4.14.2006
6.6. Colombian Film Industry: First Act
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This review on the status and potential of the Colombian Film Industry points at several key elements that have to be addressed by government and agents if the amount of productions is to grow and their financial results are to be more sustainable. The two strategies available in the short-mid term for Colombian cinema are the resistance and the differentiation strategy. A comprehensive set of policies to expand production and audiences of low-mid budget national films targeting a guaranteed internal exhibition and the expansion of the internal audience, and also the production of more neutral films able to travel to the international art-cinema circuit using the commercial infrastructure of the big TV-media conglomerates.
Financing sources, national and international marketing, audience formation, and guarantees for competition in the different exhibition windows are the areas that have to be covered by policy and professionals to achieve long term growth for the film production sector. Home Video and TV broadcasters have to be integrated into film production financing. Spaces for marketing communications of film products have to be implemented to contact national audiences. Presence in international markets for films and talent and definition of markets to target has to be planned and executed. Educational programmes for audience development and workshops about Colombian and Latin-American filmmaking and audiovisual media, especially at schools, have to be developed.
"Competitive" exhibition and distribution quotas that include Colombian and Latin-American cinema have to be implemented to guarantee competition in the feature films delivery sector. The current economic policy trends embodied by the neoliberal discourse do not oppose state financial support and grants for production or distribution of national films. The Majors know that such grants and production loans will not have any effect on their market share since any film produced in such a way usually reaches its first copy after a long process that weakens the production team and the potential of the film itself. What the Majors, their representatives, and the international trade institutions oppose is market limitations and regulations to allow competition, that is, more players competing in the same market. Competition is the key driver of advanced capitalism. When industry groups lobby hard to stop governments from pursuing regulations that will maintain some kind of competition they are not doing it on behalf of competitive capitalism but of monopoly capitalism.
A mix of regulated market space, mandatory private production financing (open and pay TV networks will have to diversify into film production), and audience formation through education and marketing is required in order to offer more film content choices, of professional quality, to informed audiences. These three elements have to work together. One without the others is far from enough.
For a national cinema, for Colombian producers and filmmakers, production and delivery of films is a permanent struggle. Without a comprehensive support strategy it will be very difficult to expand the industry and its internal and external audiences. Perhaps Victor Gaviria embodies such creative struggle, with its successes and failures, as no one else in the Colombian film landscape. When referring to the difficulties to find investors for his projects, he concludes:
“I attracted producers by giving away the property of the film. My production company had 100%, but little by little we gave the shares away at lower prices than their value. I gave 10-15% of the film at much less. You end up giving away your work, and the grants you got, giving it to the financial co-producers at half price of the film’s value, and you give it away so you can finish it. Not to finish it would be even worse, a tragedy. The film is owned by other people now. It is not mine anymore. But you will see that "Sumas y Restas" is what I wanted it to be. It was a difficult subject for investors to get involved with. But that’s critical immaturity, a weak public opinion that fears contamination. Contamination means that today's flows of information are so dense that there's no time to separate the signs that appear together, everything is associated… as one cause. Investors fear that kind of association. Nobody wants to be around the subject of Cocaine. There's some kind of shame about being mixed with certain issues, but in a film the important thing is the treatment not the subject. Art is not ashamed because Art is privileged by the treatment, not by the chosen subject. A work about drug-trafficking might be crucially important for Colombia depending on how the film or the novel is treated. Those themes cannot be forbidden to Art”. [Gaviria, 2005].
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¶ 8:53 PM This review on the status and potential of the Colombian Film Industry points at several key elements that have to be addressed by government and agents if the amount of productions is to grow and their financial results are to be more sustainable. The two strategies available in the short-mid term for Colombian cinema are the resistance and the differentiation strategy. A comprehensive set of policies to expand production and audiences of low-mid budget national films targeting a guaranteed internal exhibition and the expansion of the internal audience, and also the production of more neutral films able to travel to the international art-cinema circuit using the commercial infrastructure of the big TV-media conglomerates.
Financing sources, national and international marketing, audience formation, and guarantees for competition in the different exhibition windows are the areas that have to be covered by policy and professionals to achieve long term growth for the film production sector. Home Video and TV broadcasters have to be integrated into film production financing. Spaces for marketing communications of film products have to be implemented to contact national audiences. Presence in international markets for films and talent and definition of markets to target has to be planned and executed. Educational programmes for audience development and workshops about Colombian and Latin-American filmmaking and audiovisual media, especially at schools, have to be developed.
"Competitive" exhibition and distribution quotas that include Colombian and Latin-American cinema have to be implemented to guarantee competition in the feature films delivery sector. The current economic policy trends embodied by the neoliberal discourse do not oppose state financial support and grants for production or distribution of national films. The Majors know that such grants and production loans will not have any effect on their market share since any film produced in such a way usually reaches its first copy after a long process that weakens the production team and the potential of the film itself. What the Majors, their representatives, and the international trade institutions oppose is market limitations and regulations to allow competition, that is, more players competing in the same market. Competition is the key driver of advanced capitalism. When industry groups lobby hard to stop governments from pursuing regulations that will maintain some kind of competition they are not doing it on behalf of competitive capitalism but of monopoly capitalism.
A mix of regulated market space, mandatory private production financing (open and pay TV networks will have to diversify into film production), and audience formation through education and marketing is required in order to offer more film content choices, of professional quality, to informed audiences. These three elements have to work together. One without the others is far from enough.
For a national cinema, for Colombian producers and filmmakers, production and delivery of films is a permanent struggle. Without a comprehensive support strategy it will be very difficult to expand the industry and its internal and external audiences. Perhaps Victor Gaviria embodies such creative struggle, with its successes and failures, as no one else in the Colombian film landscape. When referring to the difficulties to find investors for his projects, he concludes:
“I attracted producers by giving away the property of the film. My production company had 100%, but little by little we gave the shares away at lower prices than their value. I gave 10-15% of the film at much less. You end up giving away your work, and the grants you got, giving it to the financial co-producers at half price of the film’s value, and you give it away so you can finish it. Not to finish it would be even worse, a tragedy. The film is owned by other people now. It is not mine anymore. But you will see that "Sumas y Restas" is what I wanted it to be. It was a difficult subject for investors to get involved with. But that’s critical immaturity, a weak public opinion that fears contamination. Contamination means that today's flows of information are so dense that there's no time to separate the signs that appear together, everything is associated… as one cause. Investors fear that kind of association. Nobody wants to be around the subject of Cocaine. There's some kind of shame about being mixed with certain issues, but in a film the important thing is the treatment not the subject. Art is not ashamed because Art is privileged by the treatment, not by the chosen subject. A work about drug-trafficking might be crucially important for Colombia depending on how the film or the novel is treated. Those themes cannot be forbidden to Art”. [Gaviria, 2005].
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