In Argentina, the local movie industry would not exist if it wasn´t for this public funds destined to support movies production. But until now the system to assign this funds was not used to be audited, to be transparent presenting its numbers. The PDFs published in the web site had just an administrative goal, and it was the work of LA NACION Data which allowed to expose the numbers and make them accessible to citizens .
This series of articles produced a strong impact in the movies industry, and those who participated in this investigation were accused of trying to destroy the system that allows local movies to be produced. The investigation was raised by other media including radios and TV which amplified its reach . It also served as base to amplify corruption cases presented in justice.
This dataset for us is not only a source of stories, it also represents the power of data to start monitoring public spending, and we are keeping it updated to follow up, as we demonstrated in the Subsidies for the Bus Transportation System, updated as well by our team.
LA NACION Data produced a dataset on movies subsidies by scraping and transforming monthly PDFs published by the National Institute of Movies and Audiovisual Arts (Incaa) in its web site.
With this dataset, José Crettaz , media and society editor, started to analyze this information. After looking for the main patterns as how much was spent, who was the most benefited and so on, he started to research the relationship between those movie producers , with the idea of investigating if there were privileges in the subsidies distribution.
To do this, LN Data team prepared a second dataset , the Official Gazzette, in which companies must publish its members composition or it´s constitution in the first place.
After that to measure the subsidy per movie viewer, we gathered a third set of PDF´s provided by Ultracine ,normalized them and built the third dataset of movie audience.
Digging into the data , José found a series of stories, that before this could never been told.
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On November 23rd, 2014 the first article described the mechanism and who received the subsidies, with emphasis in those curious movies very few watch (and costs a lot of money in subsidies):
>> Movie subsidies: the insolit cost of films very few watch <<
2) On November 27th, 2014, we focused in an emblematic movie, a documentary on Nestor Kirchner, recently deceased and husband of current president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
>>Movie subsidies: the Nestor movie, an aspirator of public funds <<
3) On November 30th, 2014, we focused in the main beneficiaries of this subsidies.
Movies subsidies: friends and leaders close to Kirchner between those who benefit
On March 18th, 2015, to sum up part of the information that came back from different sources after publishing our articles, we started a new series, in this case the fourth article, but for sure, there´s more to come.
This is a case in which we could demonstrate how investing in building a dataset can produce many stories. As we love to say: build once, use many..
Movie subsidies: complaints, frauds, black lists and other scandals about INCAA
IMPACT
The series of articles in this investigation has lots of impact in media and justice.
Neither INCAA nor other entity related to the movie industry denied the published numbers. The only official reply came from INCAA´s president: Lucrecia Cardozo, who accused LA NACION of defending “concentrated interests”.
The Union of Movies Industry in Argentina (SICA) wrote to clarify that the amounts they receive are then transfered are then transferred to workers and are not retained by them. But also confirmed that the amount published was correct.
The journalis Jorge Lanata interviewed Crettaz in radio, in the most heard news program of the morning “Lanata sin Filtro”. Santiago García (journalist specialized in movies) also interviewed Crettaz in the radio LaOnceDiez,
https://soundcloud.com/preferiria-no-hacerlo/jose-crettaz-sobre-subsidios-en-el-cine-argentino
The director of “Miserias” the movie that only reported 13 viewers – published a video in Youtube explaining the reasons of this scarce audience and accuses LA NACION of attacking the movie industry in Argentina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfzaYl9VRQ4 In the same video the director confirms the published numbers.
Many producers and directors contacted LA NACION to explain the amounts they receive, others to congratulate about this series of articles and accused the INCAA of discriminating them .
The monthly movies magazine CinemaTracks highlighted this series as the “best series about subsidies from INCAA ever”.
Other media that replicated some of the articles were:
http://www.lavoz.com.ar/politica/la-pelicula-de-nestor-sigue-sumando-subsidios
In the judicial area, the Association of Movies and Audiovisual (Aprocinema) , lead by Cristina Agüero, used this series to present into court and activate a formal complaint against INCAA for detouring public funds.