2014 Morelia Film Festival Remarks by Senator Christopher J. Dodd Mexico October 19, 2014

Transcription

1 2014 Morelia Film Festival Remarks by Senator Christopher J. Dodd Mexico October 19, 2014 Thank you, xx, for that very kind introduction. And good morning ladies and gentlemen. I want to begin by saying how pleased I am to be back in Mexico. My personal relationship and my family s relationship with Mexico is a long-standing one. My brothers and sister studied in Mexico, and I traveled throughout Mexico after the years I served as one of John F. Kennedy s Peace Corps volunteers in the Dominican Republic. As a member of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 30 years, and Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, I spent a great deal of time working on bilateral issues between our two countries. I was proud to support President Clinton s efforts to aid Mexico s economy in 1995, and I was also a strong proponent of NAFTA which benefitted the people of both our countries. Each year, for 26 years straight, as a US Senator, I brought lawmakers from the United States Congress and the Mexican Congress together for our annual U.S. Mexico Interparlimentary Meeting in order to share our thoughts, our opinions, and our aspirations for the common goals and issues of mutual concern. I would like to believe that through these efforts, and by working together, both in Mexico and in Washington, we helped to strengthen the special relationship our two nations share. Though I am no longer in public life, I remain honored by and grateful for my connections to Mexico. It is why I proudly wear the Order of the Aztec Eagle that was presented to me years ago by the Mexican government. However, today I come to Mexico under very different circumstances. Like all of you, and the thousands of others visiting Morelia, I come to Mexico because of my passion for film makers and the art of filmmaking. I want to confess at the outset to being a late convert to this passion. In the nearly four years since becoming head of the Motion Picture Association of America I have become an evangelist on the history and significance of the art of film. So I am thrilled to be able to share some brief thoughts on the current state of the global film and television industry, particularly the tremendous growth and success occurring in Mexico, and how I believe by working together we can ensure that this recent success continues for years to come. I can think of few better settings in which to share these thoughts than at the Morelia Film Festival. 1

2 For eleven years this festival has brought together artists, creators, innovators and film lovers to share and enjoy the remarkable work occurring within the Mexican film community. I have no doubt that its twelfth year will be even more successful. Since joining the Motion Picture Association, I have attended a number of these festivals, visited production sites, and met with industry and government officials throughout the world. In all those travels, I have found one overriding truth: no matter the language, culture, or nationality, if a film is a good story well told, audiences will connect to what they are seeing on the screen. That is because the recurring themes and human emotions represented in films courage, justice, humanity, love, conflict and more connect and unite us. These themes and emotions are not unique to any country or culture. They are not Mexican or American. They transcend national boundaries and borders. The best stories, told well, are universal. The best films touch us emotionally and challenge us intellectually. They give us the freedom to dream and imagine, while simultaneously reflecting the reality of the times in which we live. In fact, films that have tackled important social, moral, and universal human emotions are often the films that endure. Luis Buñuel s Los Olvidados was recognized at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival for its realistic depiction of the lives of impoverished children living on the streets of Mexico City. Emilio Fernandez s Maria Candelaria and Carlos Navarro s Janitzio addressed the issues of Mexico s indigenous populations. I have no doubt that each of you understands the enormous power of film to not merely entertain, but to also inspire and challenge. It is this central point that has contributed to the growth of this festival and of the film and television industry generally. Though this festival may be younger than Cannes, Venice, or Sundance, there is no denying Morelia s emergence as one of the world s premier film gatherings. More than 750 films are registered this year a 30% increase over last year. And with a flourishing domestic industry producing truly wonderful creative products I am not surprised. 2

