In 1963, aged 57, the father of Italian neorealism and director of Rome, Open City (1945), Roberto Rossellini, the film left to experiment with educational television. This was announced at a ceremony Filmcritica magazine, and his words are still considered a declaration of principles:
“Today’s crisis is not only crisis in cinema, but also of culture. The film, broadcast medium par excellence, has had the merit of making palpable the crisis, put it in evidence. For this I retire from the profession and think I have the obligation to prepare, with all liberty to rethink everything from the beginning, to return back on track from completely new basis “. The following year he launched his project encyclopedia television series L’Eta del ferro, narrated that the path of man to the knowledge of the metal and its handling in four episodes. They followed the prize du pouvoir par Louis XIV (1965), Atti degli Apostoli (1968), and Socrate (1970), Blaise Pascal (1971) Ipona d’Agostino (1972) and biographical Cartesius (1973), all supported by RAI. In the words of the filmmaker on the run, his camera had passed the pretense of film to show crude realities, like a curious child who observes his surroundings. Half a century later, Rossellini theory has gained an unusual force, even in Chile.
The announcement came from the nine paragraphs devoted to culture in his speech on May 21. President Michelle Bachelet few seconds stopped in the portfolio which had just received its new leader, Ernesto Ottone, to give the big surprise: the creation of a cultural and educational channel TV free, free and ad-free reception. “We want to make TV an instrument to realize the cultural and geographic diversity of Chile and in the service of all Chileans,” he said. The minister Ottone said later that day that the initiative is “a very old dream of citizenship and creators have a channel quality and focused on the educational and cultural development”.
But, far from creating unanimity, the announcement shook the television medium, leaving several strands undone. Yes there were those who welcomed the initiative, but also others who saw it as half measures of a historical debt with cultural content on the small screen. Jaime de Aguirre, for example, former director of CHV, said in an interview after leaving the station: “The programs become cultural or not as they are able to socially mobilize the country by way of entertainment or at make it “, questioning what we mean when we speak of a cultural channel. “Fomes the drain of things ?, the drain of things that can not be financed by the market?” He insisted.
De Aguirre and findings rocked again: many questions revolve around cultural television, several unanswered.
The work table headed by the National Television Council (CNTV), the ministries of Education and Culture, independent film and television producers and the General Secretariat of Government, working against the clock. Doubts about what is culture and what is not, they say, must be met before the second government of Michelle Bachelet concluded, when the channel finally displayed.
The two streams
What is meant by cultural television? The study of CNTV 2014, entitled Cultural Television, diagnosis and definitions, quotes the Colombian Ministry of Culture: “It is important to know that she wears own expressions of creative talent to land on which they are capable of commercial exploitation.” Therefore, two aspects in one: on the one hand, European, that cases like the BBC (England), where currently an official of the CNCA makes a pasantía-, RAI (Italy) and ARTE (France-Germany), emerged as a public service “related more with the high culture to popular culture as high culture was legitimized by intellectual elites,” said Bethlehem Igarzabal, director of the area of communication and culture at FLACSO Argentina, in his paper All television is cultural.
The writer Rafael Gumucio, who was part of the foundation of Channel 2 Rock & amp; Pop, agrees: “The cultural television should not be linked only to the arts. I dare say that even Vertigo cultural content could be transmitted while the identity of the country. That entertains does not mean that it is not. It is not exclusive. ”
The French thinker Dominique Wolton states, however, that cultural television does exclude certain audiences and deepens inequality. “Overall public television, following the European model, sought to educate and transmit the culture of the arts, elite, high culture without considering that far from creating chances of meeting with all sectors of society promoted exclusion and abandonment of the audience. ”
To Nissim Shearim, a former board member of TVN from 2000 to 2006 and during his tenure who gave battle to keep off the air programs like the Show of Books (led by Antonio Skármeta ) and The Patiperros, Cristian Leighton, “much to quality programs discarded ago, which is inconceivable in a historic moment that Chile faces far-reaching reforms such as educational”. The same could visit the BBC studios in London. “With what I saw among news, documentaries, movies and entretención- spaces, cultural demonstrated that television can be a great tool for education and culture without undermining the viewer’s entertainment.”
The journalist and producer, former host of cultural programs Hour 25, Augusto Góngora, says that “these contributions create new looks, talks and possibilities for action. It vitalizes the social and cultural life of citizens. ”
On the other side, meanwhile, the American model, who devised television as a private company is economic purposes. “They focused on the production of entertainment to attract audiences. High culture and television were not associated from the beginning. The PBS public television was the only one presented spaces with cultural content. In addition, American intellectuals, influenced by the Frankfurt, showed no interest in collaborating in the production of television programs, “says the same Igarzabal.
The anthropologist and Driver Road and The Odyssey (TVN), Ricardo Astorga, is perhaps the most enthusiastic state proposal, but recognizes the shortcomings of the local scene. “I think it’s great that a cultural channel open by law is created, but I think all who are dedicated to this have been unable to build a democratic television that collect different sensitivities and contribute to society. Rather it is the other way around: as the private channels owned by big businessmen whose purpose is to generate profits, television was becoming that, a business, “
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