Associação Cultural Videobrasil

The overview of these 7 years of Fotoptica Videobrasil Festival is very positive and auspicious. Each year, we enjoy the privilege of following and keeping track of the evolution in quality and subject matter of research lines and experiments. We have witnessed how these encounters foster creation, attract audience attention and amplify the diffusion of the artwork. Over these years, some of the videos shortlisted and awarded at the Festival have systematically travelled to roughly 20 Brazilian cities and, albeit timidly, to a few international festivals and exhibitions. And thus, video has expanded, thanks to the efforts of people and organizations which are concerned and aware of the challenge this represents in terms of value and changing mentalities.

We know festivals encourage creation, but sadly they have not been enough to stimulate the market. We are also aware that what stimulates the market is the expansion and diversification of the avenues through which artworks are made known, through the establishment of a network to publicize and articulate our creators in face of the inception of new televisions, new image broadcasting and reproduction systems designed for mass audiences.

In this seventh edition of Videobrasil, with the invaluable collaboration of a few companies, organizations, friends and professionals who are aware of this battle, I believe we are inaugurating an important process of international dissemination, involving people from several countries in Europe and from Brazil who are involved in the creation, production, distribution and dissemination of this still-gestating art. We will work for the development and continuation of these exchanges. 

The task of spreading and fostering video production in Brazil has been performed tirelessly by the producers of the Fotoptica Videobrasil Festival, which arrives at its seventh edition this year. At this particular moment, we take a major step by going international – bringing in foreign professionals and allowing our contestants to be in closer contact with the international scene. I believe this healthy interchange will eventually become productive and bear good fruit, especially because upon internationalizing video, we will endow it with a global, unique language. We have achieved this milestone with our Festival through the persistence of our producers, who have always indiscriminately embraced the professional video making generation and the amateur cinema set who work with Super 8 and 16 mm. Professionals and amateurs alike have had their chance here. They have fought for their work and especially for a market in which to show their productions.

Next year, Brazilian television will celebrate its 40^th anniversary. Here in São Paulo, where it emerged, despite the fact that three new UHF channels are set for inauguration before the end of the year, and the fact that a few local channels have unique programming, the biggest challenge facing independent producers remains to air their works.

Video bursts in as a multiplying element of all areas of culture: from theater to music, from cinema to the fine arts, operating as a medium or material and even as the central subject in some events.

For seven years now, the Fotoptica Videobrasil Festival has encouraged and supported male and female producers from São Paulo and even from other states in Brazil.

This year, the State Secretariat for Culture is announcing at the Videobrasil the winners of Prêmio Estímulo para Vídeo 89 (89 Video Stimulus Prize), designed to encourage productions in all genres and formats.

Video is also culture, obviously. Thus, the secretariat is pleased to announce see the launch of Circuito Paulista de Vídeo (the São Paulo Video Circuit) next September: travelling shows will go to 60 cities in the state. Video is art connected to the ultimate technology, and a machine with which to register the memory of our time.