These are activities that have their origin in creativity, skills, and talent. The creative industries are an economic sector that create employment, human development, and social inclusion. They involve a high degree of entrepreneurship, innovation, and value creation.
They account for 2.2% of Chile’s GDP and create around 150,000 jobs throughout the country. In international markets, they are characterized by their ability to adapt quickly to changes and to trends in the circulation of the different goods, services and rights that are traded in the creative sector around the world.
In the last decade, the high level of quality and professionalism of Chile’s creative industries have gained international recognition on multiple occasions. The film industry is a case in point with “Bear Story” winning an Oscar in 2016 (Best Animated Short Film) and “A Fantastic Woman” winning in 2018 (Best Foreign Film). The graphic artist Gabriel Rodríguez also won the Eisner Award for his work on the book “Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland” (2015). In 2015, “The Mole Agent” was the only Latin American documentary to be nominated for an Oscar, after being preselected for Best Foreign Film. These acknowledgements join the emblematic Nobel Prizes won by Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda in the literary field in the 20th Century.
Chile’s videogames industry has been growing constantly and its exports have succeeded internationally. They include content development and service delivery.
The platforms are made up of the more traditional subdivisions, such as computers and consoles, and emerging subdivisions, such as online and mobile platforms. The industry has both direct and indirect distribution methods, via publishers and distributers.
The sector currently offers content development for Cell Phones (Android, IOS), Consoles (Xbox One, PS4, PS Vita, Wii U, 3DS, Switch), Computers (Windows, Mac, Linux), Web (HTML5, Facebook), and VR / AR (Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality). It also provides Work for Hire, Co-Development, and Licensing services.
A large group of Chilean creative people are developing the graphic novels that are successfully entering the main international circuits, via scriptwriting, illustration, coloring, and marking services, among others.
The sector also offers content developed and produced in Chile for publication by foreign publishing houses, through the sale of rights to physical or digital works.
The quality of Chilean graphic novels is internationally acclaimed. The graphic artist Gabriel Rodríguez has received recognition, winning the Eisner Award, considered the Oscar of the discipline, for his work on Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland in 2015.
Chile’s independent music industry represents 98% of national production and its artists have performed in more than 1,500 concerts abroad.
Music a sector with broad, international-quality production, in diverse styles, and related services that have established themselves in key markets such as Mexico, Spain, the United States, and Canada. According to figures from PortalDisc, each year more than 200 Chilean artists tour in more than 50 countries around the world.
In this area, Chile produces live shows, rights and related services such as record labels, bookings, recording studios, production, and digital distribution, all with a keen focus on innovation/knowledge economy and a strong territorial development.
Within the fashion industry, exports in the following four subsectors stand out:
The Original Design industry uses local raw materials to produce sustainably on a small scale. The designs integrate experience and local traditions, and each contains its own unique story, adding a greater value to the product. The jewelry industry produces handmade pieces and has the capacity to scale for commercialization. The sector uses local materials such as horsehair, lapis lazuli, Patagonian coal, horn, and stone. The leather and footwear industry employs high-quality raw materials in its products. Its processes include craftwork and the recovery of traditional trades. The traditional textile industry is made up of textile factories that produce underwear and/or first layers such as pantyhose, socks, and shirts. The quality of the products, their durability and potential for high-volume commercialization stands out.
Chile has more than 100 publishing houses that cover almost all genres and themes in the world of physical format books: Literature (fiction, anthologies, panoramas of Chilean literature, poetry, essays, aesthetics, literary criticism, among others); applied sciences and technology (engineering, aquaculture, oceanography, seismology, mountaineering, etc.); social sciences (history, anthropology, gender, archaeology, economics, among others); tourism (practical guides, popular art, among others); children’s books, education (reading promotion, textbooks, among others); architecture, art, design, and periodicals.
Chile’s publishing industry also offers services to correct orthography and style, typographic proofreading, writing, ghost-writing, translation, editorial coordination, editorial design, reading guides, graphic resources, printing, digital editing, press, and marketing.
With more than 150 producers, Chile’s audio-visual industry has brought more than 200 feature films, 200 short films, and 200 documentaries to life over the past decade. With the variety of products on offer, Chile’s audio-visual industry has been rising in North America, Europe, and Latin America. The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and France are the main markets for Chilean productions.
The quality of Chilean cinema is corroborated by the 240 international awards that it has received since 2009. In 2018 alone our films received 84 international awards, including our country’s very first Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category for “A Fantastic Woman”, directed by Sebastián Lelio.
Chile currently has exportable products and services in three different areas: cinema, television and audio-visual service production and postproduction.
In the case of cinema, Chile offers feature films and short films (fiction and documentary) as finished products, coproduction and production house services. In television, the industry offers television programs, scripts and formatting, coproduction, and production house services (equipment and infrastructure rental).
Chilean visual arts stand out for the collaborative work the industry has carried out to strengthen the sector and search for sales channels consistent with the new global scenario, in which digital platforms have become the best route forward to provide continuity to the possibility of commercialization and exchange among different galleries, artists, and markets.
In this context, the Sismica.art platform is prominent. Developed by the art gallery trade association, Asociación de Galerías de Arte Contemporáneo (AGAC), and created under the auspices of the SÍSMICA sectorial brand, the platform gives worldwide visibility to diverse national galleries and artists in a collaboration agreement with the Artsy.net portal.
Dance, theatre, circus, puppetry, storytelling, and opera make up this sector, strengthening and contributing to Chile’s image abroad.
Various cultural products are providing Chile with increased access to international circuits and securing us recognition around the world. Its subdisciplines are exported in the following formats:
In only two decades Chile’s animation industry has become one of the most recognized and exported in Latin America thanks to the high quality of its productions.
The industry is made up of advertising animation, with more than 30 years of history in making high-quality productions, and traditional animation (2D, 3D and stop motion), an area dominated by children’s animation series.
Chile also has an animated film production and growing visual effects (VFX) sector, with an increasing number of companies specializing in this service.