3 Last year, the Mexican box office grew more than 11 percent, reaching almost 12 thousand million Pesos in revenue. Last year s most popular and highest grossing film in Mexico? Not a Bond film or a Disney film. It was Eugenio Debez s domestic production No se aceptan devoluciones (Instructions Not Included) which sold more than 15 million tickets during its theatrical run and also became the country s most rented DVD. Additionally, north of the border this movie shattered U.S. box-office records, becoming the all-time highest-grossing Spanish-language film and the fourth highest-grossing foreign language film in history. Today, in addition to having the world s 10 th largest box office, Mexico stands as the 18 th largest global exporter of creative goods and the largest exporter of Spanish language goods. Additionally, Mexico s creative and media industry, of which film and television are a major component, represents 3% of this nation s total GDP just behind aerospace, agriculture, and automobiles. In Mexico 42,000 jobs are directly generated by the film and television industry along with another 12,000 indirect jobs. And every year, more than 100 thousand hours of Mexican television programming is translated into 30 languages and exported to audiences in 100 different countries, including the United States where the Hispanic community represents the fastest growing percentage of our population. Mexico s film and television success is not an overnight miracle, but rather a reflection of Mexico s historically strong embrace of culture. That would explain why Mexico is home to over 40 thousand archaeological and 27 cultural heritage sites. And why the city of Mexico can boast of having the largest number of museums of any city in the world. It was that same love and respect for culture, along with a desire to preserve and share it, which led Mexico to be one of the earliest nations to embrace filmmaking. In 1896, two years after Thomas Edison began selling his kinetoscope projectors, and one year after the Lumière brothers hosted their first film screening in Paris, Salvador Toscano Barragán brought the first film projector to Mexico. And it was only two years later that Toscano created Don Juan Tenorio, Mexico s first film. From those early beginnings, a domestic film industry took root. And though the decade long Revolution slowed the early growth and interest in this art, it was Mexican filmmakers who captured the lasting images and footage of this period s historic events. When the first Mexican talkie debuted in 1931 it reinvigorated the industry. And when the Second World War severely reduced film production in the United States and Europe, the Mexican film industry stepped into the void, dominating the region s cinemas. 3

4 Those years are often called the Golden Age of Mexican film, and it continued through the 1960s. This was the period that gave the world Tin-Tan and Ricardo Montalbán; Fernando de Fuentes, Dolores del Río and countless others. Individuals not only loved in Mexico, but symbols of the Mexican film industry s growing success admired throughout the world. The 1990s saw a similar surge as new artistic and innovative voices emerged and caused the world to once again take notice of Mexico s creativity. And over the last two decades, the Mexican film community has given the world some truly talented individuals: Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, whose film Birdman will be celebrated, Alfonso Cuarón, Selma Hayek, and Gael Garcia Bernal, to name a few. And additionally some remarkably creative stories like Amores Perros and Y tu Mama Tambien which found great success both domestically and internationally. This wave of domestic creativity has migrated regionally. Filmmakers throughout the Americas are attracting not only talent and attention, but financing and audiences as well. Argentina and Brazil are obvious examples of this growth, but numerous other countries are also creating quality film product. In recent years both Pablo Lorrain s NO, from Chile and Claudia Llosa s The Milk of Sorrow, from Peru were nominated for the Academy Award for Foreign Language Film. Film and television projects are shooting throughout the region a sure sign of the industry s growth and vibrancy. And throughout Latin America there is a growing audience for great films. Just consider this in 2013, box office revenues across Latin America grew 7% over This is an average equal to that of the world s fastest growing market Asia-Pacific. And perhaps one of the most notable signs of the Mexican film and television industry s growing significance is the increased interest of other nation s film industries to establish a presence in Mexico. I can tell you this is absolutely true for the Hollywood studios I represent. Every one of the Motion Picture Association s member studios is at work in Mexico on co-productions that we believe will attract audiences, not only in Mexico, the U.S., and throughout the Americas, but also around the world. Some of my studios have invested heavily in Mexico by building physical production facilities. 20 th Century Fox, for example, co-ventured on the construction of Baja Studios while filming Titanic. Since then, a number of other hit projects have been filmed at that studio including Troy, Pearl Harbor, and the Robert Redford survival thriller All is Lost. The reason for the studios intense interest in Mexico is clear: they see, on many levels, great potential and creativity in Mexico. 4

5 As technology makes the world grow ever more interconnected, with more content and more culture becoming available across borders, opportunities for these great stories to find international audiences only grows. This is great news for the studios that I represent, but it is equally great news for the film and television industry in Mexico. Allow me to state the obvious: as the CEO of the Motion Picture Association and Chairman of the Association s board, it is my responsibility to advance the interests of the studios that I represent. Creating global market access for our products and protecting our content our intellectual property from thieves are my overriding objectives. But one of the reasons I was excited to accept your generous invitation to be at this festival was to make the case that, while market access and protecting intellectual property are important to Hollywood, they must be essentially vital to Mexico as well. These issues of market access and intellectual property transcend borders, cultures, and ethnicity. And if we are vigilant in the defense of our individual and collective patrimony, we will witness the dawn of a new and unimaginable era of cultural creativity in the world of film for innovators, creators, and audiences the world over. The growing consumer demand for more film and television gives all of us new opportunities for working together. And, thanks to remarkable technological innovations, particularly the explosive growth of the Internet, we have more opportunities for creating, viewing, and sharing these great stories than ever before. There are now over 400 online distribution services available to consumers around the world for watching films and television series. Services such as Netflix and itunes are discovering the immense potential of the online content market in Mexico. As an industry, I can tell you categorically that we are working tirelessly to create new distribution services every day in order to make more films and television legally available to more people everywhere at an affordable price point. With the exception of the birth of this industry more than 100 years ago, this is the most exciting time in the history of the film industry. A time filled with seemingly endless promise and opportunity. But along with these great new innovations and opportunities for distributing our content come new challenges for creators, innovators, and consumers as well. I realize for many, the concepts of copyright and intellectual property may seem remote; with no real meaning or impact on their everyday lives. 5

