ESTRATEGIAS : PROTESTANDO CONTRA CINÉPOLIS EN ESTADOS UNIDOS

(NOTA: Debido a la importancia de este post, permanecerá hasta arriba en el blog hasta las 10:30 AM, hora de Baja California.)

Lean por favor con atención lo que sigue por que esta es la nueva estrategia contra la censura a FRAUDE: México 2006:

Hace unos días en el hotel Marriott de Orlando, Florida, se llevó a cabo la convención anual ShowEast, que es una especie de feria de la industria del cine de Estados Unidos organizada por el grupo Nielsen, uno de los conglomerados de medios más fuertes del mundo, y propietario de publicaciones de la industria del entretenimiento como la revista Billboard.

En esta convención se premió al dueño de Cinépolis, Alejandro Ramírez Magaña, en la categoría de "Premio Internacional de Exhibición" y a Felipe de Jesús Muñoz Vázquez, subprocurador de delitos federales de la PGR (¡SÍ! ¡De la PGR!) con el "Premio al Liderazgo Gubernamental".

Los detalles se dieron a conocer en la página de internet de la revista Variety. Sobre el dueño de Cinépolis dice Variety:

Alejandro Ramirez Magana has brought compassion to the movie business. With advanced degrees in economics from Harvard and Oxford, the Cinepolis CEO has spent years working against poverty for the World Bank and the United Nations.

The former chief of staff of Mexico's Social Cabinet and former Mexican representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, his mission to change Latin American social conditions is reflected in his co-authorship of the book "Poverty, Human Development and Indigenous People in Latin America."

Que quiere decir que, según Variety, Alejandro Ramírez "trajo compasión al negocio de las películas." Lo describen además como ex-jefe de achichincles de la SEDESOL y ex-representante de México ante la OCDE.

Del chango de la PGR dicen lo siguiente:

Felipe de Jesus Munoz Vazquez hates pirates. And as Mexico's deputy attorney general of the Office of the General Prosecutor (PGR), he's made plenty of them walk the plank.

Que quiere decir que el cuais este "odia a los piratas" y como subprocurador le ha echado el guante a bastantes.

Ah pues que chido y que bonito. Nadamás que Variety no dijo que Alejandro Ramírez fue señalado por haberse negado a proyectar la película FRAUDE: México 2006 alegando que es amigo personal de fecal. Tampoco dijeron NADA de las quejas que recibió IMAX por la supuesta censura de su socio comercial en México Cinépolis.

Total que a Ramírez le dieron este premio en el ShowEast, el cual por cierto, tiene entre sus patrocinadores a IMAX y a Warner Brothers según la lista de patrocinadores de ShowEast.

No tengo idea si el grupo Nielsen o la revista Variety--una de las revistas más importantes de la industria de Hollywood--sepan de la declaración de CENSURA de Ramírez o de las órdenes que, según reportes, Cinépolis giró a sus empleados para minimizar el documental sobre el fraude electoral. PERO, si no saben, en ese caso ¿Qué les parece si les vamos informando de qué lado masca la iguana?

Envíen la siguiente carta a las siguientes direcciones de e-mail:

Robert Sunshine y Mitchell Nehauser (directores ejecutivos de Nielsen)
robert.sunshine@nielsen.com
mitchell.neuhauser@nielsen.com

Revista Variety
news@variety.com

Y nomás por no dejar, a Lou Dobbs, de CNN:
lou.dobbs@turner.com

Envíen la carta con copia a IMAX:
sarmstrong@imax.com
info@imax.com

Y con copia para Cinépolis:
contacto@cinepolis.com.mx
mlopezg@cinepolis.com.mx

Esta es la carta a enviar. Usen este título para el e-mail: "AN AWARD FOR A CENSOR?"

AN AWARD FOR A CENSOR?

Variety Magazine and Nielsen Business Media Group,

Variety Magazine's website, variety.com, publishes a note, dated on October 11, 2007 ( http://www.variety.com/awardcentral_article/VR1117973876.html?nav=news ), regarding the awards given at the recent Nielsen Business Media Group's SHOWEAST convention. In the list of award recipients, Variety includes two names that caught my attention: Alejandro Ramírez Vazquez, CEO of Mexican theater chain Cinepolis, and Felipe de Jesús Muñoz Vázquez, assistant to the Mexican attorney general's office.

