of the Kinetescope.
In South Africa, the 1st Mutoscope was a peep show "containing flick-over books of photographs taken from Biograph films", and was installed in 67 Pritchard Street in Johannesburg - a demonstration that within the span of a mere 5 years than Joburg had evolved from a dusty town into a burgeoning metropolis inland of SA, and
another demonstration that the Johannesburg gold rush had in the span of a decade gained traction and momentum from increasingly international companies, nationals, and especially the British Crown, which was ever hungry for mineral conquest.
Joburg would explode in population every concurrent 5 years since the discovery of Gold in 1884, and it would be this international influence and foreigners coming into the Boer Republics (especially the British) which systemically escalated tensions into open warfare. The use of film, as a new medium for propaganda, was discovered and exploited during that war, and it caused some early rotten tomatoes critique sneed
The 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer was is worth its own set of Longposts, but what's significant to understand for dramatards in the Film-drama of this post, is that virtually everybody in South Africa, was divided on the war and its progress. It might surprise you to know that not all Bongs were bloodthirsty barbarians who reveled in the misery of the Boers, or jeered at the cruelty and neglect of Boer women and children wasting away into living skeletons, as held by the British army.
Opposingly, not all boers or residents of the Boer Republics were unified in the declaration of the war against Bongland. Some boers wanted to become subjects of Britain and the Commonwealth, as many were eking out a shit poorcel existence in the middle of actual wilderness. At this point in time, the Pound was the most powerful currency on earth. Many boers themselves had become blind with the Gauteng Gold Rush, and had rushed to the Pretoria and Joburg cities to find their fortune and a better life individually, and comfort which a modern city-state like joburg offered many people, like sewage and flushing pottys, and being quite literally not in danger of being mauled by predators like lions and cheetahs.
The Boers were disunified same as the Greeks were against the Persian invasion, and when war was declared against Britain, only half of all Boers actually tool up arms against the English, and shockingly to any modern Afrikaners, between a 1/4 and 3rd of Boers actively AIDED the British throughout the whole war!
https://www.angloboerwar.com/forum/11-research/4591-films-about-the-boer-war
"Eight British commercial cameramen are known to have filmed in South Africa during the Boer War. William Kennedy-Laurie Peepeeson for the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company, Walter Calverley Beevor and Sydney Melsom (there are doubts over his identity) for Robert Paul, John Benett-Stanford, Edgar Hyman and Joe Rosenthal for the Warwick Trading Company, all filmed in the period up to the fall of Pretoria in June 1900. Sydney Goldman, Rosenthal's replacement, and C. Rider Noble (reportedly one of three filming for Walter Gibbons) remained to film the later stages of the war, but no film from this period is known to survive. Other film companies filmed only troops departing or returning to Britain, or resorted to `fake' recreations of battlefield scenes. (There is evidence of at least one amateur taking a cine camera to the war. Although film companies in other countries filmed local news stories relating to the war or produced fake war scenes, only British cameramen were present at the war itself."
No actual battle footage has survived, and only recreations and troop movements, and British soldiers disembarking from their ships in Cape Town were ever filmed to survive. Additionally all film during the war was produced by British photographers, and through the eyes of the British, thus innately biased. However, it needs to be said none of the actually war photographers were under the employ of the British Crown directly, and gave fairly NEUTRAL coverage regarding the war, with almost little to no political intentions behind the film, other than capturing the reality of at the time modern warfare against a near-peer enemy.
From the SA historical archives:
Here is an example of how a British Photographer covered everyday life of British soldiers, during a point in which they set up camp, did their daily duties and were busy repairing a bridge destroyed by boers.
Another generic Hospital and wounded scene, which you would not find out of place in WW1 or WW2 footage. Pretty neutral
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What WASN'T neutral was propaganda films and recreations filmed under Lord Kitchener's directive to display the war favorably towards the British Crown. as you can imagine, for many of the Boer non-combatants in Pretoria and Joburg, or Cape Town, seeing the side they greatly favoured portrayed as losing for the 1st time on modern Mutoscopes was pretty sneed inducing. 
