The Institutionalisation of Ibero-American Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: The Fénix and PLATINO Awards

Abstract

In 2014, the Fénix Ibero-American Awards for Cinema and the PLATINO Awards for Ibero-American Cinema were launched. Created by Mexican and Spanish organizations respectively, both platforms aimed at promoting and disseminating contemporary Ibero-American cinema. This article analyses the strategies developed by these awards to conceptualize, market, and circulate Latin American, Portuguese, and Spanish cinemas in a global scenario. As such, the essay understands these initiatives as attempts to organize the cultural and economic domain of current Ibero-American cinemas. Specifically, our research dissects the different elements that constitute both prizes, from the creation of the statuettes to the selection of the films in competition and the broadcasting of the awards ceremonies. This close examination of how the Fénix and the PLATINO construct their symbolic power reveals how they mobilize and weave Ibero-American cinemas, regional and national identities, and city branding. Finally, the article questions the possibilities and limitations of these experiences as ways of developing economic and social discourses from and about Ibero-America.

Keywords:

• Film awards
• Ibero-American cinema
• Fénix Ibero-American Award for Cinema
• PLATINO Awards for Ibero-American Cinema

Notes

1 Cinema23 is made up of “programmers, critics, academics, researchers, film festival directors, promoters […] directors, scriptwriters, producers, photographers, actors, sound people, musicians, art designers, costume people and editors” (Premios Fénix 2018).

2 EGEDA was set up in Spain in 1990 and is now also active in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, the United States and Uruguay (EGEDA 2018). FIPCA was set up in 1997 during the Ibero-American Summits of Heads of State and Government. It brings together production bodies from 18 countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela) with the principal aim of defending their interests by promoting active policies in their respective countries and transnationally. FIPCA has its headquarters in the EGEDA buildings in Madrid, since the latter became its principal sponsor in 2000 (FIPCA, 2018).

3 The cable signal for America was shared by the different national TV networks associated with the PLATINOs, directly representing the audiovisual and territorial fragmentation of the region: Telefe (Argentina), ATB (Bolivia), Canal Brasil (Brazil), UCV (Chile), Señal Colombia (Colombia), RTU (Ecuador), TVN (Panama), Canal 13 (Paraguay), TV Perú (Peru), Teleantillas (República Dominicana), Televisión Nacional Uruguay (Uruguay), Canal Siete Punta (Uruguay), Venevisión and Galavisión (Venezuela).

4 In fact at the 2016 ceremony in Punta del Este, Santiago Segura went a little further, revealing the tensions between affirmation and cultural dependence. He made a joke about Olmos which relied on a reactionary stereotype: “I remember in Miami Vice […] who is going to forget Lieutenant Castillo, one of the first times a Latino had played a lieutenant rather than a drug dealer. And in his case this was really well-deserved, because, you have to say. He looked like a drug dealer, the bastard”.

5 It is not just Banderas who mobilises this sort of discourse: all three winners of an honorary PLATINO have used it. The following year, Ricardo Darín came out on stage and immediately said that he would repeat many of Banderas’s ideas, as he was 90% in agreement with what had been said. And in 2017, Edward James Olmos was articulating the same principles: “I know both the North American and Ibero-American industries well. I can assure you that we need an international platform like the PLATINOs to help our cinema cross borders […]. For many years I have been part of getting Ibero-American cinema where it ought to be: up among the best in the world. I’ve always been aware that being Latino, Chicano, Mexican, in what many would consider a hostile environment like Hollywood, was an obstacle to my career as an actor, director, producer and activist”. So something gets shifted in Banderas, Darín, and Olmos’s vision of what it would be to fulfil Hispanics’ ambitions. Their example of a Latino union symptomatically refers to the US context rather than to what happens in Ibero-America or in the cultural history of the region itself.

6 “Algo contigo” has been performed by Los Panchos and El Trio Borinquen, both together with María Martha Serra Lima, Calamaro, Rosario herself, and Vicentico.

7 Set up shortly before the first outing of the Fénix awards, “Los Cuadernos de Cinema23 comprise a series of publications […] that record reflections and ideas on film work in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, with the aim of safeguarding, sharing, and promoting the film culture of the region” (Cinema23 2017).

8 This temporal décalage produces a situation in which, because of the timing of selection and nomination, the winning films, especially at the PLATINOs, have sometimes been in cinemas for a year and thus already have a successful track record before they gain awards. For instance, El abrazo de la serpiente was first shown in the spring of 2015 but received its PLATINO at the ceremonies of summer 2016.

9 There is an exception: the winner of the Best Ibero-American Fiction Feature PLATINO in 2016, El abrazo de la serpiente, a film shot in black and white, only partly spoken in Spanish and without transnational Ibero-American stars in its cast. The global box office is lower than the film that garnered the Fénix for Best Fiction Feature: Neruda.

10 Strangely, Box Office Mojo does not calculate the takings of two of the three Chilean films that received awards (El Club and Neruda). We have therefore had to construct the data from other sources.

Additional information

Funding

This article has been written in the context of the Research Projects CSO2014-52750-P and CSO2017-85290-P, both funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Notes on contributors

Josetxo Cerdán

Josetxo Cerdán is professor of Media Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, a member of the research group TECMERIN and the current director of Filmoteca Española, the Spanish national film archive. He was the former coordinator of the MA in Documentary of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (1999–2008), the artistic director of the Punto de Vista Documentary Film Festival (2010–2013) and programmer of the Flaherty Seminar (2012). He has co-edited Mirada, memoria y fascinacion (2001) and Documental y vanguardia (2005). He is part of the editorial board of the book series “Aproximaciones a las Culturas Hispánicas” (Iberoamericana Vervuert).

Miguel Fernández Labayen

Miguel Fernández Labayen is associate professor and the director of the MA in Film and Video Preservation in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where he is also a member of the research group TECMERIN. His work has been published in journals such as Transnational Cinemas, Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, Screen, and the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies and in collections such as The Routledge Companion to Latin American Cinema (Routledge, 2018). He is currently co-editing the volume Imaginarios digitales del Sur: Historias de pertenencia y desarraigo en los cines hispánicos (Peter Lang, 2019).