New Filmaporto platform wants to boost Porto as the city of cinema

The Municipality of Porto presented the Filmaporto Film Commission, a project that will turn the Invicta into a “City of Cinema”. The project also includes the promotion and the regulation of filmmaking in the city and the awarding of production and training grants.

“Filmaporto is a support, communication, and a maximization project that explains the potential of the city at heritage and film level, of production, and of human capital”, explained Guilherme Blanc, director of the Department de Cinema e Imagem em Movimento of the municipal company Ágora, during the presentation session that took place today, 22 June, at the Cinema Trindade.

Guilherme Blanc, who is also the artistic director of Batalha Centro de Cinema, said that the Filmaporto “follows on the previous mission [by its predecessor Porto Film Commission] of facilitating filming in the city, although it engages in densifying its communication role with the sector and its agents, of being a link between the artistic work and the technical work”.

The new commission’s script indicates “support to filming, logistic support, financial support to logistics, administrative support to production, support to dissemination and support to promotion”.

The great novelty of Filmaporto, which provides a better framework within the current cinema production dynamics, is the awarding of grants to support the production. The five Filmaporto grants for cinema fully produced in the city will be awarded annually, via tender, the amount of 20 thousand euros each, which represents a “boost to the sector’s dynamics and to employability as well”, affirmed Guilherme Blanc.

The financial programme will be voted during the Executive Meeting on 28 June and applications are estimated to open in the beginning of July. Around the same time, the Filmaporto website will be available, with the provision of the regulation, as well as access to all the information on filming in the city.

The website will work as an entry directory for professionals, national or international, allowing the new commission to streamline and simplify the entire administrative process, “such as licensing and filming regulations issues”, explained Luís Araújo, film commissioner.

Commission will be housed at the Batalha Centro de Cinema

Guilherme Blanc advanced that the Batalha Centro de Cinema will work as the headquarter of the Filmaporto Film Commission as soon as it reopens doors to the public, in February 2022, and shared his drive that the cinema industry shall find there “and in its valences, a host institution, of visioning and meeting”.

Another role taken by the new Filmaporto will be the “international participation in platforms and industry meetings in festivals outside the country, where we can explain the city, the work by our agents, and do it in an articulated way with other entities, national and regional”.

“We believe this project can be a key component of Porto Cidade do Cinema”, affirmed Guilherme Blanc, who stated that “we have seen a renovation in the city, in the domains of creation, screening or appreciation of cinema. It is up to us to interpret this moment, to see how we can power it, by establishing new ways of connection with the sector, with the entire cinema chain in a catalyst way”.

The essential need to nurture audio-visual heritage

The President of Tourism of Porto, Northern Portugal, Luís Pedro Martins, the Director of Porto Municipal Theatre, Tiago Guedes, and councillors for Economy, Tourism and Trade, Ricardo Valente, and Transports, Cristina Pimentel, also attended the ceremony.

The Mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira enhanced the need to “constantly care” for heritage, the city statute within the cinematographic sector, “so that it does not fall in a sort of empty epithet. Mostly, it is necessary to back it up in realities of contemporary production, to which a number of agents contribute in an increasingly interesting and committed way in Porto”.

According to Rui Moreira, the municipality wishes to “review the way we can help, support, and boost cinema production of those seeking the city or that can potentially look for Porto as a filmmaking scenario, but also of those who wish to live in Porto and develop here their activity in the audio-visual sector”, taking on a “more relevant and challenging role” in the project.

“Not only Porto has made itself known in an increasingly effective way as a city and a territory, but also we have directors, producers and other cinema agents that chose not to abandon the city as their workplace”, enhanced Rui Moreira.

The Mayor of Porto asserted that Filmaporto Film Commission is a project that “comes in a particularly interesting moment in the cinema dynamics in Porto, in the production sector, and in teaching and access to screening. It is up to us, therefore, to foster and to boost it. That is the major goal, in the short, medium and long term of Filmaporto”.