Cinema of South Africa

Cinema of South Africa (Joziwood)
No. of screens	857 (2010)
• Per capita	1.9 per 100,000 (2010)
Main distributors	Ster-Kinekor 38.8% Nu-Metro 35.7% Uip 21.7%
Produced feature films (2013)
Total	25
Number of admissions (2011)
Total	22,400,000
Gross box office (2013)
Total	R879 million
National films	R98.4 million (11%)

The cinema of South Africa, often metonymously referred to as Joziwood, refers to the films and film industry of the nation of South Africa. Although few local productions are known outside South Africa itself, many foreign films have been produced about South Africa (usually involving race relations). One exception was the film The Gods Must Be Crazy in 1980, set in the Kalahari. This is about how life in a traditional community of Bushmen is changed when a Coke bottle, thrown out of an aeroplane, suddenly lands from the sky. The late Jamie Uys, who wrote and directed The Gods Must Be Crazy, also had success overseas in the 1970s with his films Funny People and Funny People II, similar to the TV series Candid Camera in the US. Leon Schuster's You Must Be Joking! films are in the same genre, and hugely popular among South Africans.

Arguably, the most high-profile film portraying South Africa in recent years was District 9. Directed by Neill Blomkamp, a native South African, and produced by Peter Jackson, the action/science-fiction film depicts a sub-class of alien refugees forced to live in the slums of Johannesburg in what many saw as a creative allegory for apartheid. The film was a critical and commercial success worldwide, and was nominated for Best Picture at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Other notable exceptions are the film Tsotsi, which won the Academy Award for Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006 as well as U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha, which won the Golden Bear at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.

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