6 But, as leaders of a growing Mexican film industry, these remote concepts should mean a great deal to each and every one of you. For as long as the art of film has existed, protecting intellectual property and copyright have been the foundation of a healthy film and television industry. And they remain among the most effective guarantors for the creation, production, and dissemination of cultural works anywhere in the world today. Intellectual property and copyright are what ensures that every one of the hardworking individuals involved in bringing films and television series to life in Mexico have jobs and are decently compensated for the countless hours of work they contribute to these stirring productions. Intellectual property and copyright are what ensures that independent producers, film studios, and financial backers have the chance to be compensated and rewarded for the risks they have taken, and the incentive to do it again when the next great film or television story comes along. If the next generation of Mexican artists and filmmakers are to have an opportunity to create and market their creations to a global audience; if we want creative industries to continue experimenting, not only with new stories but new ways of telling those stories, then protecting these long established principles of intellectual property and copyright is more important today in the digital age than ever before. In a technological world changing and evolving at a dizzying pace, the cultural and creative industries rely on the legal certainty of the existing copyright and intellectual property landscape to underpin their ongoing investments in developing innovative stories. There are efforts underway around the world today to weaken the intellectual property protections that have been cornerstones of our global film industry, and, I might add, many other industries as well. The people behind these movements claim these so called intellectual property reforms are meant to ensure a fair balance of the interests between authors, publishers, and users. But in truth, these efforts are being influenced, in part, by those who believe everything online should be free regardless of the authors, creators, innovators and owners of these properties intentions! Some like to claim we in the film industry are an antiquated industry, out-of-touch with the modern world. That you and I are trying to stifle innovation and creativity thanks to the Internet. They are just wrong. We believe that every creator, whether a musician, a filmmaker, an author, has the right to determine, for a limited time, how their creations should be treated. 6

7 If the author of a creative work wishes to give away his or her creation for free, they have every right to do so. But for others all over the world including so many talented individuals who created the films being presented at Morelia creative work is not just a vocation, it is a livelihood. They should never be forced to accept that those who steal from them have a legal right to do so. No, you in Mexico are not holding on to an outdated business model. If we fail today to protect copyright and intellectual property, not only will it undermine the viability of this great industry in Mexico and elsewhere, it will deter promising new voices and artists, and it will compromise every nation s ability to promote themselves, their cultures, and their values. If we want these innovations in film to continue, if we want our creative sectors to thrive, I believe it is incumbent upon all of us within the Internet ecosystem to create a safe, stable, and secure online environment. An environment where users need not worry about identity theft, malware, or invasions of privacy, but rather where the work of artists can be enjoyed, legally, while the creators are fairly compensated for their efforts. This means working together, government officials and private industries all across the globe, to curb the growth of piracy by ensuring international copyright is respected and protected through meaningful enforcement. We have seen positive developments in Mexico, and appreciate the efforts by the federal government and law enforcement agencies to root out and deter content theft in notorious marketplaces like Tepito. But more must be done most importantly, to ensure that creative works are protected in the digital environment just as they are in the physical world. Guaranteeing international standards in trade agreements, and the rule of law across all borders this must be the basis of any Internet policy if we are to ensure a trusted online environment; one that promotes innovation and the freedom of expression; access to knowledge and information; and deters illegal activity. Watching the growing strength and flourishing talent of the Mexican film industry on display here in Morelia, I know these issues are just as important to Mexico as they are for the studios I represent. Every person working with the Mexican film and television industry has an interest in seeing Mexico fully implement the international WIPO treaties protecting creators rights to make works available online; to establish legal frameworks allowing creators and online service providers to work together to protect the digital environment; and to pass legislation that makes it clear that camcording a film in a movie theater is a crime. 7

8 I believe that if we work together to ensure the safety of Mexico s film and television industry, and the hardworking people who labor in it, there will be many great days ahead for the next generation of talented Mexican filmmakers. Thank you all for inviting me to be here today. I hope that you all have a wonderful time experiencing this industry s great content on display at this years Morelia Film Festival, and I look forward to making many future returns in the years to come. 8