IGF 2018 BPF Local Content

-                 Date & Time: Tuesday 13 November 2018 15:00 - 16:30 CET  (UTC+1)

-                 Organizer(s): •   Giacomo Mazzone, EBU,; Ignacio Estrada BPF Co-facilitators,  Wim Degezelle, BPF Consultant

-                 Chair/Moderator:   Bertrand Moullier (FIAPF)

-                 Rapporteur/Notetaker:  Giacomo Mazzone (EBU) & Wim Degezelle (IGF)

-                 List of speakers and their institutional affiliations (Indicate male/female/ transgender male/transgender female/gender variant/prefer not to answer):

-                 1. Roberto Gaetano,  , ALAC Italy (MALE)

-                 2. Ucha Seturi, Telecom Operators Association of Georgia, coordinator of the Tusheti project, Georgia (MALE)

-                 3. Ema Edesio, Award winning filmmaker and film director, Nigeria (FEMALE)

-                 4. Enyi Omeruah, Music and audiovisual entrepreneur, Nigeria (MALE)

-                 5. Jean Hubert Nankam, Producer of reality TV shows, documentaries, and drama, Ivory Coast (MALE)

-                 •6. Alain Modot on behalf of Grégoire Ndjaka, Association of the African Broadcasters AUB/UAR (MALE)

-                 7. Gonzalo Laguado Serpa, Proimagenes Colombia, Colombia (MALE)

-                 8. (remote) Ani Dallakin, the Internet Society, Armenia REPLACED BY  Lianna Galstyn   MAG member (FEMALES)

-                 Theme (as listed here): LOCAL CONTENTS

-                 Subtheme (as listed here):

-                 Please state no more than three (3) key messages of the discussion.

AGREED PREMISE:

The success of Internet in a community (apart of the availability of infrastructure) is determined by the availability of local contents and local services in local languages. More of these contents and services are available in a community, more successful the internet is.

KEY MESSAGES:

1. In some parties of the world there are already existing and consolidated models that today guarantee a flow of resources (from TV and radio, film industry, publishers, etc.) to professional creators. In the developed countries these mechanisms are slowly moving to extend their action also to internet contents. In other parts of the world such kind of mechanisms doesn’t exist or are very weak;

2. Face to the insufficient transfer of resources from the Internet platforms to local creators in local languages (especially in small countries), the most efficient way to improve the quantity and quality of local contents and languages over the Internet is to accelerate and facilitate the conversion of existing models into the Internet market. Cinema becoming digital and on line. TV and radio becoming digital and producing ad hoc contents for the on-line distribution. Printed media becoming digital publishers of web-based contents and services;

3. Effective national and regional laws could incentive this process of transformation, while International Treaties (such as UNESCO on cultural diversity and WIPO on the protection of authors, performers, producers and broadcasters rights) could represent a level playing field and provide appropriate framework for domestic policies. The BPF session presents a series of case studies and successful practices that provide useful food for thoughts.

 -Please elaborate on the discussion held, specifically on areas of agreement and divergence. [150 words]Examples: There was broad support for the view that…; Many [or some] indicated that…; Some supported XX, whileothers

Full support was expressed to all experience presented, each one of the covering one specific need and perspective.

Roberto Gaetano explained the importance to develop more and more Internet identifiers (for instance domain names and email addresses) in non-ASCII scripts. Without that all non-latin languages and regions of the world are practically excluded from the effective access to Internet.

Lianna Galstyan presented the experience of Armenia educational platform, where -thanks to the state financing- educational resources have been made available on line to all educational institutes of the country.

Ucha Seturi presented the Tusheti project in Georgia where the valorization of a specific territory and of its language has been made possible through an Internet platform that allows direct trade of local products and promotion of tourism in that region.

Ema Edesio and Enyi Omeruoah from Nigeria presented the successful experience of a selfproduced movie : “Kasala” that is now touring around the festivals of the whole world having great success, that has been simultaneously distributed in cinemas and through digital and on-line tools, opening the way to new forms of financing.

Jean Hubert Nankam from Ivory Coast presented his experience of a series of  episodes for TV and the web called “Teenagers” distributed on TV and on Facebook, with one main sponsor and a consortium of 8 tv buying the rights for broadcasting distribution. A community of 120.000 adolescents across the region that is now developing into a market for ancillary products, such as music records.

Alain Modot from France but also representing the AUB (African Union of Broadcasters), explained the project of Hub Africa, where -with the seed money from institutional partners (such as EU or development funds publics or provates)- a serie of programmes will be coproduced with a consortium of broadcasters, with centralized sales of advertising spaces for the TV and the on line distribution simoultaneously.

Gonzalo Laguado from Colombia presented the successful experience of the Colombian film fund Pro-Imagenes, that supports with state funding and with money from taxations of certain activities, the development of movies (including one nominated best foreign movie at the Oscars 2015), TV series and ,more recently, of web series.

 -What ideas surfaced in the discussion with respect to how the IGF ecosystem might make progress on this issue? [75 words]

Putting in place the proper mechanism created by IGF for the BPF, that consists in identifying experiences models and enablers that could help to solve the lack of local contents in local languages, especially in underdeveloped countries.

-Please estimate the total number of participants.

There were around 100 participants in the room.

-Please estimate the total number of women and gender-variant individuals present.

Half of the audience in the room was made of women

-To what extent did the session discuss gender issues, and if to any extent, what was the discussion? [100words

Gender issue was not the main subject of discussion. But the choice to present the experience of a  woman film maker from Nigeria as one of the pivotal example of Best Practice, was a clear message to the participants.