First modification:
The new law approved by the Nicaraguan parliament with 88 votes in favor and none against will regulate all film and audiovisual production in the country, both that carried out by companies and by independents. Professionals in the sector denounce that this law has a “control and censorship” character that “threatens freedom of expression.”
New twist in Nicaragua to control society. The Nicaraguan parliament approved this Thursday a regulation to control all the cinematographic and audiovisual production of the country. “This law comes to promote, disseminate and regulate the activities of cinematography and audiovisual art,” said Sandinista deputy Wálmaro Gutiérrez during the debate.
According to Gutiérrez “this is a law that comes to strengthen the National Cinematheque, not (it is) to persecute the holders or owners of cell phones, but to protect the cultural and film heritage” of the country.
The activities that will be regulated by this regulation are “those referring to the creation, production of moving images in their different formats, such as cinema, digital video and any other means known or to be known,” indicates the text of the law.
Professionals in the sector have expressed their concern about this new law which, according to them, seeks to gag them. Independent filmmakers denounced in a statement that this law is to censor. Its ambiguity lends itself to interpretations that represent “a threat to the freedom of creation and (of) cinematographic expression”, they affirmed.
Officials assure that they will not persecute those who post videos on social networks. “It is not because I have a cell phone and I make a video that I become an audiovisual producer,” Gutiérrez clarified. This law will not regulate journalistic audiovisual productions, said several deputies consulted by the French news agency AFP.
The law defines the parameters to consider that a film is national, among them, that it is produced by a natural or legal person, that 50% of the technical staff or authors are nationals and that the language is Spanish or languages of the Caribbean coast. .
The new regulations on film activity were preceded by the dissolution of the Nicaraguan Film Association (ANCI), in April of this year, as part of the cancellation of more than 2,000 NGOs ordered by parliament and the Ministry of the Interior in recent years. four years.
Members of the defunct ANCI, which functioned for 34 years, told AFP that, with this law, the legislature is only making official what was already a requirement to work in the film industry and that “it has become extremely difficult” to do cinema in the country.
