There is no mass media of transmission of culture superior to cinema. Not even television. The small screen surpasses everyone in penetration, but its subjection to vulgar commercial mandates detracts from hierarchy and depth. Cinema is greater art and the countries that have Clear that film is used as a spearhead in the conquest of markets.
The United States quickly understood the strategic value of cinema and for years dominated the screens of the world. Hollywood took advantage of this circumstance to sell its history, its icons, its values, its model of nation. Therefore today its film industry has no competition. It surpasses it in Indian production, but without the resources, the exhibition network, nor the fabulous marketing apparatus of the Americans.
This situation alerted others Nations. The European Union and latin American countries, by for example, they have been designing policies and strategies national and regional to face the steamroller of cinema American. Europe allocates large subsidies to production and in some countries that subsidy is up to 100%.
In Latin America, during the last years went from a regulation that went against the market economy, to a regulation of promotion that, instead of prohibit and oblige, establishes incentives for production and display. As part of these policies, Ibermedia was created, a regional fund that administers incentives to production in several countries in Latin America and Spain.
Brazil encourages the production of cinema with ease on credit, tax refund, discounts and all kinds of perks. And in Colombia, the law grants tax benefits for exhibitors who project Colombian feature films and medium-length films, and return of taxes for private investment in film production.
Additionally, many countries have organized institutes for policy development national cinematographic and have created their own funds of promotion. In Chile, the Arts Development Fund invests in the production of short and feature films; in Argentina INCAA does the same; in Brazil, Embrafilme; in Colombia, the CNACC and the Fund for Film Development, and in Mexico, Imcine and the Fidecine fund.
Hollywood watches this one carefully movement and the emergence of directors like the Mexicans Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Gerardo Naranjo; Brazilians Fernando Mereilles and Walter Salles, and the Argentines Fabián Bielinsky and Juan José Campanella.
On the other hand, for economic reasons, such as low per capita income and the popularization of services and technologies, such as subscription TV, satellite and DVD, added to the phenomenon of piracy in both In other cases, the box office has been declining. In the countries from the south of the continent cinema attendance is less than once per year. The statistic ranges from 0.7, in the case of Argentina, and 0.4, from Venezuela. In Mexico, the attendance is once a year and in the United States, the Latino population goes to cinema 6.7 times a year, while in Spain the statistics is 2.5 times.
In Colombia, for example, the Cinema box office fell from 66 million annual admissions in the decade of the eighties and 23 million at the beginning of the ninety, to 16 million in the early years of this decade. The phenomenon, that has been lived in a similar proportion in the rest of the countries of the region, brought with it modifications in the exhibition, which went from rooms of 800 or 1000 seats, to the multiplex model, in where small rooms are grouped, with 100 or 150 seats.
Despite the increase in production and the ostensible improvement in the quality of the films, the bottleneck of Latin American cinema remains the display. Local audiences value their cinema well. In Argentina, four national films were among the top ten seen in 2002: Nine Queens, Dad is an idol, Heart and Appearances, all above of the million viewers. Something similar happened in Colombia with Rosario Tijeras, the most watched film in 2005.
However, for now this policy incentives do not seem to be enough, because for the Latin American producers are almost impossible to access the markets in the region and recover your investment in them.
