One of the many panels held at the Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM) last week drew a particularly large audience that had some standing and others unable to get into the cramped room, their curiosity piqued by its title: ‘Producers on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.’
The panelists were some of Colombia’s most successful producers and/or directors, Diana Bustamante (“Memoria”), Cristina Gallego (“Birds of Passage”), Franco Lolli (“Gente de Bien”) and Manuel Ruiz Montealegre (producer of recent Cannes winner, “A Poet”), all members of PI, the Colombian association of independent producers founded in 2023. Gallego, its president, served as the moderator.
The panel highlighted the challenges facing Colombia’s independent film industry, 10 years after the most recent film law and its incentives were launched, stressing the need for greater collaboration among producers, directors and institutions.
“What I’ve noticed over the past 10 years is that the market has closed off completely [to auteur films]—not only in Colombia, particularly in theatrical, but also on streaming platforms and even on television. The interest in films, especially auteur cinema– the kind we make –has diminished. And it’s not just here; the same has happened globally, even in major festivals like Cannes,” Lolli asserted.
“I believe that the decisions made by the government or regulatory bodies haven’t risen to the level of the crisis we’re facing. I think that’s also one of the reasons why we’ve gathered here: to share our experiences and see what we can do to change and improve the situation,” he added.
Bustamante recalled that when the film law came into effect 10 years ago, they “witnessed a kind of blossoming,” she said, adding: “But it was fleeting – like a flash.”
“Since then, we’ve been living in a state of perpetual crisis. Independent cinema, no matter how independent, has a very conflicted relationship with the industrial structure of film – especially when it comes to exhibition and distribution. There’s a sort of collapse there, because these films are often made for alternative circuits that have not been properly developed,” she noted. “As a result, we’re producing a wave of films that we don’t get to see ourselves, that are not reaching or connecting with audiences. Yes, now there are more funding opportunities, and most Colombian films today involve co-productions and travel more widely. But we still face a major barrier. And I don’t think it’s simply because our films are bad. That’s not true. The issue is not the quality of our films; it’s that audiences don’t have access to them. I think that’s a key point,” she continued.
Indeed, Colombia’s box office has not recovered from the pandemic, especially homegrown cinema, which registered a 1.5% share during the first six months of the year despite 28 new local releases, according to CadBox, a database on Colombian Admissions and Box Office. Last year saw about 70 Colombian releases but few resonated with the movie-going public.
Said Gallego, who produced the Oscar-nominated “Embrace of the Serpent”: “In the PI Manifesto it says that making films in Colombia is an act of resistance….I think resistance is an essential part of independent cinema. It’s a bit like punk, isn’t it? It’s about going against the grain, against the current of the big industry.”
She recalled the resistance she faced in making her first movie. “When we made our first film, people told us, ‘You’re never going to get anywhere with that expensive movie. You’ll never pull off 85 locations here. You’ll never raise that kind of money.’ But we said: just because it hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it can’t be done. What you need is to invent new ways of making it happen.”
“So, of course, making films in Colombia – which, almost by definition, means making independent films, except for a few rare cases – requires us to work in divergence. It means saying, ‘Let’s do it differently, let’s find new paths,¡” she added.
They agreed that film quotas would most likely not work. Some exhibitors, given the slow box office, have been disinclined to show local films unless they are sure to attract the ever elusive movie-goer.
In the end, the panel disbanded with more questions than answers.
“I think our goal is precisely to create pathways for cinema to remain a possibility not just for a few, but for a variety of voices – from the regions, from academic spaces and from community filmmaking and from independent cinema, like the kind we make, so that it continues to be a possibility for expression,” Ruiz Montealegre concluded.
BAM ran over June 14-18.
variety.com
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