Villa del Cine

Fundación Villa del Cine (English: Cinema City or Cinemaville) is a government-funded Venezuelan film and TV studio that was inaugurated on 3 June 2006 by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in the city of Guarenas, near the capital, Caracas.

Villa del Cine is part of the Ministry of Popular Power for Culture and receives funding through its National Autonomous Center of Film (CNAC). According to the pro-Chávez website Venezuelanalysis.com, Villa del Cine is an incentive to increase film production and to enable filmmakers access to materials, equipment and facilities, not just to provide funding. In 2006, the Venezuelan government set up a sister institution, Distribuidora Nacional de Cine Amazonia Films, (Amazonia Films) as an alternative to commercial networks. Amazonia Films distributes the projects created by Villa del Cine and has since acquired films from South America as well as Europe and Asia for the local market.

As of 2012, the president of Villa del Cine is filmmaker José Antonio Varela who also directed the organization's film La Clase The executive director of Villa del Cine is Lubezka Luque.

As of 2006, Hollywood productions comprised 86% of the Venezuelan film market. President Chávez said the aim of Villa del Cine is to counter the lack of an alternative media and to “stimulate, develop, and consolidate the national cinema industry to encourage the Venezuelan people to draw nearer to their values and idiosyncrasies.” At the inauguration of Villa del Cine, Chávez said, "They [Hollywood] inoculate us with messages that have nothing to do with our traditions." Although he said some Hollywood films are "enjoyable", he criticized their portrayal of Native Americans as "savage."

An adviser to the government said, "For a country like Venezuela, it's really the only way to build a cinema infrastructure," noting that several countries, such as Mexico and Brazil, had taken the same route. The director of CNAC, which funds Villa del Cine's projects, said that the aims of Villa del Cine are to facilitate a variety of productions, ranging from short films targeting the youth audience to large cooperative projects in conjunction with the Mercosur trade bloc in the region.

Francisco Sesto, a former minister of culture who also made early contributions to the creation of audio-visual cooperatives in Venezuela, said the aim of Villa del Cine is "the transformation of the state and how people might become participants in the development of film through their own art".

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Wikipedia