Many fistfights would break out between British and Boer supporters in Joburg and Cape Town, outside the arcades in which Mutoscopes or Kinetescopes were housed. For the 1st time in history here, peeps could have strong feelings regarding film on a personally divisive shown topic. Film reels worth a mere 60 seconds of propaganda would cause such turbo rage that sometimes the arcades the Mutoscopes were housed in, would be trashed or burned down in anger by Boer supporters 
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https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/emily-hobhouse
By 1902 it would be the British's chance to be horrified or foaming. As rumours ran down the grapevine from the warfront in the Boer Republics, all the way back towards British civilians, both in the Cape, and back in England, those who followed international newspaper coverage would find themselves horrified one morning, by the frontpage images of emaciated Boer teenagers and women looking like skeletons with rubbery skin skin hanging from gaunt cheeks. This sparked outrage from the English public at what they deemed to be dehumanizing barbarism, unbecoming of the British Crown. And all of this was through the tireless efforts of Emily Hobhouse, who went through superhuman efforts to expose the Boer concentration camps, towards the wider British awareness. Remember boys, no internet or cellphones those days.
Hobhouse visited concentration camps set up by the British in the Orange Free State and Transvaal. When Hobhouse arrived at the camps, she was appalled to see the conditions in which the women and children were forced to live in. For several months Hobhouse attempted to improve the living conditions of the Boers and in many cases provided them with some supplies and clothing. Eventually, Hobhouse also attempted to voice her concerns to the British administration at these camps and Lord Kitchener (the British Supreme commander in SA) himself. However, Hobhouse was unsuccessful in her attempts to persuade the administration to make efficient changes and therefore, decided to travel back to England where she voiced her opposition to the concentration camps and reported on the appalling conditions in these camps. She focused her campaign on the liberal opposition, and in this way was instrumental in the government decision to send a group of women, under Dame Millicent Fawcett, to look at the situation, where they confirmed the horror to the wider public.
Among her campaigns, Emily would distribute fliers and photographs of the concentration camps in Cape Town, and back in England. She would also distribute primitive films which would horrify british civilians, when they looked aghast at Motion Pictures of Free State concentration camps from the peepholes of Mutoscopes and Kinetescopes. It was believed that regular and motion pictures were mostly responsible for igniting the British general public regarding the shortcomings of the Transvaal and Free State concentration camps.
A very similar set of events occurred during the Spanish concentration camps which housed prisoners in suboptimal and negligent manners.
https://www.pbs.org/crucible/tl4.html
The American media's portrayal of the horror conditions in which the Spanish housed the Cubans, would also turn international sentiment against the Spanish, and spur the Spanish to improve conditions for the prisoners they housed.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/concentration-camps-existed-long-before-Auschwitz-180967049/
When she attempted to return to South Africa in 1901, Hobhouse was arrested in Cape Town and sent back to Britain. She returned again after the war and helped set up home industries in the OFS and Transvaal to help rehabilitate the Boer families.
https://londontraveller.org/2016/03/04/the-anglo-boer-war-museum-the-womens-memorial-bloemfontein/
1910 - THE FIRST ELECTRIC THEATRE FOR COLOURED PEOPLE ONLY:
By 29 July 1909, the Electric Theatre in Durban was the first permanent theatre to be established in South Africa. Electric theatres was the name given to specific theatres by a british company which used Bioscopes to project motion pictures. By 1909 they had 5 bioscopes - which was the 1st modern incarnation of projectors displaying moving images towards a wall that seats were arranged against.
Already in this early stage, racial separation had become a notable feature of SA, similar to America, and Indians or coloureds were not always allowed to all of the white portions of cities or ablusions or entertainment. This sparked outrage among the coloured and Indian communities there in Durban, as they too had desire to see the new modern marvel of motion pictures.
Going around this: On 11 December 1910 the first Electric Theatre for "Coloured People Only" was opened on the corner of Grey and Alice Streets in Durban. The first programmes showed scenes outside the mosque in Grey Street.
And thus, for a time the discontent was stilled in the Durban community, this early set of events on racial discriminations would however spark early movements in the Coloured community from Durban, all the way to Cape Town, on having racial representatives embark on equal treatment under SA government.
