By Juan José Alomía
A controversial executive order by the President of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno, has generated great concern among the Ecuadorian film community, fearing this political action will have a direct effect on local film production. The executive order merges the country’s film agency, the Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Creation (ICCA), with the Institute for the Development of Arts, Innovation and Creativity (IFAIC), that oversees a larger pool of cultural and artistic activities.
In the midst of the state of emergency and extraordinary measures caused by the current pandemic and under the premise of austerity, Moreno signed Law Decree 1039 annexing both public institutions on May 9. The measure is supposed to achieve necessary savings for the state. However, many filmmakers regard the decision with suspicion.
“As much as the Minister of Culture insists on the good intentions of the merger, the only certainty is that this government ends its term in a few months and those who made this decision will soon be gone. We artists are the ones who will have to face the consequences of these decisions,” says Gabriela Calvache, director of the film La Mala Noche. She adds that: “What’s at risk is the guarantee that there’s a public agency specialized in cinema in Ecuador, and that it’s consistent in the short, medium and long term."
Manolo Sarmiento, filmmaker and former director of the EDOC Documentary Festival, holds that, because the government officials never spoke with the film community about this move, the decree represents a violation to the social pact that a law is supposed to be. "We are the victims of the enormous improvisation and the enormous weakness of this government, which hasn’t been capable of reacting rightfully to the crisis we are experiencing and is also incapable of managing the culture and arts sector," argues Sarmiento.
He goes on to emphasizes that proof of this being an improvised decision is that at first the government announced that the savings from this merger would be $130,000 per year (which would be more damaging in terms of benefit to the state), and that days later the Minister of Culture Juan Fernando Velasco said that the savings would be as high as $600,000 per year. In other words, the government is not even certain about what the real savings will be.
Sarmiento adds that one of the problems underlying this measure is that the decree issued by the President could well be unconstitutional, as it violates the statutes of the Organic Law on Culture approved in 2016.
For Mariana Andrade, director of the Corporation of Audiovisual Producers and Promoters of Ecuador (COPAE), the IFAIC has had problems since its creation: “It is as a big monster where all the arts are included, it is not only a development institute but it also has many competences and powers that are very hard for a single institution to manage”. The IFAIC covers projects such as the National Reading Plan, different Performing Art Centers, as well as many initiatives related to Literature, Painting, Dance, Symphony Orchestras, among others.
But Andrade also claims that the moment the country is currently going through must not be ignored. "We must analyze much beyond our discontent. We in COPAE want to go beyond a visceral response," she says, and insists that all possible options must be analyzed to solve this problem.
Both Andrade and Sarmiento have concerns about the possible politicization of the government’s cinema promotion policies. In response to these concerns, the government has promised to respect the organization charts and budgets of the now-defunct ICCA, but they have not commented yet on how new officials will be chosen. "If this government does not listen to us, we are going to reach the Constitutional Court and we are going to continue fighting so that the policies of audiovisual promotion are not reduced, but rather increased," says Sarmiento.
The ICCA has been operating in Ecuador since 2016. Before its creation, it was the National Film Council (CNCINE) the institution in charge of promoting national cinema. CNCINE was created in 2006 as part of the Cinema Law, which arose as a direct response to the demands of filmmakers' guilds and producer associations that since the eighties were demanding the creation of a public institution for the development of filmmaking in the country.
In 2006 the total budget for cinema public funding was one million dollars, and 2019 closed with a total contribution of $1.4 million.
On June 16, filmmakers Sebastián Cordero (Such is Life in the Tropics, Europa Report) and María Fernanda Restrepo (With My Heart in Yambo) started a social media campaign demanding the government to repeal the decree. In a short video, Cordero affirms that Ecuadorians "should have the right to create images that speak of our own reality, that remain in our memory, that shake us, that belong to us." For her part, Restrepo affirms that telling our own stories helps us "to fight racism, discrimination, impunity."
Presidente @Lenin Moreno:
— Sebastián Cordero (@SCordero23) June 17, 2020
Los cineastas ecuatorianos estamos sumamente preocupados por el decreto 1039, que desaparece el ICCA (Instituto de Cine y Creación Audiovisual), al fusionarlo con el Instituto de Fomento a las Artes, Innovación y Creatividad (IFAIC).
Abro hilo: pic.twitter.com/WXMSokR4aM
Text translated by Juan Medina.
