14/11/2005

The Portuguese Ministry of Culture has announced the appointment of José Pedro Ribeiro as the new president of ICAM. The current vice-president of the institute will replace Elísio de Oliveira, who has run the Portuguese film institute since 2002. Mr. Oliveira decided to ask for the non-renewal of his mandate for "personal and professional reasons".

The new head of ICAM will be backed by two new vice-presidents: Nuno Fonseca, currently the international relations officer, and the actress Leonor Silveira (Espelho Mágico), who has so far coordinated the promotion of Portuguese cinema.

Deciding on the future guide-lines for the national film industry, ICAM's renewed team will certainly take into account the results of a survey released last week by the Lisbon Lusofona University, according to which more than a half of the Portuguese (58,2%) reveal an attitude of indifference towards national cinema. Besides, 45,9% of the moviegoers are unable to remember the last national film they have watched, and only 6,7% prefers Portuguese cinema (against 93,3% for foreign productions). The survey underlines that, globally, Portuguese film is considered as "too informative and too literary; generating very few emotional responses", which certainly contributes to the divorce between the public and national films.

If 2004 was a bad year, 2005 seems however to invert the trend with two Portuguese titles making a splash in the box office: Marco Martins' Alice (see the Film Focus) has sold over 25.000 tickets and over 50.000 people have already watched The crime of the Father Amaro (read the article).