Hilarious that it would not be housing segregation which sparked the earliest racial rights advocates movements in SA, but the inability to see movies because of their race! 
1931 - RISING AFRIKANER NATIONALISM IN FILM:
In 1931, the Capitol Theatre in Pretoria opened. At the gala opening, South Africa's first "sound films" were screened, as in films with you know sound accompanying the moving pictures. Among these "sound films" was Joseph Albrecht's Sarie Marais and Moedertjie, which portrayed the English/British cultural and economic imperialism negatively (the desire to spread the British language, culture and influence even where they were unwelcome). At this moment in time, England was the dominant cultural force on earth, similar as to how Burgerland is currently. And Irish, Scottish and Boers were constantly sneeding at the fact that the English had such profound influence upon them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaner_nationalism
https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/december-16-and-construction-afrikaner-nationalism
Afrikaans nationalism was emerging as a force. And modern film of the 1930 was a powerful tool regarding the diffusion of information and ideals over very large amounts of peeps.
Having gained official recognition in 1925, Afrikaans now flowered as a language. Poets, novelists and historians began to contribute to a growing archive of literature. A new translation of the Bible was lauded by DF Malan as the greatest cultural event in the life of the Afrikaner people. Writers such as Uys Krige, Elisabeth Eybers and WEG Louw published their first volumes of poetry. During the 1930s, Giliomee writes, ‘a new generation of Afrikaners sought to rediscover themselves through acknowledging both the heroism and the suffering of the war’.
Point is that, after finally escaping the thumb of British dominance, afrikaners went into total turbo overcharge with regards to finding their self identity. Unfortunately, similar to the Serbians finally having thrown their cuckoldry yoke of the Ottoman Turks off of their backs, the Afrikaner self-identity would become hyper extreme, to extent that their self actualization would lead into Afrikaner-supremacy and the notion that they were meant to lead South Africa under the hand of God. This mythos became so strong that it morphed Afrikaner sentiment in turbo racism against all of the other races occupying SA, and would be the foundational building blocks that led to the creation of Apartheid as a state of societal being 15 years later under the Verwoerd Administration, the architect of Apartheid.
It wasn't that Bongs or Boers weren't racist or discriminatory before the 1930s to blacks ad coloureds in SA, but with the 1931 Afrikaner Nationalism spike, it became a profound norm, and not just colonialist snobbery against perceived inferior african indigenious cultures.
The Burgerland film, Birth of a Nation, was screened for the first time in South Africa in 1931, for a very limited run of four nights only in the Johannesburg Town Hall. This was some sixteen years after its first release in the United States. In spite of this time gap, The Birth of a Nation had major consequences in South Africa, especially on South African film makers.
7 years later, In 1938, a film released, called "Building a Nation". It was very similar in structure and tone to its american counterpart, yet surprisingly much less racist and no caricatures of blacks. It was banal and true to historic events, though biased as through the eyes of settlers. It depicts South Africa from Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival at 'The Cape of Good Hope' in 1652 until 1910, when South Africa became a Union. It expanded the mythos of the Afrikaner by depicting the heroic struggle of the proto-afrikaners, to their identity forging through the Great Trek inland, and so on.
It is a source of supreme irony that the entire film is in English, and made by mostly english actors who portrayed the historic events of SA, including the Anglo-Boer as neutrally and truthfully, and yet Afrikaners had their spike of nationalism and anti-english sentiment in 1938.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Voortrekkers
Another film made in 1916, called Die Voortrekkers made a resurgence in the 1930s amongst all of the new Afrikaner literary types, who dubbed the silent film with post-production sounds. It basically depicted the dutch fricking off from Cape Colony to establish an autonomous homeland inwards towards the interior of SA, and the trials which these nutcases faced as they travelled difficult terrain and faced off against black tribes for territory. Once again mostly inoffensive when compared to America's "Birth of a Nation" with its blackface caricatures raping women
But the IMPACT these two films had was extreme. By 1930s the Union of South Africa had existed for 20 years, and many people had become used to the new order of things, with the alarming spike of Afrikaner nationalism, many liberal journos of the time criticized the filmmakers of stoking disorder in the Union of SA, the ironically mostly english filmmakers whom were only interested in making a historic drama. After the war, a degree of reconciliation developed between the Afrikaners and British, facilitating the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, under the leadership of former Boer Commandos such as Louis Botha and Jan Smuts.
