Film, Audiovisual, and New Technologies in Latin America. Public Policy in the Context of Digital Convergence (original) (raw)

2017, Companion to Contemporary Latin American Film

For the last 20 years, after the neoliberal storm of the 1990s, state film policies in Latin America have focused almost exclusively on production. Commercialization, audiovisual convergence-especially between film and television-and digitization are practically absent from cultural politics. National film agencies continue to impose regulations similar to those of half a century ago. "Neofomentismo"-government incentives to promote cinema that were created during the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century-served as a corrective to the more orthodox neoliberalism that dismantled public support for film and other cultural industries until the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, neofomentismo is far from "fomentismo," i.e. the active participation of the state in the production, distribution, and screening of films between the 1940s and 1970s, a period that marked the golden age of some Latin American cinemas, especially those of Mexico and Brazil. Neofomentismo focuses on production: it allowed for unprecedented growth in the number of films in almost all of Latin America. However, in both distribution and exhibition, it continued to turn its back on Latin American cinema, and these two vital links in the value chain remained virtually excluded from the legislation that supported film (except for isolated regulations that were limited in their support and effectiveness). The U.S. concept of the multiplex came to Latin America in the second half of the 1990s. In the majority of countries in the region, the number of cinemas and spectators more than doubled between 2000 and 2013, an increase driven by the significant growth in the Mexican exhibition sector, which went from 2,100 screens in 2000 to more than 5,700 in 2014. Brazil, the other large Latin American market, saw its number of screens increase more than 80%. Colombia-about to overtake Argentina as the third largest film market in Latin America (something unthinkable a few decades before)-saw its number of theaters grow 190% between 2000 and 2014, while Argentina's number of screening venues has been practically at a standstill for nearly 20 years (the same holds for Uruguay). 1 However, despite the growth of the exhibition sector in Latin America, there has been no increase in the distribution of national or other non-Hollywood films, nor has there been rapid