The president of the Cinema and Audiovisual Institute (ICA) and new film commissioner from the Portugal Film Commission, Luís Chaby Vaz, will be heard in the parliamentary committee on Culture, after approval of a PSD request.
According to a source from the Culture commission, the request presented by the PSD to hear “as a matter of urgency” the president of the ICA and film commissioner was approved this Tuesday unanimously.
In February, it became known that the president of the ICA would also assume the position of film commissionerhaving been published in the Diário da República, on 24 February, the decree-law, approved earlier that month by the Council of Ministers, which changes the structure of the ICA so that it now includes the structure and powers of the Portugal Film Commission ( PFC).
According to the decree-law, the president of the ICA, who is currently Luís Chaby Vaz, becomes the film commissionerthat is, the one who coordinates the activity of the PFC, the position being unpaid.
At PFC, Luís Chaby Vaz will be assisted by an executive director and by a “network of focal points”, one of the novelties of the organic restructuring of the ICA.
This network of focal points will be composed of “representatives of ministerial offices in the governmental areas of internationalization, administrative modernization, tourism and culture, as well as representatives of other entities of special relevance”, reads in the decree-law.
The PFC must meet twice a year with the network of focal points, whose function is to issue opinions and “pronounce on questions raised” about the activity of that structure.
A consultative council is also added to the ICA organic structure, to which the PFC must submit a strategic plan for each three years and annual activity plans and reports.
The advisory board is chaired by the head of Turismo de Portugal and includes the film commissioner and representatives of entities or associations linked to tourism, cinema and audiovisual. One of the entities already identified for this advisory board is the Portuguese Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade.
It should be recalled that the Portugal Film Commission was created in 2019 as a project group to define a definitive model of structure, to promote the country “as an international film production destination” and to publicize the Support Fund for Tourism and the Cinema, a tax incentive system to attract international productions to Portugal.
At the beginning of February, the ministries of Culture and Economy revealed that this fund allowed, between 2018 and 2022, a total investment of around 238 million euros, of which 129 million of foreign investment, with incentives of 64 million euros attributed to 168 projects.
After five years of validity, the government asked for an impact study of that fund – whose conclusions are not yet known – and promised for this year “changes to the access rules, assuming the commitment to maintain the incentive regime until the end of 2026”.
For that reason, this year applications to the FATC will have two phases: the first opens on April 3, “with a budget allocation to support projects that will be announced by the end of February”.
The second phase of applications, “with rules and budget allocation to be defined”, will open in the last quarter of this year.