Like Yugoslavia and its underlying ethnic tensions, these 1930s era Afrikaner films would stoke discontentment by accident or design amongst the european residents for the next decade. Lucky for us it only produced 
instead of ethnic genocide.
1939 - WORLD WAR 2 INFLUENCE ON SOUTH AFRICAN FILMS:
On August 31 the Germans invaded Poland and World War II broke out. The war accelerated Afrikaner nationalism and motivated the movement to produce culturally specific films.
Large contingents of the Afrikaners were very pro Germany, both as wingcuckery against Britain, and becuase the Germans had been the primary benefactor for the Boers in terms of weaponry and supplies all the way back in 1899. It was a sour pill for many Boers, that (once again) they would likely be mobilized against a nation they had no beef with, and had had good relations prior to, since they were part of the British Commonwealth, and would be mobilized alongside Australia and New Zealand against the Krauts. This caused divisiveness within Afrikaner communities as they were basically split against whether to aid England against the Krauts in yet again another World War.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4185756
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossewabrandwag
A strong movement against the british was spearheaded by the Ossewabrandwag organization under D.F. Malan, a far right Afrikaner Nationalist movement, which opposed South African participation in the 2nd Global war. Afrikaners formed the Ossewabrandwag in Bloemfontein on 4 February 1939, as tensions between Germany, France and England had already been brewing and the world was once again reeling on the brink of international war after Germany had absorbed Austria back in March 1938.
The Boer militants of the Ossebrandwag (OB) were openly hostile to the British and sympathetic to Germany. Of course in spite of this bravado, they were overwhelmingly insignificant in their ability to oppose Union of South African security forces. Members of the OB refused to enlist in the UDF (Union Defense Force) and sometimes harassed servicemen in uniform. This erupted into open rioting in Johannesburg on 1 February 1941; 140 soldiers were seriously hurt.
The Ossebrandwag had a military arm (die Stormjaers ) filled with veterans which engaged in sabotage against the Union government. They dynamited electrical power lines and railroads and cut telegraph and telephone lines.
The Union government cracked down on the OB and the Stormjaers, placing thousands of them in internment camps for the duration of the war. Even so many of the internees, including future prime minister B. J. Vorster, became future leaders of the ruling National Party during apartheid. Moreover, the internment aroused Afrikaner opposition to the government and helped the NP win the 1948 general election. The perceived cruelty in which the SA Union government treated those who opposed the 2nd Word War, inflamed tensions against the Afrikaners, especially since many of the Ossebrandwag were respected veterans and members of general Afrikaner society. By the time 1948 arrived, Afrikaners had outpopulated british whites in South Africa, and were far more unified in their collective identity.
As for films,
In 1936: The South African Censor Board is created, allowing the government to control the public's access to films and their content. This included anti-Union sentiment, and the censoring of any films which were deemed to undermine the Commonwealth global war efforts, such as inciting riots or rebellions within British colonies or Commonwealth states. Anyone so much as in possession of Ossewabranwag propaganda films, would be instantly interned.
The South African Censor Board's power expanded dramatically during WW2, basically turning the organization from a prudish organization which censored taboo topics against conservative sensibilities, and turning the SACB into a powerful propaganda tool, which would find itself in the hands of Afrikaners during the 1948 election.
The hardcore censoring of the Ossewabrandwag also expanded to any films which exibiting Afrikaner nationalism. This clumsy attempt of the Union government to stamp out Rebellion and dissent during the war years, only inflamed Afrikaners more. And Ossewabrandwag films became black market objects.
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The weirdest part about Afrikaner wingcuckey during the war years were their naivety of Jewish extermination by Nazi germany. So far away from Europe, Afrikaners didn't develop anti-Semitism to the degrees their mother-continent peers had. On average, afrikaners had positive feelings towards Jews, and reality only supported Nazi Germany to oppose the British Crown influence on South Africa, and because of germanic affinity.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4185756
Additionally, compared to Norwegian and French who sometimes willingly cooperated with the Nazi military forces during their occupation of these countries, Afrikaner dissidents had often little contact with German High command itself. Even more absurd was that German High command was seldom even aware of the OB, or that there were even any dissention available for exploitation in the British Dominion state, half a planet away from Europe.
