Tsotsi director reveals anti-pirate moves

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE

Moonyeen Lee is one of South Africa's leading film gurus. Today she boasts of overseeing over 15 movie productions as casting director. Perhaps the best of all her efforts has been the 2005 hit movie, Tsotsi, which won an Academy Award for best foreign film this year. The movie is about a gangster and shows compassion.

The popularity of the works saw one of the editors of the film releasing it illegally on DVD. He was eventually caught and brought to book, but the bootleg DVDs did not stop flowing into the lucrative market where the news of the success of Tsotsi at the Academy Awards created waves. The result was mass production of Tsotsi, by other DVD thieves who flooded the whole of southern African market, including Botswana. The pirated copies hit the market even before the real DVD was officially released. Lee is filled with pain. She feels especially for the actors, who have now been denied their rewards because the money for the hit movie is now going into wrong hands. "The whole cast is not benefiting at all from the rampant piracy. It is really sad."

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