BY MARIA ZUPPELLO The year 2008 has been the year of Brazil. The Brazilian film industry’s international stature has been growing, and the TV sector has expanded internationally. The year started with director José Padilha’s Tropa de Elite( The Elite Squad) taking home the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, and ended with the international success of director Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation. “The Brazilian Film industry is literally booming,” commented São Paulo-born Blindnessdirector Fernando Meirelles, to the international press while promoting his film with star Julianne Moore, who leads an international cast. “And it’s only the beginning,” he added. With these recent success stories, Brazil is beginning to be seen not just as a country that exports telenovelas, but also as one in which the film sector is showing real promise, and its products (both cinema and television-related) are sold all over the world. “It’s a terrific opportunity that we have, creating new markets for our content,” said Delmar Andrade, International Sales director for Brazil’s TV Record, which in the last two years has grown its sales an astonishing 130 percent. This effectively penetrates the Brazilian market, which for years has been dominated by Rede Globo. Now at number two, TV Record recently announced it has acquired the exclusive Brazilian rights for the 2011 Guadalajara Pan-American Games. In addition, it confirmed a deal with Mexico’s Televisa for the co-production of telenovelas in Brazil. International sales will be divided between both companies. And TV Record is not the exception to the rule. All over the country TV channels and independent producers are doubling their output with new and original products. “The Brazilian market has for years been an atypical market,” said Elisabetta Zenatti, Program director for Bandeirantes, one of the few broadcasters able to stay competitive in the “hot” Brazilian domestic TV market. “Globo has always dominated the scene by producing everything by itself.” For independent producers, that meant that life has not been easy. “We learned to survive,” commented Denise Gomes, a Brazil-based independent producer, and partner in the country’s Bossa Nova Films. “Many of us were forced to turn to advertising.” But that scenario is changing, according to Gomes, especially after the federal government launched TV Brasil, a non-profit, public broadcastingTV channel. The reason the Brazilian TV and film market is booming is due to a number of factors, including national economic growth of up to six percent last year; a wellregulated production environment; and, most importantly, financial investments made through tax incentive laws. “There is tremendous filmmaking originating in Brazil right now. There are new ideas and more content,” said David Linde, co-chairman of U.S.-based Universal Studios, which is ready to fund five Portuguese-language theatrical movies with as much as $10 million each. “Things have gotten much easier in the filmmaking industry because of government incentives,” said Bossa Nova Films’ Gomes. “Now it’s the turn of TV productions, from documentaries to series to reality shows” to take advantage of the incentives. The rise in Brazilian production over the last few years is due to the Brazilian government’s decision in the early ’90s to give the country a new audiovisual policy. Among the most relevant changes in 2008 was the Ministry of Culture-managed Sector Fund, which offers loans and direct investments in exchange for equity in both filmed projects and companies. According to a press release from Ancine, the federal cinema agency, in 2008 the Sector Fund allocated a total of $21.8 million to production and exhibition. Another new incentive plan, called Article 3-A, will allow local broadcasters and pay-TV programmers to invest part of their tax money due to the government in films and TV shows. This fund is expected to eventually reach a yearly sum of $25 million. Tax Incentive laws are beginning to stimulate the large-scale production of documentaries and serials in Brazil, awakening the talent of directors and producers. Audiovisual cooperation agreements with Mercosur — a Regional Trade Agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — and other Latin American countries will, in the next few years, make Brazil one of the most important audiovisual hubs on the Latin continent. With these changes, the Brazilian audiovisual market has become very attractive for partnerships in several areas, including co-productions through tax incentives (estimated at more than $28.81 million per year) and co-productions for pay-TV programs (estimated at more than $17.7 million per year). An example of this is the 13-episode series Alice, co-directed by Brazilian directors Sergio Machado and Karim Ainouz, co-produced by HBO with the Brazilian Gullane Film, and distributed by HBO. Alicehas been a success all over Brazil and now is ready to enter the international market. Aliceis also a good test case since it showed how easily a product of good quality could increase subscriptions for the pay-TV sector. In 2001, pay-TV peaked at 4.6 million subscribers, but between 2001 and 2004 there was a significant drop in the number of subscribers. Starting in 2004, the market picked up again. According to Paris-based François Sauvargnargues, director of the Drama department of French/German TV Arte, “Today, Brazil is becoming more and more strategic [for Europe]. Arte is very attuned to this market and is interested in both co-production and broadcasting rights.” That’s the case with O Brasil da Pré História - O Mistério do Poço Azul ( The Mystery of the Giant Sloth’s Cave ), a 52-minute documentary produced by Brazil’s Mixer. Focused on the history of the South American continent and filmed in the heart of Brazil, it has been sold to Arte, SBS (Australia), RAI (Italy), TSR (Switzerland), RTBF (Belgium), CBC (Canada) and Discovery HD (Canada). Even the more classic Brazilian soap, the telenovela, is changing dramatically. Mutantes, Caminhos do Coração ( The Mutants, Ways of the Heart ), which was produced by TV Record, was well received in the Asian TV market thanks to its sci-fi plot. The story is full of the transformations of men and women into vampires, felines, snakes, spiders and werewolves, which attack the streets of São Paulo disseminating evil. The cast includes U.S. actor Lance Henriksen, of X-Filesfame. “If you watch Mutanteson TV, you don’t know that it’s a telenovela,” said TV Record’s Delmar Andrade, “You might just think it’s a series with really sophisticated special effects. Even the plot is new, with genetic topics being the focus.” With 44 million TV households, the Brazilian TV market is now facing a new challenge: the transition to digital television. Though it began in 2007 in the densest areas of the country, the complete transition will take approximately six years. Surveys have shown that 73 percent of the country’s population is completely unaware as to what digital TV is, and what benefits it will offer. A large-scale promotion will therefore be necessary to educate Brazil’s people and show them what a digital TV future can bring. V I D E O • A G E JA N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 20 T e r r i t o r i e s Brazilian TV Welcomes Challenges, Opportunities TV Record’s Mutantes, Caminhos do Coração Elisabetta Zenatti, Program director for Bandeirantes
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