The reason why these two names caught my eye is because of the recent controversy that erupted in Mexico because of the reported refusal by Alejandro Ramírez to play in his theater chain the documentary film FRAUDE: México 2006 (FRAUD: Mexico 2006) by Mexican film director Luis Mandoki, which shows the evidence of the electoral fraud perpetrated by the ruling Natinal Action Party (PAN by its Spanish initials) in the Mexican presidental elections of 2006. According to the Mexican press, Alejandro Ramírez had reportedly claimed that he was a personal friend of Felipe Calderón (currently appointed president of Mexico after supposedly winning by half a percent point the court-challenged election) and therefore he, Ramírez, would not allow a documentary that questions Calderón in his theaters. This report can be verified at the following link to La Jornada newspaper from Mexico City:

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/09/04/index.php?section=politica&article=009n1pol

The controversy doesn't stop there. After this issue became a scandal in Mexico, Cinepolis accepted playing the trailer for the documentary (and supposedly it also agreed to play the documentary as well), but according to recent reports, many of Mr. Ramírez's theaters received the order of playing the trailer before movies with small audiences, thus limiting the promotion for the movie and, therefore, its chances at reaching the moviegoer audience (this movie, by the way, has no budget for a media campaign beyond the trailers and posters in theaters). And in some cases, according to other reports, the trailer was simply not played at all. One such report was published on Monday, October 29, in La Jornada:

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/10/29/index.php?section=opinion&article=004o1pol

This has led thousands of people to conclude that what is actually taking place here is a strategy of censorship: the trailers play, but to semi-empty screens. In one report, for example, the trailer was placed before Resident Evil: Extintion after about a month after the movie started playin in theaters in Mexico. Needless, to say, after a month of playing, few people would actually go to see that movie.

Personally I do not know if this is censorship or not. But I can tell you this: it does show an apparent attempt to at least try to keep the movie as small as possible and therefore dooming it to failure at the box office, which, in turn, would keep many people from being able to see it.

This is a grave issue if we consider the fact that this isn't just any movie. It is a historical document that shows for the first time the visual evidence of the electoral fraud in the Mexican presidential elections of 2006. Evidence that, by the way, television and most of the media in Mexico has refused to show to their mass audiences for over a year just to please the party in power in Mexico.

In other words, given Mr. Ramírez's reported statements claiming a close friendship with Calderón, and given the fact that Felipe Calderón himself refused to agree to a ballot recount in a presidental election that by no means was clean, I have to ask Variety and the Nielsen Business Media Group: Did ShowEast give an award to a censor and to a representative of the government that would benefit from this case of censorship?

I ask this question only because I would like to know the answer. Specially if we consider the fact that important people in the Hollywood industry have already seen a screening of the documentary and found it not only moving, but outright revealing because of the implications this movie has not just for Mexico, but for the entire world.

It's ironic, though, that Variety magazine claims that Alejandro Ramírez "brought compassion to the movie business", when his theater chain seemed to be making sure (appartently) that a documentary with enormous social significance would be doomed to be viewed only by very few people, and thus keeping a larger audience from seeing with their own eyes what really took place in the Mexican presidential election.

And it's even more ironic that a representative of the Mexican government also got an award for supposedly being an example of law enforcement, when the electoral results that put his boss, Felipe Calderon, in office, have been denounced for being illegal--and the Mandoki documentary actually proves it.

I invite you to watch the trailer for the movie and see for yourselves that this movie is as important--if not more so--than documentary projects such as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. You can see it online at this address:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=K7pWiBmcaHc

On a final note I would like to point out the fact that I noticed the Nielsen group lists as one of the sponsors of the 2007 ShowEast convention the Canadian IMAX corporation. IMAX has a business partnership with Cinepolis in Mexico through which Cinepolis features IMAX screens and IMAX experience movies in its theaters throughout Mexico. Recently, many consumers in Mexico wrote to IMAX asking them if they were aware of the issue with Cinepolis and FRAUDE: Mexico 2006. These consumers told IMAX they would stop going to IMAX screens in Mexico if Cinepolis acted in such a way that could be perceived by the consumers as censorship against FRAUDE: Mexico 2006. And I can understand their reasons; this movie is giving the Mexican audience something that the media in Mexico (specially television) refused to give them: the truth. Censoring this movie, or attempting to minimize the movie so it would die out quickly at the box office, would be the added insult to injury. It would mean people would be denied the right to know what took place in the presidential election of 2006 EVEN if they paid for a ticket to see it.

And a final question: Does the Nielsen group really know who are they giving awards to? Does the rest of the film industry know who are being awarded at Nielsen's conventions?

Sincerily,
(FIRMA)

PS:
The Mexican press reported that Warner Brothers backed down from distributing the documentary on the electoral fraud under pressure from Mexico's TV giant Televisa. Warner Brothers claimed they backed down (even though they had already paid for test promotional materials for the movie) because documentaries were not good business. What Warner Brothers failed to mention is that Luis Mandoki had previously directed a documentary on left-wing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who contested the presidential election of 2006) called "¿Quién es el Señor López?" ("Who is Mr. López?") and that it sold 2 million copies in 2 months. A staggering number if we consider that the previous record for best selling DVD was held by Shrek 2, with 400,000 copies. Not even a quarter of what Lopez Obrador's documentary sold. So much for Mexican political documentaries "not being good for business."

Todos a enviar esta carta PERO YA. Si en Estados Unidos no saben de lo que hace Cinépolis en México, ¡Que se enteren ahora! Recuerden: envíen el e-mail con copia a todas las direcciones arriba mencionadas. Que se enteren TODOS. Y que Cinépolis defina de una buena vez si va a seguir haciéndose pato con el trailer y con la película.


Una razón más para apoyar al peje en el 2007.