https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0079-3317
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ABSTRACT
This article analyses the case of Cine.Ar Play, an Argentinian video-on-demand service (VOD) launched in 2015 by the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) with the support of the state-owned telecommunications company ARSAT. Cine.Ar Play expresses the will to democratise access to domestic audiovisual production, intervening in the distribution and dissemination phase. This VOD service is particularly relevant in a country with a considerable territorial extension and a high volume of domestic films that do not find adequate conditions for their commercial exploitation. Two elements stand out in the case of Cine.Ar Play: its insertion in a public policy led by the INCAA, whose aim is to guarantee the circulation of works produced in the country, and the implementation of a particular mechanism that serves to nurture the service’s catalogue by linking public funding for new film projects with the temporary and non-exclusive transfer of exhibition rights. Six years after its launch, the service has more than two million users and has a catalogue of more than 3,300 titles.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the experts interviewed for their testimonies and all the INCAA and ARSAT staff who participated in providing information. They also thank Dr. Roderik Smits (University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain) for his valuable comments on the first draft of this article, and Dr. Leandro González (National University of General Sarmiento, Argentina) for his guidance in consulting sources of information.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2023.2195421
Notes
1. The INCAA is a non-state public entity that operates within the Ministry of Culture. It is in charge of regulating cinematographic activity and promoting the production, dissemination and commercialisation of Argentinean cinematography in the country and abroad. Created in 2006, ARSAT is the telecommunications company of the Argentine state that provides wholesale data transmission, telephony and television services through terrestrial, aerial and space infrastructure.
2. Between 2010 and 2015, with the implementation of digital terrestrial television, the Argentine state produced and acquired audiovisual works through numerous public tenders, diversifying the spectrum of companies dedicated to production and allowing public, private and non-profit broadcasters to include fiction, animation and documentaries in their schedules. As a result of that experience, the BACUA was created, with 3,006 hours of content. At the request of the 72 operators adhered to the BACUA, the works were sent for television broadcasting to different provinces, after which they became part of the catalogue of the VOD platform Contenidos Digitales Abiertos (CDA), an additional internet exhibition window that was operational until 2016 (Rivero Citation2019). This public experience, with limited functionalities, was taken into account when developing Cine.Ar Play.
3. Today, the screen quota, the ‘first institutionalised [Argentinian] film policy’ (Falicov Citation2007, 28), requires each local exhibitor to screen one domestic feature film per cinema per quarter, in all screenings and for a least one week. In addition, if one of these films reaches a minimum percentage of viewers, the exhibitor must continue to show it in the same cinema the following week.
4. Between April 2017 and March 2021, the price to view a film was 30 Argentinian pesos (1.85 dollars); between April 2021 and October 2022 the price was 90 Argentinian pesos (0.92 dollars); since November 2022 the price is 200 Argentinian pesos (1.17 dollars). The mismatch in dollars is due to the devaluation suffered by the local currency in that period.
5. For instance, at the beginning of the last decade, the INCAA negotiated the restitution of an important domestic film collection that was in the hands of Turner International Argentina (Warner Bros.), in addition to obtaining a free licence to broadcast the titles on its television signal. The collection, returned in November 2012, contains around 400 35 mm and 16 mm titles produced between the 1930s and the early 1990s. It includes a variety of works directed by prominent local directors, such as Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, Lucas Demare, Mario Soffici, David Kohon, Mario David, Homero Manzi or Carlos Hugo Christensen.
6. Increasing availability of audiovisual works across borders implies costs, in particular for subtitling/dubbing films or TV series into different languages. Subtitling is ‘a much simpler and less costly process than dubbing, and it offers the additional enjoyment of hearing the original voices’ (Chaume Citation2013, 115). According to Guillermo Patiño, CEO of one of the most important subtitling/dubbing companies in Latin America (CIVISA Media): ‘[I]n the subtitling of a film you need three people (…), in the dubbing of a telenovela you can have up to 40 characters, you record them one by one and then mix them. It’s all very handmade. (…) There are many more people involved in the process. That’s why a reasonable amount of time for the dubbing of a film is three weeks’ (Sánchez Granel Citation2018).
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Notes on contributors
Luis A. Albornoz
Luis A. Albornoz, Director of the research group Audiovisual Diversity at University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M). As a professor in the Communications and Media Studies Department at the UC3M, he teaches on the Audiovisual Geopolitics course. He is Deputy Head of the Doctoral Programme in Media Research and the Master’s Degree in Music Industry and Sound Studies. Albornoz is an elected member of the International Council of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), holds a degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a PhD from the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising at the Complutense University of Madrid. His latest published works include Power, Media and Culture (Palgrave/IAMCR, 2015), Diversity and the Film Industry (UIS report, 2016), Diversidad e industria audiovisual: el desafío cultural del siglo XXI (FCE, 2017), Audiovisual Industries and Diversity: Economics and Policies in the Digital Era (Routledge, 2019), and Grupo Prisa: Media Power in Contemporary Spain (Routledge, 2020).
Fernando Krakowiak
Fernando Krakowiak, Degree in Communication Sciences and Doctor in Social Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA, Argentina). He works as a professor in the subjects Communication Policies and Planning at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the UBA, and Economics of the Entertainment Industry at the Argentine University of Enterprise (UADE). His lines of research are communication policies, political economy of the media and audiovisual digitization processes. His latest publications are “Political economy of communication, State and public policies” (Eptic online, 2017), “Audiovisual regulation in the Inter-American Human Rights System and the challenges of digitization” (ZER, 2018) and “Politics and technology: history of the adoption of technical standards for the development of television in Argentina” (Revista Argentina de Comunicación, 2021). He also wrote together with G. Mastrini “Audiovisual flows in Latin America and Europe”, chapter of the book Challenges of cultural relations between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean (Quaderns Gescènic, 2019), “Netflix in Argentina: accelerated expansion and little local production” (Comunicación y Sociedad, 2021) and “State media in South America: the political before the technological”, chapter of the book Management of public media in the digital environment (Tirant Humanidades, 2022).