#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #SPAIN #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Spain, CNT #431: A silent profession and a place from which to raise your voice by Juan Herrera Aparicio & Sergio Herrero (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The historical member Fernando Fernán-Gómez used to say that most of his work as

an actor consisted of waiting. The extra job, in addition to that, consists of
being silent, even while he is acting. But far from remaining silent, figuration
has managed to organize itself through CNT and that is where he does not miss an
opportunity to raise his voice. ---- For decades, in the original cinema,
described by many as the purest, the actors and actresses gave life to the
characters and told their stories without using one of the fundamental tools of
acting: the voice. In fact, that characteristic is what has ended up calling that
era of the seventh art: silent cinema. Chaplin, Jean Harlow, Buster Keaton, Pola
Negri, Harold Lloid, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino... no one would dare to
belittle them just for not using their voice, just as they would not say so about
a mime like Marcel Marceau on stage. Figuration is now those silent actors and
actresses around the principals, a silence that they have extended to their
working conditions for decades.

Shortly after the CNT Performing Arts Section was formed, and thanks to the
struggle maintained for an agreement to regulate our activity, it was signed, but
we did not manage to participate in it: the result is that our activity has not
really been regulated because Many things have been left out, with the damage
that this entails for both parties. Everything that is not defined in it is
likely to be a source of conflict, but the employers seem not to want to realize
it or they think it is very convenient to have that hole through which to plunder
some benefit -because they have not counted on the fact that some people are
going to claim-; and the generalist unions, which do not know the ins and outs of
the profession, do not care and prefer not to count on the workers to know what
the agreement must include.

Now we have an agreed salary, but it has been frozen in the 2018 rates because
the renewal of the agreement is paralyzed. In a cumbersome wording, overtime is
vaguely defined, and some jobs are not mentioned, such as acting as doubles for
actors and actresses or demonstrating certain skills, which are paid at the mercy
of the will of the agencies and producers, not to mention the cancellations of
jobs or the times we have to claim purely acting jobs for not using the voice -or
sometimes even speaking- that thanks to the indefiniteness of the figuration
agreement, the producers constantly try to save themselves. Also, there we could
prevent a child from working 8 hours from 6 in the morning.

Women also play at a disadvantage within this precariousness. A profession in
which the image, the body, is the main instrument we have, will always place
women in a more vulnerable position. There are not a few cases in which attempts
have been made to pay nude or semi-nude as a normal representation, and even more
so, in several cases emotionally affected colleagues have come because during a
shoot -due to the famous requirements of the script- they have been summoned to
go out on underwear and have ended up being encouraged to carry out more
committed actions that far exceeded what was initially required of them,
defenseless in the face of the lack of subsequent support from agencies,
producers and even other colleagues. Our support will never cease in situations
like these.

The latest labor reform has come with more uncertainty than improvements while
waiting for a long-promised Statute of the Artist, Creator and Worker of Culture
that should regulate the conditions of these professions, especially
intermittent, in a sector historically forgotten.

There have been meetings with the so-called professional associations, some of
which have become unions precisely so as not to lose rubble. There would be
nothing wrong with it, if it weren't for the fact that among these workers there
are businessmen, and in this case it is something very clear because they are
some well-known faces, who immediately reach the most prominent positions in
these organizations. Actors who produce series and movies, technicians who
dominate the market... in short, people whose interests are closer to making a
profit for themselves than for ordinary workers.

CNT protest at the 36th edition of the Goya Awards, held at the Palace of Arts in
Valencia on February 13, 2022 / Secc. Performing Arts CNT
The true representation of workers is in the unions, but the two media unions
(often not because of their achievements), if they do not have professionals in
the field, can hardly be valid interlocutors. Through a class union that emerges
from a true organization of professionals, without anyone who is not a grassroots
worker being able to speak for us, it is the only way that our problems can be
picked up and addressed. in collective bargaining.

That open forum for figuration has been CNT, since, after trying to find
different ways of organizing, it was able to form a section of Performing and
Cinematographic Arts from which to assert its rights by itself through direct
action. Where there have been violations of our most basic conditions, the
militancy of the section has been present helping thousands of workers.

Our main objective from the beginning has been to achieve the signing of the new
agreement. It is the social part that has to demonstrate that it is on the side
of the professionals, without preventing those with the greatest implantation and
power of mobilization from being at that negotiating table, so that it does not
happen again that they do not have the workers to negotiate their working
conditions -the same thing that seems to be happening with the Statute-. To do
this, the visibility of our profession and its problems (concerns) us a lot and
we try to be present at the galas of the sector: there are already several
editions to which we have attended, both the Goya and the Union awards of Actors
to ask for their express support.

The section, moreover, is constantly on the lookout for any news that may affect
professionals in the Performing Arts. Thus, we fought for the achievement of aid
for artists and technical personnel of culture and reported it so that thousands
of extras could endure in these hard times. This is an example of how the best
way to get to know this and other aspects of our profession is through training,
which even during the pandemic, as far as possible, we carry out among the
militancy and openly for all figures. The conviction that this work must be
professionalized has led us to strengthen this aspect of trade union work.

The bad habits acquired by veterans and the inexperience of people who, out of
necessity or curiosity, approach a shoot for the first time, show that not
everyone knows how to wait, much less everyone is silent while it is being
recorded. And just as the CNT figuration is (re)known for how we fight for our
rights as part of the team, we want to be identified for knowing what to do to
facilitate the work of our filming partners, for a serious and formal behavior
that can easily arise from interest in the functioning of the audiovisual medium.
Our task is also to promote it, and show that nobody has to tell us to shut up,
that we know how to be in our place. But let no one forget that the formations
have also educated our voice to raise it in a powerful and sonorous way and
vindicate ourselves. And that those voices will only remain silent on the filming
sets as long as we are heard at the negotiating tables so that our rights are
spoken of as something more than a bureaucratic issue.

NO APPEARANCE, NO PRODUCTION!

https://www.cnt.es/noticias/una-profesion-muda-y-un-lugar-desde-donde-alzar-la-voz/
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