A large number of Societies of Authors Worldwide, met again to celebrate once again, the W&DW annual Congress held in the city of Algiers, Algeria on April 16th and 17th..
Creators from different countries worldwide attended to Algeria to participate in the Writers & Directors Worldwide annual meeting , which was received by the Algerian CMO –ONDA – coinciding with one of the most important cultural and artistic celebrations in Africa, the Creativity Fair. The Algerian Minister of Culture, Mr. Azzedine Mihoubi, and the CISAC‘s VicePresident , Marcelo Piñeyro, opened the congress receiving the creators and pointing out to the most important: Culture and its relevant role on society, as the Minister Algerian of Culture in its opening speech: “Culture is the foundation that allows people to communicate with each other through all their expressions, art, music, dance, literature and audiovisual creation. It exerts a unifying role and can be a tool to mitigate extremism. It disseminates the ideals of humanism and cultural diversity“.
During the congress, several panels were presented on the current situations in the different regions of Latin America, and their recent progress, carried out by ADAL – Latin American Audiovisual Directors Alliance and their member societies – of the progress made by the Pan African Alliance of Authors and Composers, who have generated an engine of change throughout the continent through the awareness of author’s rights and its defense. These advances in the alliances generate that W&DW continue forward and with more force than ever. With the need and the objective well placed in generating Alliances in the different continents, thus provoking an increasingly influential panorama.
For the first time, we received the FERA, the FSE and the SAA organizations who introduced themselves and told us about their objectives, offering a joint effort and pointing out that making the authors’ voices heard is the way to obtain and protect the rights.
Once again, and throughout the panels and the voices of the creators, the need to unite the necessary forces to help those who need it most was concluded. Emerging societies in India SRAI, Brazil DBCA / GEDAR and BGDA Guinea, are at the height of their political lobby to make the authorities of their countries understand the importance of the author’s defense worldwide beginning with their own territories.
The need to draft an open letter was also concluded, in which the European Ministers of Culture will be urged to adopt a right to remuneration of audiovisual authors. W & DW will also actively encourage its member societies to sign representation agreements with their sister societies to increase the rights paid to the authors.
Quotes
“We are very cautious and very alert of the fight we have because being under the attack of large corporations … together with Internet service providers, who do not understand that there are author’s rights in the content they give to the public and these must be paid, this is the livelihood of authors …” Horacio Maldonado – Film Director; Screenwriter – President W&DW “At this moment we are looking to incorporate African authors, who will federate, structure and bring us their new energy … we want to reach the younger authors” Yves Nilly – Screenwriter – Vice President W&DW
“Creators from all over the world should think about the problem and Africa cannot be absent from this debate … solidarity should be consolidated between African creators and the creators of the world in a global reflexion” Samuel Sangwa – Film Director- Regional Director for Africa CISAC “Africa is undoubtedly the greatest area of potential growth … the experience and success we have had in Latin America is transportable to Africa and the need to support its Alliance and its authors” Marcelo Piñeyro – Film Director; Screenwriter – Vice President CISAC “The objective of W&DW here in Algiers, is looking for a rapprochement between African authors and establish a cooperation with Africa and African societies, hoping that this meeting will be the starting point for new alliances.” Sami Bencheikh – Film Director – CEO ONDA “Africa is the future in terms of young people … Therefore, it is essential to train these young people, to train them as artists, and to create together a synergy with CISAC so that we can better defend the interests of the authors.” Sam Mbemde – Composer – PACSA President “It is important to work with the different governments, so that they also understand it, and that they support their creators. Because a country that does not support its creators, as a nation has a poor destiny.” Miguel Angel Diani –PlayWright – ARGENTORES President “Here we can see how much digital really helps the local African communities to express themselves and to startups some kind of very fruitful cinema and musical productions as well.” Hrvoje Hribar – Film Director- FERA Board Member “It’s very interesting to hear about Africa, and to see how they build up a CMO structure, and how they try to make people aware about what writers rights really mean.” Caroline Otto – Film Director; Screenwriter – FSE Board Member “It is important that W&DW can support the African nations in their quest to make sure that all the audiovisual authors, whether screenwriters or directors, can make a fair living from the use of their works.” Barbara Hayes – Screenwriter – SAA Board of Directors Chairman “It is important that, as authors and administrators of societies all over the world, we can know the problems of others… The struggle is the same. It is enriching to understand the situation of African countries and perhaps it gives us some solution to our problems” Vinod Raganatah- Screenwriter – SRAI President – “It is very important that Latin American filmmakers, African filmmakers, from Europe and the whole world too to join in this effort of W&DW so for the first time we all have an international unity for the collections of Authors’ rights” Sylvio Back – Film Director – President of DBCA- “At this moment, after 5 years, we have all the legal mechanisms to be a Colombian CMO, legally formed so that we will start collecting the Authors’ rights not only of the Colombian directors but also of the directors worldwide” Mario Mitrotti- Film Director – President of DASC “I hope that all the societies gathered here, can be a contribution for the African authors and work in community just as the other societies have been for us. Because if the authors had not met us that time in Colombia, we would not have the result we have” Alexandra Cardona Restrepo- Screenwriter – President of REDES “The creation of an African Alliance, like the Latin American and, as expected for the future in Asia Pacific, is very important for a simple reason: facing global groups such as Amazon, Google and Netflix, the unique answer of the authors can be only global To say that we want to be the global voice of authors means to represent all of them and all the voices” Lorenzo Ferrero – Composer – Honorary President of SIAE
Source: www.cisac.org/Cisac-Home/Newsroom/Articles/Writers-Directors-Worldwide-builds-international-cooperation-at-annual-congress-in-Algiers
Photos:
Algiers City & Landscapes: Mustapha Sellali
Congress: ONDA / W&DW
Other Monuments and Panoramics:
The original uploader was Mehnimalik at French Wikipedia, Makamelchahid, CC BY-SA 3.0
The original uploader was Mehnimalik at French Wikipedia, NOTRE DAME D’AFRIQUE.ALGER, CC BY-SA 3.0