Ever since the Salamanca Talks in
the 1950s when Juan Antonio Bardem called our Spanish Cinema an
emaciated industry, no one has done much to develop it efficiently.
Curiously, only an author/film director like Berlanga has pointed
to the need of linking cinema to state sectors related to the
purely financial activity, such as the Ministry of Industry. As is
the case of European cinema, Spain's greatest weakness stems from
our failure to see filmmaking as an industry in which linked
activities such as production, marketing, distribution and
screening are of crucial importance. It makes no sense to produce
something when one lacks the means to market it. In this regard, it
should be noted that every year about fifteen to twenty Spanish
movies are filmed and edited yet never make it to the movies
houses. It is certain that in many cases such a failure is due to
their low quality but there are times when genuine high quality
films are strangled because there is no distributor to get these
films where they need to go: the big screen.
A successful industry needs to link
the artistic means at its disposal to the financial and commercial
elements required to make it a reality. These elements aren't
exclusive; on the contrary, if combined properly they lead to
success. The US industry is the only one that has clearly seen and
understood this fact. In Hollywood, while efforts are made to
improve the quality of its cinema, the commercial power of video is
appreciated and new technologies are used and researched. This is a
task of continuous transformation that started in the 1950s with
the birth of television and continues today.
Despite the disdain toward the
future, lack of rigor in the present and oblivion regarding the
past, it is still relatively easy to produce films in Spain.
Existing subsidies from the Ministry of Culture, the pre-purchase
of rights by television channels and the multinationals which are
compelled to distribute Spanish cinema in movie theaters, enables
Spanish producers to make between 60 and 80 films per year, even
though many of these represent mere commitments and lack any
ambition.
A.V.G. [The audiovisual arts]