10 · 20 · 05

Morelia Lab takes on HollywodThe workshop thoroughly analyzes America’s control of the film industry

Clara Sánchez

One of the objectives was to talk about independent film production in the United States: “Many independent producers said they battle with the MPA (Motion Picture Association) as much as we do. The four or five quality films a year that independent producers bring out have to compete against commercial films that have huge publicity budgets. The producers in the workshop understood that the MPA is not just a problem in our country, but everywhere. We have to turn our attention to Latin America and fight for a space of our own.”

The workshop also addressed other interesting subjects, Taibo added. “Some of the producers hadn’t foreseen many of the accounting and legal aspects of the filmmaking process. They looked surprised, you could tell they where unaware of these issues, and they would run out of the workshop, cell phones in had, to try to resolve something.”

Taibo, director of an area at IMCINE that supports producers, was confident that the students at Morelia Lab learned to avoid future mistakes, thanks to the strategies developed in the workshop: “We planted a seed, this is just the beginning, but it went really well, the producers where satisfied and surprised. Even their political posture changed, they started to feel more involved, knowing their actions will have an outcome in the future. The workshop was useful because it created a space that didn’t exist before. Alejandro Ramírez said he plans to continue the project: this was just the beginning.”

“The workshop was a great experience,” he added. “The producers got to know each other and discovered that they had similar problems, even if they where from different parts of the country. They realized they aren’t alone, that there are other people out there willing to work hard for this job.”