Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema

Transcription

1 Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema Núria Triana-Toribio University of Kent Abstract During the Zapatero years ( ), film cultures in Spain were subjected to intense media debates around their purpose and funding. This article argues that these years were key to bringing to light certain elements of film cultures that were declining: the models of desirable national films together with the manner in which these were financed and the forms of consumption that are dear to the auteurist cinephiles who make up the bulk of cultural institutions such as the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas. These elements were challenged when non-auteurist film enthusiasts accessed power. It is argued here that these years showed deep weaknesses of the film as art model. In contrast, emergent practices that are linked to transformations of media industries attendant to a market-driven culture, and the increased transnational access to cultural contents on the Internet showed the future. Resumen Las culturas del cine en España se transformaron mediante debates mediatizados en torno a la cultura y su financiación durante los años de Zapatero ( ). Este artículo sostiene que esos años fueron clave en sacar a la luz elementos de las culturas del cine en declive, aunque resistiesen modernización. El tipo cine que se quiere para la nación, la manera en la que se financia y las formas de consumo preferidas por cinéfilos de la generación del cine de autor que llevan instituciones culturales como la Academia, se vieron atacadas cuando nuevos entusiastas del cine accedieron al poder. Estos años mostraron la debilidad del modelo cine=arte. En contraste, prácticas emergentes ligadas a las transformaciones de las industrias mediáticas que conlleva una cultura definida por el mercado y el incremento del acceso transnacional a contenidos culturales online mostraron el aspecto que tiene el futuro. In the wake of eight years of PP rule under José María Aznar, there has been a marked shift in Spanish media production since the election of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in March 2004 and the return to a PSOE government. Esteve Riambau notes that beyond the continued sway in politics, [the Spanish film industry] is BHS 91.1 (2014) doi: /bhs

2 66 Núria Triana-Toribio bhs, 91 (2014) not controlled as much by market criteria as by state dependence or the biased privatization of State interests. This dependence in turn becomes paradoxically indispensable in guaranteeing the survival of an industry facing American colonization. (Jay Beck and Vicente Rodríguez Ortega 2005: 18) What will be the legacy of the Zapatero years ( )? How will historiography treat a project that started with well-meaning wealth-redistribution measures, such as the cheque bebé; implemented restorative justice measures such as the Ley de la Memoria Histórica; spent its last four years fighting for its life in the midst of a deep recession that involved cuts and reversals in all its cherished projects; and ended in calamitous defeat in the elections of 2011? It is perhaps too early to evaluate the extent of what took place in these two terms of PSOE back in government, but there is an aspect that is already emerging as a clear and constant preoccupation when we examine the legacy of those years: the renewal of the idea that the state bears the responsibility for cultural funding and that cinema is un bien cultural. The PSOE cultural policy during these two terms was full of contradictions but mostly tried to hold on tightly to this precious creed against a background of implacable media consolidation and private financing of the cultural industries in a transnational market of cultural contents. These circumstances had a momentous impact on the role, evolution and place of cinema in Spanish society. This article will argue that these challenging conditions brought to light a series of practices in Spanish cinema that are residual, lingering, not-here-to-stay, unsustainable. I want to concentrate on three of these residual cultures: the favoured forms of film-making; the accepted models for financing them; and the modes of film-going that are dear to the cinephiles at the helm of the main cultural institutions. I want to concentrate on these three areas because they spent the Zapatero years either metaphorically fighting for their lives or, literally, passing away. Cinema was rarely out of the newspaper headlines throughout these eight years. Spanish cinema, its professionals and particularly the money that funded it were constantly under scrutiny in the public sphere. More often than not, this scrutiny came as a consequence of the much contested policies affecting the national cinema that originated from the Ministry of Culture via its cinema body: the Instituto de las Ciencias y las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA). During 2006 and 2007, for instance, the eyes of journalists were on the bitter rows over the elaboration of the new Ley del Cine (Ley 55/2007 del 28 de diciembre). This law was developed with the intention of continuing to steer a middle course between a cinema industry financed largely by private interests (commercial television broadcasters) and ensuring that independent producers continued to be an important part of Spain s industry. The Ley del Cine also contains measures to discriminate positively and encourage for instance, women directors (who continue to have restricted access to the industry), script-writing and nuevos realizadores. It endorses filmmaking and film cultures in the different national languages as well as protecting the cinema made in the autonomous communities and the creation of film festivals.

