Though it is very demanding and frequently clashes with my day job as a producer of feature films, I see my responsibility as FIAPF Chairman as my most important commitment. Film and TV production, as many of you will know, is both perilous and exhilarating. It also requires us to focus obsessively on the minutiae, because production, from development to delivery, is all about present detail.

By contrast, the work we do through FIAPF is all about laying the foundations of a healthy future for our industry. It is about addressing the global challenges in international law, technology and financing, to ensure that the interests of content producers remain a high priority on the institutional agenda everywhere.

I run an integrated production/sales/distribution company making films for the Spanish and international markets. In that position, I am witnessing the assumptions our business has been based on for over fifty years being turned on their heads: profound changes are re-designing our market; they are brought on by digital technology and the increasingly global nature of our industry in the areas of financing, production and distribution. In this new world, opportunities for reaching global audiences or significant communities of taste and interest will be multiplied. So too, regrettably, will piracy. It is already widespread in video and DVD. Tomorrow, the unchecked roll-out of broadband digital may undermine the entire economic fabric of content distribution and, by extension, make film and TV production an impossible challenge for all, from large conglomerates to small scale production companies. This threat is without precedent and requires a unity of vision and coordinated action between us all as producers of content, no matter how different our priorities may be in our national agendas.

To keep watch and respond effectively to this global challenge, producers need a global federation. FIAPF is the only producers’ organisation with a truly global reach.

More than ever before, national producers’ organisations must work together to ensure that FIAPF remains a powerful voice for all of us on all the issues affecting the performance and perspectives of the audiovisual industry.

Andrés Vicente Gomez