News

Chilean film technicians meeting 4-5 July in Santiago in a workshop organised by SINTECI, the UNI-MEI affiliate for the sector in Chile, called for the establishment of a working committee with the objective of seeking to establishing common standards among film technicians working in the member countries of the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR). The committee will also be made up of SICA, the Argentine film technicians’ union, and SINDCINE, the film technicians’ union of the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Both of these latter unions also took part in the Santiago workshop.



In other matters, the workshop called for measures to give greater attention to women working in film, to establish standards for qualifying technicians, to better prevent accidents in production and for more cooperation between the Chilean, Argentine and Brazilian unions in training.



The workshop was the first in a series of a new two- year project for Latin American film technicians organised by PANARTES/UNI-MEI, as FITEC (the Latin American film technicians’ group within PANARTES) and sponsored by the Dutch FNV. Similar workshops will be held in other countries in the region with one annual all-region conference each year. Thirty-eight technicians took part in the workshop, including, as part of the union’s efforts to reach out to and organise more younger members, ten university film students. More than half of the participants were women.