CULTURE-BRAZIL: Artists Rebel Against State Aid Stipulations

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 5 2003 (IPS) - The Brazilian art world has risen up against the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which it helped elect, for a proviso that state cultural agencies will only invest in projects that have a “social side”.

Artists representing Brazilian film, music, theatre, plastic arts and literature protested Monday against what they say is “state control over culture”.

The social aspect required for state sponsorship of arts projects includes “operating in harmony with government policy, particularly the Zero Hunger Programme,” according to a document from the public electrical company, Electrobrás, which received instructions from the government’s Communications Secretariat.

“The new criteria represent political and ideological intervention in artistic creation” and could prove to be a deadly blow to the current recovery of the Brazilian film industry, said director Carlos Diegues, an informal spokesman for his colleagues.

Singer-songwriters Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque de Holanda, and actors Miguel Falabella, Marieta Severo and Fernanda Montenegro (who has been indicated in the past as a potential minister of culture) are just some of the personalities that have spoken out in support of Diegues’s statements, published Saturday in ‘O Globo’ newspaper.

In the Electrobrás document, cultural projects are asked to support efforts to generate income, train youth, and provide inexpensive or free cultural activities in poor communities.

Some of the rules for state backing aim for beneficiaries to promote Brazilian traditions and identity and to disseminate the national culture in other countries to enhance this South American giant’s image.

A priority will be placed on projects that “democratise access to culture” and stimulate the social development of the poor, says the text.

These conditions for obtaining state support put film directors in particular on war footing.

The filmmakers see it as another blow after several years of failed efforts to negotiate new criteria for financing with Communications Secretary Luis Gushiken, who defines the state sponsorship policy in accordance with laws on tax incentives for cultural and sports activities.

Writer Eric Nepomuceno said in comments to IPS that this is due to “the ignorance and arrogance” of the Communications Secretariat, which centralised such decisions “without hiring experts in cultural policy and without knowledge about the artistic realm.”

It is an effort to promote an “assistance-based authoritarian policy that is not even feasible,” said Nepomuceno, who served as secretary of cultural exchange at the Ministry of Culture five years ago.

The requirement that a filmmaker receiving state funds must distribute 100 copies of the film reveals that the officials do not realise that it is up to the distributor and not the producer of the film, he said.

It is essential to “revise the laws on tax incentives for cultural production,” said the writer, adding that the process should entail dialogue between artists and the Ministry of Culture, whose role should be reinforced.

“Dialogue was lacking,” which led to this “lamentable and unnecessary confrontation,” said Nepomuceno, who also writes screenplays and has translated several works by Colombian Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel García Márquez into Portuguese.

“No other ministry takes orders from other sectors of the government,” he pointed out.

The Communications Secretariat responded to the criticisms in a statement, denying “any form of interference in the content of cultural production,” though recognising new criteria “for the best use of public resources.”

The objective is “to democratise and decentralise the distribution of resources for sponsorshipà and expanding access for the poorest populations to cultural and sports products made viable through public resources,” says the secretariat communiqué.

Singer Veloso says “the requirements suggest intolerable state control over content and style,” adding that a good government “should not even appear to insinuate less freedom for artists.”

President Lula, a former metalworker and founder of the ruling leftist Workers Party (PT), should interpret these protests “as a serious demand by the artistic class,” said the internationally famous Veloso.

Among the criticisms by filmmakers and actors were more than a few comparisons to “socialist realism”, the policy of the former Soviet Union that stipulated political criteria and objectives for art.

The idea that culture should be an instrument of the struggle for power is “a legacy of the old Latin American revolutionary ‘machismo’,” that considers art to be effeminate and a luxury to be paid with “hunger and much suffering by those who want to engage in it,” said filmmaker Diegues.

The new requirements have caused anger because, says Diegues, they could interrupt the recovery of the Brazilian film industry, which has produced 250 feature-length works since 1994, 70 of which were directorial debuts.

Lula and the PT have always enjoyed strong support from artists in general, particularly in elections. This is the second frustration the Lula administration’s allies have suffered since the president was sworn in Jan. 1.

The first was the designation of composer and singer Gilberto Gil as minister of culture.

The artist-activists in the ranks of the PT had drawn up a cultural programme for the government and expected a minister who would agree with their ideas. Gil was not part of that group.

This second clash between the Lula administration and the artist community puts an end to their “honeymoon” period, say observers.

PT president José Genoino has stepped in, pledging to organise a meeting between the Communication Secretariat and a commission of filmmakers.