Of not believing. Destroying cultural heritage of great value and celebrating its emptying in the name of false savings seems to be part of the strategy of the current president of the INCAA. Carlos Pirovano (a specialist in microeconomics, finance and strategic planning, but without any experience in the audiovisual field) published a brief report on his six-month management through his social media accounts.
In different publications, celebrated and defended at all costs by an army of trolls, disinvestment in building maintenance and rentals is announced, such as those destined to safeguard the film archive. Through his account film kept by the INCAA. We will never know what they will do with the material.”
“The archive materials are vital records for our culture; they were kept in a building on Moreno Street in front of Enerc, although the majority of the film archive material was kept on Ensenada Street at 600, in the Floresta neighborhood, in a building that was really in pretty bad condition but had archives of all the film material that INCAA receives by law. The idea of this new administration is to move them to the second basement of Enerc, which is not good for a lot of reasons: the first reason is that it is a place that has always been very humid, which would worsen the conditions in which the archive is found in terms of conservation conditions. Preservation is an obligation; there is a law, the law of the national cinematheque and image archive, that demands it,” says Nicolás Vetromile, INCAA/Enerc worker and Deputy General Delegate of ATE INCAA.
Less INCAA, less sovereignty
The repercussions for the management report were not long in coming throughout the political spectrum. But they are faithful to the policies of shrinking everything that is creative or cultural. In fact, cuts of all kinds are also announced, even those that have to do with the teachers who go to the different headquarters of the Enerc provinces.
Having said this and despite the extreme seriousness, Pirovano sees it as a triumph: “Following the mandate of President Javier Milei to save and care for taxpayers’ money, a series of measures have been taken that in a first stage have allowed saving more than $3,000 million annually, and whose objective is financial balance by the end of the year” states the publication on X and on Instagram by the Milesite.
In reality, the cuts he refers to involve layoffs (of 254 workers) and paralysis of film activity in general, never to improve the activity or try to make it grow. In addition to being unprecedented, it is one of the many operations that appeal to ignorance and work on the irascibility of those who are unaware of the functioning of the world’s cultural industries.
The person in charge of the adjustment and emptying task, and the occasional spokesmen, omit in all their interventions a key fact, which is already known but never hurts to repeat: the Film Promotion Fund is made up of resources generated by the medium itself with a percentage of cinema tickets (10%), and a percentage of the ENACOM collection that is around 25%.
