Mexican Senate Rejects Item in Bill to Help Film Industry

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican Senate has rejected a key provision of a proposed film law that had sought to force theaters to reserve 10% of screen time for Mexican movies, it was reported Wednesday.

Backers had hailed the law as a way of reviving Mexico’s film industry by helping it compete against Hollywood.

The law will probably have to wait until the new legislative session next year, as legislators are currently debating the 1999 budget, the newspaper Reforma said.

The Mexican Chamber of Deputies approved the proposed law by a 478-0 vote over the weekend and sent it to the Senate, where swift approval also was expected.

But at the intervention of Mexican Trade Minister Herminio Blanco Mendoza, who claimed that the 10% provision would violate at least three treaties with foreign trade partners, the Senate stripped the bill of that requirement and returned the measure to the lower house, the newspaper Reforma said.

The problem was not the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, with the United States and Canada, but trade pacts with other Latin American countries that prohibited such protectionism, the paper said.

Since the Mexican film industry was deregulated in 1992, the number of local productions has plummeted while foreign films, mostly from the United States, have flooded theaters.

Before the 1992 law, theaters were forced to reserve half their screen time for Mexican movies, and ticket prices were fixed at 3 pesos, then about $1. The government also helped finance films.