CINERGIA, Fund for audiovisual development in Central America and the Caribbean, is the first and only project that supports cinema and video in the region. It was born in the year 2004 as a first step towards the creation of a regional audiovisual space that would strengthen the co-production relations among the countries in the area, and allow dialogue among the different professionals involved.
CINERGIA not only contributes financially to the development of an audiovisual production throughout all of its stages - from writing the script to postproduction and distribution - it also gives special emphasis to the professionalization of the field by offering grants, bringing specialized advice to a project, and organizing high level workshops delivered by speakers who have gained international prestige.
Similarly, CINERGIA has created an important archive of films from the region, as well as a contact database that includes local producers, international professionals, festivals, and communication and promotion channels, all with the goal of visualizing and opening paths for the production of audiovisuals in Central America and the Caribbean.
CINERGIA is in the midst of the dynamic process of creating links among the countries of the region, and strengthening their national and regional identities, through moving images. CINERGIA is managed by FUNDACINE, a private, non profit foundation for the support of regional audiovisual projects, with its main offices in Costa Rica.
Objetives:
1. To support in an effective manner the production of audiovisual material in Central America and the Caribbean during all its phases: project development, scriptwriting, production - fiction as well as documentary, both short and feature length films - postproduction and distribution.
2. To contribute to the professionalization of the creators of audiovisual productions in the region, as well as to the improvement of the quality of their products.
3. To build promotion and commercialization channels for the audiovisual productions of the region.
4. To create spaces for dialogue and the encounter of the creators from the region with diverse personalities or institutions from the audiovisual world, such as distributors, exhibitors, festivals, television channels, and others.
5. To create a database - film archive, contact directory - in order to establish a network among the producers from the region and the international audiovisual world.
Operations
CINERGIA holds an annual contest (between March and July) of audiovisual projects in its different categories: project development, script writing, production of short films, production of documentaries, production of "first works," postproduction, distribution and university scholarships for filmmaking, television y digital animation careers.
Afterwards, a selection committee, made up of high level professionals linked to the audiovisual and cultural fields from the region, meets in Costa Rica to choose the projects that CINERGIA will support, either with scholarships, workshops, script consultancies, or cash prizes. The results are published during the month of October.
Each April, CINERGIA organizes professional workshops and meetings among the producers whose projects have been selected or highly valued. The winning projects and the most relevant productions of the region are shown during these encounters.
Supported Projects
Some of the completed projects that CINERGIA supported:
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"¡Viva Cuba!” by Juan Carlos Cremata (Cuba), fiction film for children. It won the Grand Prix Ecran Junior at the Cannes Festival in 2005; this was the first time a Cuban film earned this recognition. It has also won several awards in Italy, Germany, Australia and France, besides been widely distributed in Cuban movie theaters. |
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"Entre los muertos", by Jorge Dalton (El Salvador), long documentary that approaches the phenomenon of death in El Salvador, the relationship between the living and the dead, as well as the spaces and funerary rituals in a society that is used to violence. |
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"Corazon abierto", by Katia Lara (Honduras), documentary about the posthumous creation "No hay tierra sin dueño" by the Honduran filmmaker Sami Kafati. It has participated in festivals in Costa Rica, Cuba and Italy, and it’s currently being distributed throughout Honduras. |
Offices
The headquarters are in San José, Costa Rica, but CINERGIA counts with the support of kindred institutions that act as reception and information offices in each country of the Central American area: