Film (Co)Production in Latin America and European Festivals

Abstract

In the late 1980s, the Rotterdam International Film Festival launched the Hubert Bals Fund with the intention of supporting films shot in pe­ ripheral regions. During these two decades many other festivals have created similar programs and film producers are increasingly using these funding mechanisms to finish their films and, at the same time, achieve exposure on the circuit. In the case of Latin America, which is one of the so-called ‘periph­ eral regions’, the Uruguayan production company Control Z Films and the Chilean Fábula are clear examples in this funding circuit that are becoming ‘less and less alternative’. Almost all these companies’ films have received some financial aid from this kind of initiatives. Some of the programs of most relevance in the international context, the ones created around European festivals, are the above mentioned Hubert Bals Fund and the World Cinema Fund launched by the Berlin Inter­ national Film Festival in 2004. Cine en Construcción, crucial for the cinema in Latin America since its inception in 2002, is a joint initiative between the San Sebastián International Film Festival and the Recon­ tres Cinémas d’Amérique Latine de Toulouse that exhibits selected film projects in film sessions for film professionals. One of the key aims of these film funding models is related to an interest held by some festivals in producing in regions they consider to be peripheral. Despite the fact that cinemas from Africa, Asia or Latin America are still considered to be peripheral, they have been continually present in festivals all over the world for decades (ELENA 1999). These funding programs show the way in which film festivals still consider some areas as peripheral. The same happens if we look at the themed festivals or sidebars organized around any of these peripheral regions.