Cultural Policies in the cinematographic industry: production and exhibition of documentary films in Argentina (2001-2015)

Abstract

The present work aims to account for the cultural policy promoted in our country at the beginning of the 21 st century in relation to the film industry. We intend to research a generally underrated area in the state budget, or at least not taken into account at the same level as the production, circulation and diffusion of fiction films: the field of documentary cinematography. It is a field that becomes relevant in Argentina in the year 2001, when the production of some filmmakers that  had been developing in the democratic transition, adds to that of many groups of filmmakers in the context of political, social and economic crisis that rises from the resurgence of neoliberalism and within the framework of structural changes in the field of technology that give rise to new forms of production and distribution of audiovisual material. The political and activist actions of the representative associations of the sector -the
majority constituted between the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000 ́s- translated in the period approached in a recognition and special treatment by the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts for documentary production, generating a promotion and subsidy strategy. In the first place, we focus on some peculiarities of the Argentine film industry, to explain the high economic and geographical concentration that characterizes it and the imperative need for state support to sustain the cinematographic activity over time. In the second place, this paper researches the policies sustained in the last decades by the Argentine State in the cinematographic sector, which have marked a gap between production and commercialization. In the
third place, the changes produced in the Argentine and Latin American film industry are analyzed from the year 2008 onwards with the advance of digitalization, which although it represents an immediate improvement in the exhibition conditions, it has medium and long term consequences that accentuate the oligopolistic concentration. Fourthly, the field of documentary film production is addressed, giving an account of the forms of work and the circuits of exhibition of the groups of filmmakers, which are consolidated in the framework of the Argentine crisis of 2001 and the changes that digital technology brings about. In the fifth place, the progress made in the period is examined according to the demands of the associations of documentary film
makers through the Promotion Plan of the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts, as well as the unresolved issues regarding the distribution and exhibition of Documentary films.