Among the hills, inside a park of 394 hectares of forest, it is located the largest film and video set in the interior of the country. “There, on that hill, we want to place the sign with huge letters that says Mendoza, just like Hollywood does,” says Sergio Sánchez, audiovisual producer, member of Filmandes and head of the Cuyo audiovisual interactive museum.
Mendoza, in western Argentina, is one of eight destinations in Latin America looking to attract industry investment with tax refunds (40% cash return) and a modern movie set.
The province of Malbec has a law to encourage audiovisual productions the benefit of more than 300 days of sunshine a yearlandscapes of vineyards, mountains, rivers and dams, and a development of haute cuisine and hotels linked to wine tourism.
where is the set
The filming set is located inside the General San Martín park, in an abandoned property that belonged to the Commercial and Industrial Union of Mendoza and which the city has recovered.
Marcelo Ortega, president of Filmandes, the NGO of the main audiovisual cluster, told how this space for film and video productions arose, in a strategic place in the City, next to the Cerro de la Gloria and opposite the Cruce de los Andes monument. .
“Mendoza was the first Argentine province that allowed filming during the Covid pandemic. This has generated a lot of requests from audiovisual production companies, especially commercials, which have been recorded since June 2020, and has opened the door for major projects,” said Ortega, promoter of the film studio.
The set is adjacent to a popular neighborhood called La Favorita, where its neighbors have already been summoned to participate in films and videos, such as the filming of start the danceprotagonist of the film Darío Grandinetti and Mercedes Moránand directed by Marina Seresesky.
District 33
The property where the Mendoza Commercial and Industrial Union Aconcagua fair has been renamed District 33. In addition to the new set, there are other buildings built for the establishment of different production companies.
The idea of the Mendoza City Council was to create a tribute space to Filmandes, as the producer of wine entrepreneurs was called, who was active for 12 years and came to shoot westerns, such as the herdsmenY the last cowboybetween 1945 and 1956. “It was a cinema mecca with quality productions that earned it the title of Argentine California,” says Ortega.
The new film and video studio has an area of about 2000 square meters. The floors, ceilings and walls were redone, with a special soundproofing treatment of the set, with cellulose pulp, and the entrance, with a sound tech room, which isolates the warehouse from the outside.
Inside this space there are state-of-the-art equipment, with chroma, an infinite screen 20 meters long by 10 meters high, an audio post-production studio equipped with Dolby Atmos, warehouses and production offices, makeup and cloakroom; and ample parking.
“We managed to enhance that warehouse to transform it into a space for innovation and creativity. We obtained the resources and we obtained the filming set, with the production offices and the permanent headquarters of the MIA, an interactive audiovisual museum,” Ortega underlined . .
More than 200 projects
The director of the Filmandes cluster said so Since 2018, more than 200 film projects, series, documentaries and animations have been madethanks to public policies that facilitate production, skilled human resources and installed capacity.
“Mendoza has four universities offering audiovisual production courses (UNCuyo, Maza and Congreso) and a regional film and video school,” Ortega said. And he reflected on the potential of the region: “It is an industry that generates employment and the country’s brand identity because what you produce travels around the world and they mention the places where it is made”.
Over the past two years, several figures have toured Mendoza: Jorge Marrale, Natalia Oreiro, Mercedes Morán, Daniel Fanego, Gustavo GarzónDarío Grandinetti, and Chilean actors Benjamín Vicuña, Jorge Zabaleta, Fernando Larraín and Rodrigo Muñoz, among others.
Mendoza’s strategic location is also a plus: it has a 40-minute flight connection with Santiago de Chile airport, with direct flights to major cities around the world.
“We don’t want to be a competitor to Buenos Aires, but rather a complement,” notes Ortega, who dreams of developing an audiovisual center in western Argentina that exports content to the world. He added the attribute of wine with “landscapes of vineyards, large cellars, first-class restaurants and hotels”.
The film set work took 18 months to complete and is valued at close to 44 million pesos. The resources came from the provincial government, which invested $100,000, through the Nodos program; and, from the nation, with a contribution of 15 million pesos.
cinema’s Museum
The new space of the General San Martín park houses the Cuyo interactive audiovisual museum. It was created by Sergio Sánchez, president of Fundacine and general coordinator of the Celluloid Project, who since 2004 has been recovering historical film material from the region and digitizing it.
“We recovered 14 of Filmandes’ 16 films and obtained documentaries, photos and footage from private collections that had been abandoned,” said Sánchez. Some of this material can be seen in the interactive exhibit of the museum operating in District 33.
The director who recovered Mendoza’s visual memory praised the new provincial law 9.402, which encourages capital investments, returning 40% of the amount invested in cash (cash discount), a system of attraction of foreign productions in force in the City of Buenos Aires.
The current incentive program has involved the executives of Paramount Argentina and the production company Kuarzo (generator of the programs Big Brother, ph we can talkamong others), who have already had meetings and expressed interest in working in Mendoza and exporting content to Latin America.
According to the projections of the audiovisual sector, the installed capacity in Mendoza would allow it make investments of about 50 million dollarswith job generation of approximately 6,000 jobs and projected revenues of approximately $80 million.
WD extension
Source: Clarin