The r-sluration didn't end there.
https://www.sylff.org/news_voices/12240/
In an almost inverted state, Afrikaner Far Right Wingers would have opposing racial hierarchies to their German fascist counterparts. Afrikaners considered Jews equal and fully white, and thus decisively above blacks, whereas Nazis deemed Jews the lowest of the low, and especially below africans.
By 1946 the Nuremberg trials were underway. And footage by Yank troops of the Genocide factories in Poland were being circulated globally by Anglo newspapers, and Projection companies.
https://hdec.org/ushmm-eisenhowers-foresight-protecting-the-truth-of-the-holocaust/
Afrikaner wingcuckery towards the Germans evaporated overnight. To see the jews suffer the same horror in concentration camps on a much deadlier degree, than that they had suffered in their mythos of the Boer war, basically woke up the population in shock. The rumours earlier in the war of Genocide camps were now proven by disturbing film reels, aired in South African motion picture theatres, as sent from the British and American troops which had recorded all the camps they had relieved under the Western alliance supreme commander, Eisenhower's direction, so that none may deny the reality of german concentration camps.
Support for the Ossebrandwag also evaporated overnight, and the organization became as toxic in association as that of the Nazis which they had wittingly or not supported during the war with their sabotage of national south african keypoints like bombing powerstations and so forth. Pro-OB films were destroyed, but sentiment against the Union gov still remained.
1957 - THE FIRST SOUTH AFRICAN FILM INDUSTRY SCANDALS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Back,_Africa
Lionel Rogosin (South African born, but lived and died in the USA) released his film Come Back Africa. It depicted live of africans in Townships under the new SA regime and won a bunch of rewards for artistic crap in Burgerland.
Rogosin's crew worked in secret, disguised as a commercial film unit making a musical, and were in constant fear of confiscation and deportation. It was one of the first non-musical films, if not the first to document the lives of black people in Africa using native languages.
The tiny film crew shot on location in the streets of Johannesburg, Sophiatown and in restricted areas prohibited to whites, where 50,000 African homes were being annihilated to make room for a white suburb called Triumph. Filming finished in October 1959, and Rogosin left South Africa. The editing was done in New York by Carl Lerner, who was receiving the rushes from South Africa.
The South African government attacked Come Back Africa and banned it from being shown in South Africa. It was one of the 1st films to have influence on the international stage regarding the controversy of economic and rights disparity between whites and blacks under Apartheid South Africa.
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Later that same year a film producer named Roger Bray pleaded for funds (mostly from Afrikaans churches) to make a film on the life of Paul Kruger (an influencial figure in SA history, and the guy whom the Kruger National Park is named after) and then, without shooting a frame of film, disappeared with the investors' money!
1964 - FILMING OF THE ZULU MOVIE:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_(1964_film)
"On its initial release in 1964, it was one of the biggest box-office hits of all time in the British market. For the next 12 years it remained in constant cinema circulation before making its first appearance on television. It then went on to become a television perennial, and remains beloved by the British public"
Zulu is a 1964 British epic war film depicting the Battle of Rorke's Drift between the British Army and the Zulus in January 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War. It shows how 150 British soldiers, 30 of whom were sick and wounded patients in a field hospital, successfully held off a force of 4,000 Zulu warriors.
[1] Banned in South Africa!
When released in Apartheid South Africa in 1964 the film was banned for black audiences (as the government feared that its scenes of blacks killing whites might incite them to violence).
The controversy of the banning of the film Zulu for viewing by SA black audiences was pretty ironic.
It was one of the pivot points around which Zulu ANC black rights activists rallied, when they became aware of the film in the 1960s, and that ironically enough that despite Zulus being depicted, the actual ethnic group would not have the ability to view the movie itself! They desired to see a movie which depicted themselves.
