Dr Sandra Carolina Patino

Dr Sandra Carolina Patiño joined the University of Ibague in January 2016 as a Senior Lecturer. Formerly, she was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Film and Television, National University of Colombia, Bogota, where she was also the Director of Documentary Colombia. Her research interests lie in exploring film alternative practices as the Docutherapy and challenging proposals in relation to the documentary film distribution problem. She is the author of the book ‘Approaching the documentary in the Colombian audiovisual history´(2009). She did an MA in TV Documentary Production and has recently finished a PhD in Media and Arts at University of Salford, United Kingdom.

Research

Sandra is interested in researching creative and innovative models and projects to distribute Colombian cinema ( with emphasis in documentary films) in the formal and informal film distribution markets. She is also very interested in searching individuals and communities who are able to explore how the video camera and the documentary as a genre could be used as healing tools to help them to heal their lifes from many consecuences of the violence in any of its forms and have caused them pain, sorrow, suffer and so on.

 

 

Columbian Film

With regards of Colombia, the 814 Cinema Law of 2003 and the 1556 Filming Law of 2012 still do not have any concrete regulations or strong policies to solve the problem of film distribution in this country. Although there are tensions among markets since the informal film distribution market is thriving by providing an effective way of reaching the population, while the traditional legal structures lag behind, it can’t be denied that there is an increasing number of local films being made. Certainly, in the recent years there have been more Colombian films produced than ever before, thanks to the increasing financial incentives of Calls supported by the Colombian Cinema Law 814. In fact, while in 1993 only 2 local feature films were shown in cinemas, in 2012, it was 23.

 

The Colombian government increased from 125% to 165% the tax deduction for companies and individuals who support the production of local films. In orden to guarantee shooting remarkable films in Colombia, it is returning to international film producers 40% of their expenditure invested in hiring national film services of film preproduction, film production and film post-production, and 20% of their expenditure invested in film production expenses such as hotels, food and transport.

On the other hand there is a proliferation of a new generation of young Colombian’s independent filmmakers who have been educated in traditional film education at private and public Universities. Although they have not been able to reach massive audiences at local comercial cinemas with their National independent films, what is different about this new generation of filmmakers in comparison with the old one is that thanks to the globalization film teaching opportunities available in the country and abroad, they definitevely have learned how to make their local films produced in Colombia being selected and awarded in the most well-known international film festivals around the world such us Toronto, Berlín, Habana, Toulouse and Cannes Film Festivals.

Examples of these remarkable Colombian filmmakers and films are: Los viajes del Viento ( Ciro Guerra, 2009); El vuelco del cangrejo (Oscar Ruíz Navia, 2010); Choco (Jhonny Hendrix, 2012); La Sirga (Willian Vega, 2012); El abrazo de la serpiente (Ciro Guerra, 2015); La tierra y la sombra ( César Acevedo, 2015), among others. With respect to figures of film distribution, the nearly 2 million viewers of Colombian films in Cinemas in 2013 in comparison with about 17 million of viewers who watched around 50 Colombian films in Colombian illegal websites in at least the past two years and a half, may suggests potential audiences that could be reached by the formal film distribution market in Colombia in the future.

 

 

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