Gramado Film Market Hosts First International Meeting of Cities, Showing How Film Transforms Towns
A small Brazilian mountain town of 40,000 residents that ranks as the country's second-biggest tourist destination behind Rio de Janeiro is betting that its formula can travel. From August 12 to 14, Gramado will host the First International Meeting of Cities at the Gramado Film Market, gathering municipal authorities from Medellín, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Maricá and host city Gramado, along with representatives of Brazilian and Ibero-American organisations (Variety).
The meeting's focus is practical: how the creative economy — particularly the audiovisual industry — can drive social and economic development. Two case studies sit at the centre. Medellín, Colombia, population 2.4 million, and Gramado itself, a Southern Brazil tourist town of 40,000, will both have their urban transformation stories examined as models (Variety).
Ralfe Cardoso, general coordinator of the Gramado Film Market, attributes his town's rise directly to cinema. Gramado has staged 54 consecutive annual editions of its film festival, a run Cardoso says was a major driver in turning the town into one of Brazil's best-known tourist destinations. He places Gramado second only to Rio de Janeiro in national tourism — a status he ties to the festival itself (Variety).
From Medellín, Maria Fernanda Galeano Rojo, the city's secretary of economic development, and Karla Valderrama, coordinator of its film commission, will present a panel on the Colombian city's urban transformation experience. The contrast is deliberate: a metropolis of millions and a town of tens of thousands, both using film as a civic engine (Variety).
The International Meeting of Cities runs inside the 10th edition of the Gramado Film Market, the industry arm of the broader Gramado Film Festival. The market's panels and pitching sessions will feature participation from Amazon MGM Studios, Globo Filmes, Globoplay, Downtown Filmes, H2O Films, Vitrine Filmes and O2 Filmes — a cross-section of Brazilian production, distribution and streaming players (Variety).
One of those companies, Vitrine Filmes, will present a panel of its own. Letícia Friedrich, a partner and director of the distributor, will lead "Vitrine Filmes: Sponsorship, Investment, Circulation and Impact." Founded 15 years ago, Vitrine is the leading distributor of Brazilian art features and handled the local release of The Secret Agent, which sold about 2.5 million admissions in Brazil (Variety).
Friedrich's panel will highlight the Vitrine Petrobras Session, a programme sponsored by Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras that has released more than 80 Brazilian films at affordable ticket prices. Audiovisual public policy specialist Gabriel Portela will also take part in a panel titled "Future Perspectives for" at the market forum (Variety).
The 54th Gramado Film Festival confirmed the meeting on its official news page (festivaldegramado.net). What gives the gathering its quiet weight is the scale of what Gramado is proposing: that a festival run in a town of 40,000 can offer a transferable blueprint for cities sixty times its size — and that the next city to follow that blueprint might be anywhere in the Ibero-American world.