The irony specifically, is when the Zulu movie was unbanned in1973, black zulus were dismayed to find their portrayel to be less than flattering 
A jingoistic portrayal of the British colonial soldiers made the film a classic for many patriotic Britons who take delight in its portrayal of military bravery. But for Zulus, they are basically displayed at their worst, and by their own standards come across as foolish barbarians who throw themselves as meatshields against the much better British.
When the few zulus, whom had TVs back in the 1970-1980s finally got a chance to view Zulu, they were as dismayed at their ancestors' portrayel, as the Iranians were with the display of Persia in the film 300.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/15/film.iran
[2] Modern woke audiences hate Zulu movie!
https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/activists-want-zulu-screening-banned/
on the other hand, Zulus having played their part in the movie extras crew actually enjoyed their participation in the creation of the Zulu movie,
=====(from article)
IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi‚ 89‚ appears in “Zulu” playing his maternal great-grandfather‚ King Cetshwayo kaMpande‚ and in an article after he attended the 50th anniversary screening in London in 2014‚ he said the experience was “deeply poignant”.
He wrote: “For several weeks in 1964‚ a unique community was created at the foot of the Drakensberg Mountains. It was a thousands-strong community of actors‚ film crew and extras.
“What made it unique was that‚ at the height of apartheid‚ it was a community of both black and white where everyone was respected and everyone treated one another as equals. There was no fuss about race‚ no discrimination‚ no bigotry. It was simply a community of people working together to recreate a part of history that held tremendous meaning for all of them.”
Buthelezi said the re-creation of the battle for the movie was a “milestone event” for the Zulu nation. “Thousands upon thousands of Zulu men found themselves re-enacting the deeds and glories of their own grandfathers‚” he said.
“It was therefore almost incomprehensible when‚ a year after its release‚ ‘Zulu’ was given a ‘D’ certificate by censors in South Africa‚ effectively barring black South Africans from watching the film. I was grateful that a special arrangement was made to at least screen it for the thousands of extras‚ in places like Mahlabathini‚ Nongoma and Durban‚" he said.
"At those screenings ... the audience was drawn by the pathos of the warriors and soldiers into what was‚ in the end‚ a very human experience.”
=====(end article)
1970s - APARTHEID GOVERNMENT BECOMES 
HAPPY:
During the period of 1970s onwards, it was known by historians as High Apartheid, the height of National Party power, and they had attempted to consolidate what films the people of South Africa were allowed to view, as they believed it would inspire in them to oppose the Union, to harbour communist sentiments, to have blasphemous sentiments (the regime was also conservatively religious), and most of all inspire the non-whites of SA to stand up against the Apartheid government.
Above is just a few notable famous SA films banned throughout SA, but from the 1970s onwards a shitload of unknown, now lost and lower quality films would be banned, confscated or destroyed by the Apartheid government. Art like music and movies were heavily under scrutiny, and heavily censored. Even if you were white, you were vulnerable for long long prison sentences if you criticized the government, or promoted racial-mixing. Literally having s*x with a black woman was banned, and a white gut could get long terms like 10 frickings for violating degeneracy laws. Filmmakers who depicted interracial couplings were also under the danger having their freedom confiscated along with their projects.
https://www.thesouthafrican.com/lifestyle/banned-films-list-south-africa/
Also hilariously, I found out that Bongs refer to videos that are highly taboo, as" video nasties". Typically low-budget horror or exploitation films. lmoa
A lot of the most liberal filmmakers were critical of apartheid in their secret and unknown films.
1980 onwards:
The industry was further fragmented in the 80s: on the one hand there was a blossoming of independent cinema, much of it highly critical of apartheid. Films of this sort include The Road To Mecca, Die Storie van Klara Viljee, Manie van Rensburg's The Fourth Reich, and the Darrell Roodt trilogy: Place Of Weeping, The Stick and Jobman.
On the other hand, substantial tax concessions made investing in film an attractive option and a boom occurred in the commercials industry. Several hundred films were made, mostly inferior imitations of American films. The tax scheme collapsed by the end of the 80s.
