Film making in Argentina: Trajectory, organization, geography, and the creation of externalities

1. Film making in Argentina: Trajectory, organization, geography, and the creation of externalities José Antonio Borello, Aida Quintar, Gustavo Seijo, and Adrián Pérez Llahi UNGS/ CONICET, Argentina jborello@ungs.edu.ar (paper presented at the AAG meeting in Washington, 2010)

2. Topics discussed in the presentation • We are presenting preliminaryresults of an on-going research project on film making in Argentina. • The presentation poses some questions and it looks at three dimensions of Argentinean film making: • its historical development, • its past and current geography, • and its current organization and links to TV and the production of commercials, • In the conclusions we will make some reflections about the creation of agglomeration economies around film making, particularly in the city of Buenos Aires.

3. The larger project on film production and consumption • Although the presentation is centered on the processes and agents connected to film production, the larger project of which this paper is part also analyses consumption and distribution and their interaction with production. The latter are seen as socially and politically constructed. • One underlying intention of this paper is to contribute to a more precise description of the architecture of production systems in Argentina and other less-developed countries. • The theory and concepts emerging from the experience of developed countries may be insufficient to understand the production systems of less-developed countries.

4. I. QUESTIONS

5. Data and information on film making • Existing secondary data on film making in Argentina has a number of shortcomings that are a reflection of the “common sense” knowledge about the activity. • Most of the existing analysis on the film making complex has been carried out by persons more interested in the aesthetics of film and in parts of its consumption but little on the organizational, social, economic or geographical aspects, with few exceptions. • This is also common to other cultural economic activities, which have been analyzed from perspectives emanating from the human sciences and from art. • In part, the lack of information and analysis from social and economic perspectives derives from what have been the interests of the observers of these activities.

6. Specificities of film making and methodological problems (1) • Is the film project a valid unit of analysis? • What is a movie? • Motion pictures are very different from time to time and from place to place. • How to construct a valid historical periodization of film making? (organization of production, aesthetics, political considerations?)

7. Other methodological questions (2) • Film making shares with other cultural activities a similar uncertainty about demand. It is a product that goes looking for a demand that is uncertain. • In countries such as Argentina, can we speak of a film industry?

8. Most vibrant television and cinemas around the world based on IMDbKey and sources:Over 10,000 titles (green), over 5,000 (yellow), over 1,000 (blue)http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b3/Most_vibrant_cinemas.png Brazil Argentina

9. II. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

10. Argentina, number of movies released per year, 1897-2009 Source: Data for 1910-2009 compiled by Adrián Pérez Llahí; 1897-1909, wikipedia accessed on-line, February 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_Argentine_films .

11. III. GEOGRAPHY

12. Argentina, Film producers by province, (economic census 2004)

14. Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region 13 million people 1/3 of Argentina’s population 1/2 of nat’l manufacturing City of Buenos Aires proper

15. City of Buenos Aires proper. Largest concentration of film producers (units) 13 25 9 5 DOWNTOWN 27 8

16. City of Buenos Aires, Film producers by district, (economic census 2004)

17. IV. ORGANIZATION

18. Film producers, integration, links to other activities • There are few film producers that actually last from one movie to the next one. The reproduction of the activity into the future occurs at the level of technicians and tightly connected small groups that move from one movie project into the next. • As in other economic activities, such as manufacturing, firms tend to be more integrated and to have a broader product mix than in DCs. This is because film making in Argentina does not seem to be a commercially successful activity but an excuse, an anchor for other activities. • Recent data show that about half of the technicians working in film production also work (in any given year) in the production of advertising films. Yet the number of people working in advertising films is more than three times the number of people working in film production.

19. Number of technicians who worked in adverting films and movies, 2008

20. FINAL REMARKS (1) • Historical development and trajectory: • Erratic trajectory? • Discontinuous learning processes • Large state role • Current geography: • Few large movie producers, many small enterprises heavily concentrated in Buenos Aires • Organization and links to other activities: • Important links to commercials, acting, TV, international connections continue and are very relevant.

21. FINAL REMARKS (2) • With few national restrictions to the distribution of foreign films and a small local market Argentinean films rarely make profits. • Over 70% of the public goes to North American movies. Movie theaters have also become concentrated in transnational enterprises with important links to distributors. • The public is caught in the aesthetics of Hollywood?

22. Thank you!! • jborello@ungs.edu.ar