CINESUD is an international project in which film societies and film society federations all over the world take part. Such a relevant project needs a full explanation to give sense to the whole idea in order to introduce you to the diverse possibilities in the fields of distribution and showing for the film societies of the world. CINESUD is not new for all film societies because some of them have already shown films in their film festivals in Catalonia (Spain), FIKE (Évora Portugal). and Medellín (Colombia). But after the Film Society International Meetings in Matera (Italy) and the Latin American Film Society Meeting in Sao Paulo and Santa Maria (Brazil), many countries have shown their interest in this project and the number of available films on catalogue has also increased as well as the theoretical and philosophical framework that surrounds this project.

WHAT IS CINESUD?

Introduction CINESUD was an original idea from the Catalan Federation of Film Societies to ensure the distribution of independent films with the aim of showing them free of charge in Film Societies and other alternative cinemas. Inheriting the spirit and the name of this project, a group of Latin American Film Societies have taken up again the idea of creating a distribution network of independent films to be shown free by Film Societies in our countries. Currently Film Societies and Federations from Catalonia (Spain), Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, Nepal. Croatia and Brazil take part in the project. And soon Morocco, Cuba and Dominican Republic will join them.

Methodology.- Each Film Society or National Federation of Film Societies chooses several films (feature films, short films, animation films, video clips, etc.) and proposes their authors to give up distribution and showing rights with non-profit making aims. Our suggestion is to use Creative Commons licences.

– Each Film Society presents to the remaining members their selected films to be added to the CINESUD catalogue. To do so, they provide DVD copies, film credits and any other material (pictures, trailers, etc.) suitable to introduce the film to Film Societies.

– The above information is added to a catalogue available at www.mundokino.net under the “Catalogues” section.

– Film Societies interested in the films available in the CINESUD catalogue should contact directly the Film Society or Federation of Film Societies referred in the credits of each film and agree the distribution mechanisms of the film copies. In the public showing of the films the original credits of the author should be kept and shown (as agreed in the Creative Commons licence). Also CINESUD network should be mentioned as well as the name of the Federation or Film Society that proposed the film in question.

Catalogue You can check it at: www.mundokino.net under the “catalogues” section.

This is a worldwide project and we hope many nationalities see themselves represented in it. The countries represented at this moment in the catalogue in time are the following: Argentina, Colombia, Catalonia (Spain), Lebanon, Australia,  Portugal, Nepal and Mexico. Soon: Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, Morocco,….

CINESUD TECHNOLOGICAL MEANS www.mundokino.net

The web page where CINESUD catalogue is published and is constantly updated is www.mundokino.net, the worldwide film society web. This catalogue, updated on a daily basis, will be soon improved to include new menus to allow film festival programmers to search for films by nationality, author or other key word filters.

WHAT ARE CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCES?

Everybody is concerned about showing rights and nobody wants to have legal trouble. CINESUD project, under the same philosophy of free software, is based on freeing some rights on behalf of the author.

Creative Commons licences are an alternative way of distributing contents (texts, pictures, songs, films).  According to these licences, the authors can free some of the rights related to their works while they keep some others for themselves. This process opposes to the traditional “all rights reserved” copyright model allowing a greater freedom in the use of contents and permits a wider access to cultural goods for everybody.

One of the licences available at Creative Commons is Non-Commercial Attribution – No derivations in which the author allows to copy, distribute, display, and perform his work under the following conditions:

– To attribute the work as specified by the author or licensor. – To not use his work for commercial purposes.

– To not alter, transform, or build upon his work.

More information

– Official Creative Commons web page – http://creativecommons.org/

– Open Source Movies.  www.archives.org/details/movies

Internet Archive of films freely available on the Internet with Creative Commons licences. It includes some cinema classics.

AVAILABLE FILMS SO FAR

The number of available films is continuously increasing.  At present, there is a single list at MKN www.mundokino.net , but soon film festival programmers, will have the possibility to filter the information according to your needs and tastes. An itinerant Film Festival will also be created and added from the suggestions that came out from what each Film Society or Federation considers the best of the catalogue.

We are always dealing with non-commercial cinema, basically with documentaries and short films where the keyword is UNPUBLISHED. Some works have won international awards at film festivals, but they have never had distribution outside their countries of origin. You can also appreciate a huge number of Latin American titles in the catalogue, but this will change as soon as Asian countries start to contribute to the project. Subtitles are considered a handicap that needs to be solved because not all works are subtitled in English or French.

In any case, CINESUD will become a source of contents for all those Film Societies all over the world interested in the project. The next step will be to open the catalog to more organizations, using different kinds of membership to support, finance and develope the project.