Act for Cultural Incentive

The culture incentive law initially created under President Sarney’s government in Brazil was designed as a stimulus to culture, but without control it was eventually revoked by President Collor and later re-issued by President FHC. Federal law 8313/91 known as the Culture Incentive Act was established on December 23, 1991. What should be cultural encouragement has become paternalistic and conducive to deviations from purpose and much corruption. The paternalistic law was organized in principles of project term, authors, technical team, approval, source of collection, execution and rendering of accounts, but ends up being of exclusive use of groups specialized in projects that do not care about the desired results.

The technical difficulties to approve the projects mounted the structure of small dimensions and marked political influence with training centers in several capitals that gather resources of more than ten thousand companies and an allocation of over one billion reais. The source of funds is 2% of the fees paid by companies to the federal government and must be verified with notes, receipts and contracts. The projects are known and applied even by indigenous tribes. But many events are not cultural, but even so they are approved as weddings, or international artists.

The ease of acquiring resources without the proper cultural response, such as Hollywood-style filmless productions, never gets awards at the American academy. Routes assembled and written by lottery with data to choose themes and plot, in total disdain for the adaptation of books by Brazilian authors. It does not matter to the directors the script, but the execution of the project. The ease of manipulation of cinematographic productions, with the same artists and equipment of the same great companies of television that monopolize the approvals of the projects.

Dissemination of the government’s lack of control over abusive projects was heavily commented on on social networks, especially during the campaign of presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, where many artists demonstrated support for the trillions of millions paid to each artist for mediocre performances, including foreign singers . The groups on social networks have strongly opposed the Rouanet Law and denounce the many cases of abuse of television artists. These accounts are being analyzed by the Federal Audit Court which has found errors in projects, lack of accountability, when the leftovers must be returned to the National Treasury by many artists who did not do so. What seemed to be a blessing became a curse.

Curitiba, December 06, 2018.

Adm. Egberto Fioravanti Ribeiro