The anti-Apartheid independent films such as Place of Weeping, Mapantsula and, Windprints, were seen by only a few South Africans. Even if they were not banned, the big distribution companies (Ster-Kinekor and Nu Metro) would not touch them.
1980 - THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY:
The Gods Must Be Crazy is a 1980 comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Jamie Uys. An international co-production of South Africa and Botswana. Set in Southern Africa, the film stars Namibian San farmer Nǃxau ǂToma as Xi, a hunter-gatherer of the Kalahari Desert whose tribe discovers a glass Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an airplane, and believe it to be a gift from their gods. When Xi sets out to return the bottle to the gods, his journey becomes intertwined with that of a biologist (Marius Weyers), a newly hired village school teacher (Sandra Prinsloo), and a band of guerrilla terrorists.
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/28/movies/the-gods-must-be-crazy-a-truly-international-hit.html
This is without a doubt, the best film ever produced in Southern Africa. It was an instant international success, and the greatest financial hit in SA history.
Despite its success, the film attracted criticism for its depiction of race and perceived ignorance of discrimination and apartheid in South Africa. The actors and main white cast appears indifferent to the differential treatment that whites and non-whites received in the movie, which uhhh it was kind of a reflection of South African society at the time. In Burgerland, the film was picketed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers and other anti-apartheid groups when it screened at the 68th Street Playhouse in New York City.
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/28/arts/film-view-is-the-gods-must-be-crazy-only-a-comedy.html
The New York times in 1980 wrote that they felt the depiction of the Khoi-San as simplistic people content in their primitive ways. Many Burger journ*lists accused the movie of being Apartheid propaganda, intended to portray blacks and coloureds as content with their way of life under the NP regime.
But the New York rimes 1980 review, reflected that possibly the creators of the Gods Must Be Crazy movie were in fact being sincere in their portrayal of Khoi-San and other Southern African peeps, and that they were so indoctrinated in their segregataed society under Apartheid, that the director and writers didn't even comprehend they were racist.
Point is for 
the movie was amazingly funny and entertaining worldwide, whilst activist groups boycotted it and journos would write sneed articles about how much the Union of South Africa sucked.
Other controversies involved the reality that most Khoi-San were similar to Burgerland-Indians. In that their culture was utterly destroyed and that they were living in squalor in their Homelands as designated by the NP regime. By 1980s most of the wild game numbers had been drastically reduced, and Khoi-San could literally not life like their ancestoes anymore. There was less water, foraging grounds, and wild game than 100 years prior.
The complaint was that the Gods MUst Be Crazy portrayed a distorted and idealized reality of the modern remaining populations of the Khoi-San.
The following year, Canadian anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee called the film "an amusing but thinly disguised piece of South African propaganda in which a peculiar element of South African white mythology receives prominent attention". Lee wrote that "the notion that some San in the 1980s remain untouched by 'civilization' is a cruel joke. The San have been the subject of a century of rapid social change and especially in the last twenty years have been forced to endure all the 'benefits' of South Africa's apartheid policies in Namibia"
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Further drama involved the Khoi-San main actor and star of the movie, N!xau Toma, not having been paid his fair share.
https://news365.co.za/gods-must-be-crazy/
This comic role endeared him to viewers especially those in Asia who were convinced that he makes three eccentric movie sequels. The movie grossed $60 million dollars and according to Jamie Uys, the South African director who discovered the actor, N!xau, did not know the value of paper money and he let his first $300 wages blow away.
Despite his inability to attract heavy financial resource in the first movie, he had learned the value of money and demanded several hundred thousand dollars before agreeing to a recast in the film. He insisted that the money was needed to build a cinder-block house with electricity and a water pump for his family comprising of three wives 
and their children.
When his film career ended, N!xau returned home to a newly built brick house. He tended his cattle and raised corn and pumpkins. He had a car for a while, but had to employ a driver because he had never learned to drive, The Namibian reported.
By the way the ! character indicates a click vocal for which the Khoi-San are famous for. The basic clicks are four: dental (|), alveolar (!), palatal (ǂ), and lateral (ǁ)
There's more movie and film drama throughout South Africa's history of banned and controversial films, but I think here is a good point to stop.
Hope some of you enjoy this 
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