Ramping up the drive into censorship in Brazil, its Minister of Citizenship, Omar Terra, has suspended a call for applications for governmental TV funding – until new criteria are established for its application.
The country’s secretary for culture, Henrique Pires, who reports to Terra, has resigned in protest of the incentive freeze.
The suspension, for a period of 180 days, has been applied to a call for TV projects, originally issued on March 13 by the Far South Regional Development Bank (BRDE) with the participation of the National Film Agency (Ancine), Brazilian’s biggest source of state finance for film and TV.
The moneys would have been distributed by Brazil’s Audiovisual Sectorial Fund (FSA), which has voluntarily halted immediate pay-outs as it revises its accounting procedures. In total, 70m reais, ($17 million) were due to be adjudicated by the agency.
According to a governmental ordinance published Wednesday, the administration plans to restructure the membership of the FSA management committee, and review “the criteria and guidelines for the application of resources of the FSA, as well as evaluate the criteria for submission of project proposals.”
Terra’s announcement comes just days after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro lashed out at funding for LGBTQI series in an outburst during a scheduled state of the union-style address posted by son Carlos Bolsonaro on his YouTube channel.
In a parallel departure, producers applying for film funding are required to state whether their projects have political/religious themes; references to crimes, drugs, prostitution and pedophilia; or nudity and/or explicit sex.
Terra’s ordinance is viewed by many in Brazil as an act of censorship targeted at the LGBTQI community, and the reaction to Bolsonaro’s rant and the governmental halt to funding has been immediate.
“Although he denies it, to me it’s clearly censorship.” “Transversais” director told Brazilian paper O Globo. “He says specifically LGBT productions will not receive resources. That is censorship.”
In the YouTube video, the Brazilian President attacked four of the finalist productions of the “Rde / FSA Prodav” call for entries, criticizing their themes of “gender diversity” and “sexuality”: “Afronte,” “Transversais,” “Religare queer” and “Sexo reverse.”
In its letter, Brazil’s Assn of Independent Producers (API) expressed support specifically for the called-out projects, emphasizing it: “Hereby sympathizes with all producers, directors and teams in general responsible for those projects that were attacked and censored yesterday during the announcement of the President of the Brazilian Republic, Mr. Jair Bolsonaro, across his social networks.”
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