CINEMA-BRAZIL: Hollywood Opens Fire on Plan to Foment Local Films

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 3 2001 (IPS) - A new trade dispute between Brazil and the United States is brewing, to judge by Hollywood’s reaction to a Brazilian plan still on the drawingboard, the aim of which is to foment local film production.

The Executive Group for the Development of the Cinematographic Industry (GEDIC), which links representatives of the government and the filmmaking industry, is to complete a proposal for regulating and financing movie production in Brazil and send it to Congress this month.

The goal is to create an interministerial regulating body for the industry, that will answer to the office of the president, and which is to begin functioning next year. The plan will also set up a fund whose target will be to boost production of nationally-made films sevenfold over five years. Last year, only 28 movies were made in this country of 170 million.

The funding will come from a variety of sources, including tax incentives for investors, taxes levied on foreign audiovisual productions, and an association between the local filmmaking industry and national television networks.

Although the new rules have not yet been fully drafted, they have already led to pressure from the U.S. Motion Picture Association, whose vice-president for Latin America, Steve Solot, asked to be an active participant in GEDIC’s discussions.

In letters addressed to Brazilian authorities and published by the Jornal do Brasil on Jul 26, Solot and Jack Valenti, who presided over the Motion Picture Association for four decades, warned that the plan being drawn up could affect relations between the two countries.

The new project could deter U.S. investment in Brazil, which in recent years has played an important role in the production and distribution of Brazilian films, both within the country and abroad, according to Solot.

Meanwhile, Mary Pittelli, president of the Television Association of Programmers, Latin America, a trade association of subscription television programme suppliers for the Latin American market, complained that the measures being drawn up were “protectionist”, and warned that “some of our associates could suspend their activities in Brazilian territory.”

In statements to IPS, Assunçao Hernandes, president of the Association of the Cinematographic Industry of Sao Paulo, retorted that accusations of protectionism by entities which control more than 90 percent of the market for films in Brazil were “cynical.”

Foreign films – almost all of them U.S. productions – take 93 percent of box office earnings in Brazil, pointed out Hernandes, who is also vice-president of the Brazilian Congress of Cinema, which decided last year to promote a plan to bolster development of the industry.

In the area of video rentals, “the situation is even worse, because that market is forced to absorb even the ‘trash’ that arrives from Hollywood,” stressed Roberto Mendes, the owner of Sagres, a video distributor that gives priority to local films.

U.S. distributors put out an average of 70 popular movies a year in video format, but force importers to purchase a large number of mediocre films as well, Mendes explained.

The same thing happens in television. Stations are thus able to fill hours and hours of broadcasting time with low-cost “trash”, but at the expense of local Brazilian production and culture, he added.

In the 1970s, when the local filmmaking industry enjoyed state funding and all movie theatres were obligated to show national films 49 days a year, Brazilian productions commanded 30 percent of the domestic market.

But that support structure was dismantled in the early 1990s by then-president Fernando Collor de Mello, and local production plunged to just a few movies a year.

New rules designed to give the industry a boost, especially through tax incentives for investment in the sector, led to a resurrection of Brazilian filmmaking beginning in 1994, and since then the industry has produced an average of 25 films a year.

But when those incentives exhausted themselves, discussions of the new plan got underway, said veteran producers and filmmakers Luiz Carlos Barreto and Gustavo Dahl, both members of GEDIC.

Now the objective is to overcome barriers standing in the way of the growth of the national filmmaking industry, like distribution and exhibition, said Hernandes.

The new fund will help finance “two or three strong distributors,” as well as the construction of new movie theatres, in order to double the number of cinemas, which today number just over 1,500 throughout Brazil, he added.

The goal is for local films to reconquer 20 percent of the Brazilian market “in five or six years,” and “50 percent in the long-run,” said Hernandes.

The fact that U.S. movie and television associations think they should be able to participate in drawing up policies and laws in Brazil reflects a “colonialist attitude,” Barreto charged.

“The old Yanqui imperialism” already applied pressure in the 1970s, and has now returned “with threats of trade reprisals,” in an attempt to intimidate Brazil’s lawmakers, said long-time filmmaker Arnaldo Jabor, now a television commentator and columnist for several newspapers.