Making Media Work by Derek Johnson

Author:Derek Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780814764695
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Market: A Booming Brazilian Cinema and Its Key Players

Brazil is the fastest growing film market in Latin America. The market share for locally produced Portuguese-language films has more than doubled from 9 percent in 2001 to over 19 percent in 2010, while theater admissions increased from 10 million in 2006 to over 25 million in 2010 (“O Mercado” 2011). As theatrical infrastructure expands beyond urban centers, annual productions increase, and audiences grow, the decades of the 2000s and 2010s represent a pivotal moment within the transformation of a national media industry. In a country of 200 million, this industrial expansion parallels larger economic development, rising incomes, lower unemployment, an expanding middle class, and increasing foreign investment. This economic climate, which has been credited largely to President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva’s administration (2003–2009) (Guerini 2010a), has come to be a highly publicized “economic boom” and has made Brazil the sixth largest economy in the world. Media managers have adopted this boom rhetoric surrounding the country’s growth as a promotional strategy for its national cinema (see Fick 2011; Inman 2011).

Current conditions reflect the Brazilian film industry’s pivotal restructuring over the past two decades from a nationally focused, state-supported enterprise to a more globalized and commercialized incentive-driven system. Previously, the state-run Empresa Brasileira de Filmes (Embrafilme) served as the central enterprise financing, distributing, and supporting national film production from 1969 to 1990. During that time, “the government became an active agent and productive force in the industry” in order to develop and protect the national industry against Hollywood’s widely believed imperialistic tendencies (Johnson 1987: 137–38). Embrafilme financed films such as the widely popular Bye Bye Brasil (1980, dir. Carlos Diegues) and produced some of Brazil’s most commercially successful films within a period that reimagined and celebrated both the popular and artistic character of this national cinema (Johnson and Stam 1995: 368).

However, the Embrafilme period was not sustainable. The enterprise did not survive major global and national shifts in political and economic policies reshaping Brazilian cultural industries during the 1980s and 1990s. Due to neoliberal policies and pressures within Latin America, a number of government funded cultural agencies were closed (or later resurrected and privatized) to revive Brazil’s faltering economy. Embrafilme’s 1989 dismantling led to a collapse in film production and distribution. After a complete overhaul of audiovisual policies, institutions, and funding mechanisms in the mid-1990s, the Brazilian industry experienced a retomada (rebirth) and steadily recovered with the support of private and corporate financing. A number of privatized funding mechanisms and tax incentives, such as Article 3 (discussed below), were introduced to replace earlier state subsidies and attract local and international corporations to invest in the filmmaking process (Rêgo 2005). The government also established institutions such as the Agência Nacional do Cinema (ANCINE) to facilitate these investments through managing, creating, and awarding funds. In recent years, there have also been a number of awards created to reward box office and commercially successful projects. As a result, the Brazilian film industry has experienced a boom bringing local production totals to 135 in 2010 (“Informe de Acompanhamento” 2011).

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