This Wednesday, the Ministry of Culture Federal (Sectur) announced the results of the call for the program Support for Cultural and Artistic Festivals Profest 2023from which 58 cultural meetings to be held in 25 states were selected.
Among those selected are the international film festivals of Los Cabos for its twelfth edition; that of Guanajuato, in its twenty-sixth version; that of Morelia, for the 21st edition; the one in Monterrey on its 19th occasion, and the 38th edition of the Guadalajara International Film Festival, whose promoter and president of the board of trustees, Raúl Padilla López, died on April 2, as well as the Ambulante documentary tour, for its eighteenth edition .
In accordance with the provisions of the call for teacherall these festivals may be susceptible to receive an amount of 2.8 million pesos as they are meetings with more than eleven editions.
All of them, according to the bases of the edition, must be carried out between April 17 and December 15, 2023.
Festivals are coming together
During the preceding months, the directors of the aforementioned film meetings have expressed their discomfort given the locks established in the call for the use of resources from Profest and also due to the dates on which the results are issued —in April to least in the last two versions— that force a large part of the meetings, especially the film ones, to come together towards the second half of the year, since, they have said, it is not possible to start the machinery without first knowing if they will be benefited with federal subsidy.
Prior to its 2022 edition, Sarah Hoch, director of the Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF), expressed: “this year there were some changes in the bases that favored film festivals. But the amounts are still very low and do not allow us to expand as we did four years ago. We are knocking on the doors of the private sector, but businessmen are also hit. And the Federation almost does not paint ”.
Likewise, the GIFF director suggested that more timely calls are needed to allow the operation of film meetings throughout the year:
“Call in December, give the results in January and that way festivals can be launched from February onwards, because calling late and then delaying the announcement dates piles us up at the end of the year and now we all have to fight for the same films”.
disagreement with padlocks
A few months ago, for her part, the director of the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG), Estrella Araiza, said:
“Profest was invented to be able to get by, to say that they give us something, but I understand it as a simulation, that is, it is not at all close to the federal budgets that we should have for a festival like the one we have, with that number of films and number of guests”.
And he said he disagreed with the fact that flights or lodging for the guests to the film meetings cannot be paid for with the federal subsidy and added that these locks in the teacher they are due to the “lack of knowledge” about how cinema encounters operate.
This year, the call for Profest was slightly more flexible based on the comments made by the directors of the film festivals by adding that the resources granted via Profest may be used with a maximum of 10% for the transfer and lodging of participants only for those meetings that take place from the eighth edition backwards or, in the case of those festivals corresponding to the fourth category, that is, those that have more than eleven emissions, may allocate that 10% in travel and lodging expenses for participants only if they are carried out in Priority Attention Areas.
Check out the list of festivals benefited by Profest 2023 here: https://festivales.cultura.gob.mx/profest/convocatoria
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