Local movie aficionado Linda Ginya didn’t let the Covid-19 pandemic stop him from giving people access to local films.
While the big companies were closing shop, Ginya brought back the nostalgia of the 80s and 90s by evolving his four-year-old outdoor cinema business into a drive in cinema called DriveThruSA.
“During level 4 of lockdown I got an opportunity to send a proposal to the department of sports, arts and culture, Gauteng Film Commission and the NFVF [National Film and Video Foundation]. At first, nobody believed in the concept because people didn’t understand what is this drive in cinema. How does it work? This is a concept that was done in the 90s,” he says.
The 31-year-old eventually got the two sponsors on board and he was able to hire equipment, pay for the use of his different venues and pay his 10-person team.
“It’s a different experience because you sit in your car and catch the frequency right in your car. For some people it was a foreign concept and for others it was like 'hayi man, this was done back in the 90s'.”
How the experience works is that patrons pay a fee, in 2020 it was R200 per car with four people in it, the cinema is at a specific location in Johannesburg. Ginya hosts it at Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens. Patrons then can get refreshments or buy any other items such as mask and sometimes raw honey from the sellers that are there.
Then the movie is shown on a giant screen and the sound can be picked up by tuning the car radio to a certain frequency.
“I’d say people prefer drive-in as opposed to seated cinemas.”
Clients can get their tickets through his business website or by following the company on social media, they regularly update times of screening and what will be on offer.
Ginya, an IT graduate, says his passion for film was nurtured by Akin Omotoso, the two met when Ginya was at YFM and was taught how to do voiceover work by Omotoso.
“He taught me voiceovers and he taught me literally everything I know about film today.”
The Soweto-born Ginya is now studying towards a BA Media and Communications qualification.
“It was difficult to convince the Gauteng film commission to part with almost R200,000 to partner with this project. So, firstly, my challenges were sponsorship, and secondly, convincing the [public] that this thing was going to work because at first people didn’t know much about Covid-19, but as soon as they did they gradually started accepting this concept."
Ginya says that in the beginning he wanted to screen the same movie at different locations, he had picked the Botanical Gardens and Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown, but had to rethink the Square due to financial and safety concerns. Ginya was able to host his drive-in cinema experience in all nine provinces last year on the first and the last Fridays of the month, providing South Africans with movies that were made by us for us.
“Literally it’s all the movies that were funded by all the film agencies, NFVF, Gauteng film commission, your DTI or IDC, a bulk of the movies I get directly from the NFVF. I do also give local film makers that were not funded by other agencies a platform, but provided that it has to be good content, like good content so much that if someone can say tomorrow, we want this film, why is not with us.”
Ginya usually calls on three to four directors that have experience and are currently working in the industry to be a sounding board on films that are not graded on. However, this is not the norm.
“’But I always ask people to get their grading from the Films and Publication Board (FPB) because the last thing I need is screening a film and there were scenes that shouldn’t be seen by [minors]. We always try and make sure that the film has at least been screened by the FPB.”
Ginya is currently in the Eastern Cape, he says it is underserviced when it comes to cinemas.
“Our biggest mandate is getting local movies to the people, so we try to get areas that have no access to the cinema and we all know that the cinema is expensive.’’
When it comes to profit Ginya is not shy to state that everyone involved in DriveThruSA is able to make money from a screening, from the team to the vendors, but he says it is not enough.
Ginya is still hoping to get more funding so that he can screen the same movie in all nine provinces at the same time. He needs funds for additional equipment so that he is able to do this and he hopes that hosting screenings will boost local small businesses who can operate as vendors.
Ginya’s next screening is going to be on April 1 and 2 in Johannesburg and on March 20 ad 21 in East London.
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