3 bhs, 91 (2014) Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema 67 Between 2009 and 2011 cinema stayed in the headlines as clashes developed over this law and the órdenes that began to issue from it. At the same time, there was a proliferation of embarrassing stories about the inflated number of film festivals, cinema weeks, or other cinema-related events vying for recognition and, more importantly, money from the Ministry of Culture (see Jordi Mesonero Burgos 2008: 9 14; Núria Triana-Toribio 2011: ). Then in 2011 there were the very public and highly mediatized disagreements between Álex de la Iglesia, film-maker and president of the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematograficas de España and Ángeles González-Sinde, film-maker, Minister of Culture, and former president of the same Academia. Invariably, the groups debating Spain s cinema in the printed press and online held contrasting, when not opposing, views about the most desirable conditions for a thriving film industry, with an implicit set of questions organizing the debate. Should the box office decree what survives and let the US film industry expand unfettered, or should the state or Europe intervene and protect? What types of films should be encouraged or discouraged? What is the legitimate place of cinema in society (the ever-present debate of entertainment versus culture)? What was played out in these disputes were Spain s debates about a nation s governing principles, goals, heritage and history (Hjort and Mackenzie 2000: 4) which, as these authors argue in the context of other European cinema industries, are the issues really at stake when a nation becomes self-reflective about its cultural production and questions how to fund it and what to prioritize. As these confrontations often happen between individuals and/or institutions whose positions are very much dictated by their habitus, through these conflicts we come to learn much about the taste, education and world view of the participants in these debates, but also, vitally, about the underpinnings of a national film culture. El cine = bien cultural The Academia, like the division of the Ministry of Culture which looks after cinema, ICAA, was created at the beginning of democracy in the early 1980s by PSOE sympathizers or, indeed, party members (card-carrying director Pilar Miró fashioned ICAA in 1983) to protect the interests of the domestic film industry. 1 In order to understand the clashes between the residual ways of understanding Spanish cinema and the (re-)emergent market-driven and transnational views, we need to consider the origins of both ICAA and the Academia. At the start of Spain s democracy, Spanish cinema relied on a model that favoured protection from the state for the production of cinema understood as a 1 Academia was created by left-leaning and/or PSOE members who shared an interest and participation in the film cultures critical of Francoism. Among its funding members were producer Alfredo Matas, directors Carlos Saura and Luis G. Berlanga, and actors such as Charo López. Its first president was José M. González-Sinde, father of the Culture Minister at the end of the Zapatero years.

4 68 Núria Triana-Toribio bhs, 91 (2014) cultural product and looked at French legislation for guidance. This is a normal state of affairs for democratic European national cinemas and it was precisely a democratic European cinema for a country seeking entry to the European club that Spain aspired to possess at that time. Turning Spanish cinema into a cinema fit for Europe required changes and transformations that have been studied extensively (see Camporesi 1994: 65; Triana-Toribio 2003: , for example). Those who may argue that under Francoism the industry was profitable, albeit churning out low-brow and inexpensive comedies and melodramas that the leftleaning critics derided as subproductos, must be reminded that this supposedly thriving industry of popular sexy Spanish comedies and for a brief period películas clasificadas S, still depended on a measure of state funding and protection from the late-francoist governments (Marta Hernández 1976: 45 57). And we must also remember that at the time these subproductos were seen as undesirable not just for their supposedly low production values, but mostly because they championed traditionalist and anti-democratic views that embarrassed the pro-democracy section of the film industry. Art cinema had to be protected, particularly since it was starved of state funds due to the collapse of the subsidy system in the 1960s (Hopewell 1986: 80). ICAA and the Academia took it upon themselves to act as gatekeepers in pursuit of a then much-desired quality cinema that transmitted Spanish democratic values in the 1980s and enabled Spanish film to travel abroad. The contexts and outcomes of what ICAA and the Academia achieved in those early years have been discussed at large in Spanish cinema historiography. To understand the full extent to which the Zapatero years are significant to film cultures we have to remember that since the late 1990s, a compromise model has been implemented that has been marked, as Beck and Rodríguez Ortega (2009) explain, by a turn to genre. Between 2004 and 2011, the discourse about national production emanating from the Academia and ICAA s funding indicates that this turn to genre should not exclude an engagement with cinema as art. 2 A cursory look at the list of the films awarded Goyas from 2004 shows how prizegiving became an instrument for ensuring that the right type of combination of genre and artistic value was aimed for by productions. If no longer cine de autor para mayorías or cine polivalente (Esteve Riambau 1995: 421), the powers that be in the Academia were seeking to support películas necesarias such as Camino (Javier Fresser 2008) or películas de género pero con ambiciones such as El laberinto del fauno (Guillermo del Toro 2007) and Celda 211 (Daniel Monzón 2009). It is often the case that loss-making or barely profitable productions deemed to be prestigious are discussed as necesarias by the critics, either because of their subject matter or as humildes because they are seen as the necessary festival- 2 Academia declares that it will promote: Cualquier otra actividad tendente a elevar el nivel artístico, técnico o científico de sus miembros y estimular el de los ciudadanos dando a las artes cinematográficas el nivel artístico que merecen y la constructiva colaboración entre la Administración Pública y las personas relacionadas con estas artes (see Academia n. d.).

