Springbok Film Co.

Though Thelma Gutsche assumed that the short-lived Springbok Film Co. was “an overseas production firm”, it was probably founded by the Australian-born entrepreneur and showman Rufe Naylor, initially to produce locally-made “topical shorts” to be shown in his Transvaal-based Tivoli picture palaces, but also to provide a home for The Great Kimberley Diamond Robbery (1911), a fictional two-reeler made by R.C.E. Nissen that was touted as South Africa’s first home-grown film drama. The company seems to have fallen by the wayside when Naylor’s financially struggling Africa’s Amalgamated Theatres (A.A.T.) was taken over by I.W. Schlesinger’s African Theatres Trust.

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