“The forest of the platforms must not cover the trees of the cinema”

FIACINE

In this last sense, our Academy has done things well given that just a few weeks ago Argentina was elected to the presidency of FIACINE, the Ibero-American Federation of Academies of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, made up of 12 Latin American countries (including Brazil), plus Spain and Portugal. “We talk very often and something that is increasingly clear to us is that all our countries share similar problems and concerns. For example, with increasingly universal issues such as the crisis of cinema and culture in general, and different conflicts with platforms, often related to taxes and the screen quota”, explains Findling. “It is an issue that in the medium term we are going to fix here in Argentina because it is already about to be resolved in several European countries, including Spain. Although more is produced in the country with the platforms, I myself have had some experiences with my films in which there were always correct deals, the truth is that we must not let the forest of platforms cover the tree of cinema and national culture. They are very different things since the platforms produce but for a global market, and then a production designed for a platform does not have our cultural personality as if it were a national production”.

There is an urgent issue, he adds, which at this time is what most worries the Argentine Academy, as well as almost all sectors of culture, and that is the fact that the law on specific allocations that distributes funds for each cultural field, and that by a 2017 law it would go to a general fund in December, which does not guarantee that it will be distributed proportionally, that is, that the taxes on movie tickets go to INCAA, those on music go to the Institute of Music and so on. “We have already achieved half a sanction in the Chamber of Deputies, where I gave a talk last April, which is with other content on the Academy’s YouTube channel. But the Senate has not yet addressed the issue and it is something very serious, because if we do not take the situation back to before 2017, the film industry as we know it could be destroyed.

Projects

The fact that he is now a holder of the Academy does not prevent Findling from continuing with his work as a producer – as a director, his last film to date is “Virtual Reality” starring Fede Bal. “Right now I have two productions in the final stage,” says the filmmaker. “One is a co-production with Mexico, ‘No corre el viento’, which, although it seems incredible, brought us the problem that we couldn’t form the technical team due to the full occupation that there is at the moment in Argentina due to the number of productions foreigners who film here, because the exchange rate obviously suits them. And the other is a horror film directed by Fabián Forte, ‘The Witches’ Game’. I have been making films of all genres, but horror is my favorite genre, people love it and it is getting better and better, something that is seen by the responses to foreign horror films and also by the number of films of Argentine terror that have been released lately, and the various titles that are about to hit theaters”.

Coming back to the Academy, Findling believes that an important goal to pay attention to is “our members’ sense of belonging. The Academy includes all the fields and professions that have some contact with the cinema, which is very broad and sometimes visibility is lost a bit and what our objectives are, beyond someone being a technician, an actor, a musician, a screenwriter, a producer or a director.