Cecilia Roth at the Platino Awards: “The idea has been established that all of us who are linked to culture are parasites of the State”

The Argentine actress Cecilia Roth will receive this Saturday the Platinum Awards 2024 of Honor for a lifetime dedicated to audiovisuals on both sides of the Atlantic.

During the press conference prior to her recognition, the artist asked for help for her country’s cinema, which is at serious risk of dismantling: “Culture in general at this time in Argentina is experiencing a point of expulsion for enormous numbers of families who we dedicate ourselves to this (…). “They are dismantling everything related to culture in general and to cinema in particular,” the artist denounced in her moment of glory before a stage of three hundred journalists from the Latin world who were waiting expectantly for her words.

“I want this to be known in Spain and in Latin America, this is a request for help,” said the protagonist of global hits such as “Everything about my mother” (2000) or “Martín (Hache)” (1998).

A request that “means that we be attentive, because next year there may not be any representative of our country because this year no film will be made,” Roth has warned.

“We are a link in the culture of our history and our own country and we cannot cut the links,” warned the interpreter, who concluded her reflection with a positive message. “I am sure that this will also pass, but with your help, more so,” she said to the applause of the more than three hundred journalists from 23 Latin countries who gathered in the Diego 4 room of the Xcaret Arte hotel in the Riviera Maya. .

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The artist celebrated the existence of the Platino Awards, which she understands “as an entire ‘country’ in which we can cross paths, interweave, get to know each other, each one with our own identity, and at the same time be united by the language,” Spanish or Portuguese.

“It gives me enormous joy to be here with people who make audiovisuals and know how difficult it is to make films, make series, in the midst of the changes that the industry constantly undergoes, and how countries change,” he said minutes before responding. to a couple of questions from Latina journalists who asked him to extend that request to other countries, in addition to his own.

“Our countries are very fragile, very vulnerable,” Roth highlighted. “Slowly, with a lot of struggle, we have built an industry that is not yet seriously established and that a strong wind, like the one blowing now in Argentina, can knock down.”

And he has claimed that “an industry supported by a State does not need a subsidy, because everything is returned.”

“The idea has settled among people that all of us who are linked to culture are parasites of the State. And what we should all do, starting with the Platinum Awards – said Roth – is to try to modify that harsh, cruel and unfair idea that we are parasites.

First, he pointed out, “because it is insulting and unfair to those of us who know what it means to make a film. But how to tell it to people who listen to slogans and phrases that destroy us? I believe that the entire Platino community has to take charge of what is happening in each and every one of our countries, telling it, shedding light on it, and facing it with active resistance.”

“Not just saying it, but hammering it home,” he clarifies with a sad smile. We do not say that making films is easy, but no one asks the State for more than it deserves, all the organizations that have been dismantled, from the INCA to the Film and Audiovisual School, and everything they make possible, in Argentina have been dismantled. . So – she concluded – we have to tell it and work so that this can stop happening, and if possible, that it can be turned back.

Roth, simply dressed in dark pants and a striped t-shirt, hardly made up and very serene, was grateful for “the deep tranquility” that it gives her to feel surrounded by the Platinum world. “This is what these awards generate,” she said.