Spanish Cinema Roundup

Abstract

The seventh annual edition of Spanish Film Screenings took place in the capital on June 18–20, 2012. Intended as the major professional event for the promotion of Spanish film, Madrid de cine (as it is also known) is organized by FAPAE (the producers’ association), ICAA (the film academy), and other bodies including the Madrid tourist authority. Sixty-six foreign buyers and twenty-four representatives of the international press (including your correspondent) were treated to meetings with Spanish sales agents and film crews and screenings of forty-three recent titles. In a uniquely Spanish touch, there was also a padrino, or godfather, for the event. Enrique Urbizu (director of No Rest for the Wicked, the most recent feature to gain the best film award at the Goyas or Spanish Oscars) gave an evocative and informative talk on ‘‘The Light of Madrid’’ high above the city in the tower of the Cibeles Palace. The location was emblematic for more than one reason. While the Cibeles statue in front of the palace is a famous symbol of the city, the huge building itself was recently transformed from central post office to town hall at ruinous expense. Coming as it did just days after Spain was granted a humiliating bailout (known significantly in Spanish as rescate—rescue) by the European Central Bank, Spanish Film Screenings provided a rare opportunity not only to take the commercial pulse of a national cinema, but also to ask what the future of such a mid-sized industry (and nation) might be at a time of unprecedented fiscal crisis. The Spanish case thus holds clues for the future of film elsewhere in Europe and beyond. At first things seemed surprisingly positive. A FAPAE report on 2011 suggested that, out of a total of 199 features made that year (the fourth-highest figure in Europe), the number of titles screened abroad had increased (by twentyone percent), as had the number of countries in which they were seen (by fifteen percent). In Mexico alone distribution had risen to thirty-six titles, higher than ever before. An award was presented to Agustin Almodovar, producer of The Skin I Live In, as the film with greatest international impact: to date it had been sold to forty-two countries and seen by 4.2 million people. In private interview, however, Pedro Perez, the head of the producers’ association, was more cautious. Spanish cinema had always been in crisis; and he hoped that his country, the first to go into recession, would also be the first to come out of it. But there were three new problems. Firstly, a change in the market meant that, in this current transitional period, box-office receipts were down but it was as yet unknown how to monetize new windows such as video-on-demand and Internet (the rate of piracy in Spain remains among the highest in the world). Such uncertainty damaged small businesses like Spanish production companies above all. Secondly, the very visible economic crisis in Spain cast a shadow over the industry. Thirdly, a recent change in government from the Socialists to the right-wing People’s Party had brought with it a shift in funding policy from state subsidies to fiscal incentives. The latter would prove insufficient to fund features, unless they were raised enough to reassure private investors, an initiative that might well be vetoed by the European Union on anti-competition grounds. Enrique Urbizu, Agustin Almodovar, and Pedro Perez at the Spanish Film Screenings awards ceremony Courtesy of FAPAE.