“O Portuguese-Brazilian agreement will be resumed. The protocol is reviewed, updated and modernized”, said Chaby Vaz on the sidelines of the “Luso-Brazilian Cultural Dialogues” meeting, which takes place at Casa da América Latina, in Lisbon.
Portugal and Brazil signed an agreement in 1981 – which was updated over the following decades – to “concretize the cinematographic relations between the two countries” and which resulted in the co-production of Portuguese and Brazilian feature films, with funding from both States. .
However, during the term of the Brazilian presidency of Jair Bolsonaro – with a criticized disinvestment in the cultural area – the protocol “was not abandoned from a formal point of view, but it was not implemented”, recalled Luís Chaby Vaz.
The partnership should be resumed later this year, with a foreseeable reopening of applications in the second half.
The announcement of the resumption of the Portuguese-Brazilian partnership comes today, on the day that the new president of Brazil, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, begins a five-day state visit to Portugal.
According to Chaby Vaz, the protocol will have 350,000 euros of financial support from Portugal — the previous amount was 300,000 euros — and another equal amount from Brazil, to support the co-production of four feature films.
One of the conversations held today at Casa da América Latina, in Lisbon, was about the cinema and audiovisual market in Portugal and Brazil, with the participation of Chaby Vaz, the president of the Portuguese Association of Independent Producers (APIT), Susana Gato, Audiovisual secretary of the Ministry of Culture of Brazil, Joelma Gonzaga, and director Liliane Mutti.
Interest was expressed in the debate for that protocol to also extend to the audiovisual sector, given the growth in production in this segment in Portugal over the last four years, as Susana Gato underlined.
“We are in a good moment to reinforce the partnership with Brazil”, said the president of APIT, corroborated by Liliane Mutti, who is a board member at BRAVI, a Brazilian entity that brings together more than 600 film and audiovisual producers.
In the debate, the ICA president was in favor of audiovisual inclusion in the protocol, but recalled that a deeper, political and diplomatic review between the two countries is needed to do so.
Joelma Gonzaga underlined the Brazilian executive’s intention to resume investment in the cinema and audiovisual sector, focused on “gender equality and social transformation”.
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