Steve Solot Launches New eBook on Filmmaking in Brazil

By Jay Forte, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President of the Rio Film Commission, Steve Solot, who is also president of the LATC – Latin American Training Center, has released a new bilingual eBook aimed at informing the foreign investor about new trends in the Brazilian visual content industry. Solot is an American living in Brazil for over 25 years, has seen many changes in the film and television market here, which he shares in the new publication.

The book title is “The Expanding Brazilian Film, Television and Digital Industry/Cinema, televisão e mídia digital no Brasil: uma indústria em expansão”, and is a publication in partnership with the Cesnik, Quintino & Salinas Law Firm. The team acknowledge the book was made possible by the support of RioFilme, Spcine, and the Brazilian Association of Independent Television Producers, ABPITV.

According to the authors, it is a compilation of essays and articles by important leaders in the Brazilian audiovisual industry, the book is a new updated version, in bilingual English-Portuguese format, of the first 2012 edition, “The Brazilian Audiovisual Industry: An Explosion of Creativity and Opportunities for Partnerships”.

This new edition, also aimed at international investors, offers a panorama of the Brazilian market, including topics such as investment opportunities, content licensing, partnerships and co-productions. The first launch event will take place during the Rio Content Market, in the Hotel Windsor Barra, tomorrow (March 9th) at noon, in the ABPITV conference room.

When asked what to look forward to in the new edition, Steve Solot tells The Rio Times, “The new edition not only includes new and important players and topics, such as Video on Demand, it also highlights the importance of municipal film agencies such as Spcine and RioFilme. Some of the most government officials contributed articles again, such as Manoel Rangel, President of Ancine and Pola Ribeiro, Secretario do Audiovisual do MinC.”

Despite the current grim economic climate in Brazil, Solot explains the biggest positive change for the industry, “By far, the most new sweeping and important legislation in the Brazilian AV industry is Law 12.485/11, the so-called Pay-TV law, which substantially changed the regulatory environment for the industry: it created the pay-TV local content quotas on prime-time (stimulated the local industry), extended the Condecine levy to Telcom companies and opened the pay-TV sector to foreign investment.”

The LATC is a media training and consulting firm based in Rio de Janeiro, founded by Steve Solot following over twenty years of experience representing the U.S. major studios in Latin America as Regional Vice-President of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). In addition to organizing technical training courses and workshops for professional filmmakers throughout Latin America, it offers a broad range of technical consulting services.