5 bhs, 91 (2014) Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema 69 worthy first works in the careers of new filmmakers (as we will see later). Películas necesarias have been pursued more often than not disregarding the loud and clear message from the box office, and the complaints from distributors and exhibitors. Towards the end of the Zapatero years, these two sectors had even more reasons to despair. As Paul Julian Smith (2011: 23) explains, more films were made and fewer reached audiences or made money: In a somewhat paradoxical development, the production of features in Spain (overwhelmingly state-subsidised) has greatly increased in the last few years reaching an unprecedented 201 in Yet at the same time the domestic share has tumbled, to a low of just 12 per cent in the same year. Once more there is little mystery here. While filmgoers in Spain, as elsewhere, tend to be teenagers, directors, mainly middle-aged men, turn their backs on the public to pitch quality projects (such as Civil War dramas) aimed at pleasing government-funding bodies more than audiences. These two challenges will be on the horizon in this analysis of recent Spanish cinema cultures. On the one hand, as distributors and exhibitors argue, one of the risks that a state takes when it believes in propping up culture via a grant or subsidy system is that it encourages too many small films that disregard the market. This in turn generates the other drawback that, as Smith points out, producers and directors in the Zapatero years, more often than not, pursued quality projects such as Civil War dramas, that pleased the gatekeepers who were interested, for instance, in the recuperación de la memoria histórica that had been recently enshrined in law. If Spanish cinema often made the headlines during the period under study here, it was because the measures that the government created were heavily contested. We might assume that the critical voices mentioned above were uniformly to be found on the other side of the political spectrum, particularly among the members of the conservative Partido Popular (PP). This party counts among its number former supporters of the dictatorship or their children and grandchildren (see Balfour 2005: 147), who could be presumed to be opposed to the Civil War dramas which, Smith points out, pleased the government-funding bodies. This was in part the case, and criticism against Spanish cinema production and its institutions since democracy has always had an element of party political disagreement to it (see Torres Mora 2009: 27 and Lassalle 2009: 23). However, the clashes that took place during the Zapatero years reveal in addition an altogether different set of disagreements. If we take for example a particular collision that took place on 13 February 2011, we can see that the differences were not among those holding opposing political views. It was in fact a disagreement within the same broad ideological camp. In order to identify what is residual in Spanish film culture, this article needs to explore the meaning and genesis of this internal dispute.

6 70 Núria Triana-Toribio bhs, 91 (2014) De la Iglesia vs. Sinde On the 23 February 2011 in Madrid s Teatro Real the cinema establishment came together for the 25th award ceremony of the Goyas, the national film awards. The Goyas, conferred annually since 1988, are the most prestigious honours given to the national production by the Academia. The filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia attended the ceremony as a hopeful (his film Balada triste de trompeta (2010) was nominated in 15 categories), but also as the president of the awarding body. He was, however, a president on the way out, since he had just resigned his post in January due to disagreements with the Ministry of Culture over the Ley de Economía Sostenible, popularly known as the Ley antidescargas. 3 This law was also known as Ley Sinde, having been developed under the guidance of the minister González-Sinde and is a response, among other things, to the fact that, as Smith explains, Spain suffers some of the highest rates of illegal downloading in the world (2011: 23). This law was brought in to curtail the problem of piracy, which the Academia and other professional organizations such as Sociedad General de Autores y Editores argue is central to the loss of revenue of authors. Before we return to the account and fallout of the collision, it is important that we address the reason behind de la Iglesia s resignation. The Sinde Law had been passed on 24 January 2011, after generating much public debate and having been rejected by the Spanish lower chamber in December In its attempt to combat illegal downloading, the law intended to curb the activities of peer-topeer sites (Evans 2009: 20). It was precisely the policing of Internet use and users being enshrined in the law that forced de la Iglesia to resign in solidarity with those who were fighting for the rights of Internet users, after much discussion and a few changes of heart. It has to be remembered that from the outset, de la Iglesia declared himself a keen Internet user and he is known for his proximity to fans through his website and forum (see Triana-Toribio 2008). He also announced at the start of his period as president that the level of piracy was not the users fault but was mainly in his view a response to the lack of legal alternatives (Evans 2009: 20). As Cristina Pujol Ozonas succinctly puts it, let us say that [de la Iglesia s] private discourse and his cultural origin clashed head on with what most cultural agents expected of a cultural manager (gestor cultural) (2011: 17). The exiting president used his address at the Goyas to signal openly his criticism of the Academia as well as the Ministry of Culture and to highlight his alignment with those who were unhappy with this law. The rules of the game have changed, admonished de la Iglesia. He reminded his audience of Academia members and government officials that those who felt that the 3 The Ley de Economía Sostenible contemplates, among other measures, that a commission within the Ministry of Culture will be legally authorized to block or close down web pages, blogs or other types of Internet pages from which films can be downloaded. This intervention does not need to be sanctioned by a judge. This power is considered an infringement of liberties. For more details see El País 2009b: This law was hastily withdrawn by the PSOE government in retreat during December 2011, only to be passed by the PP. It is known as Ley Sinde-Wert.

7 bhs, 91 (2014) Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema 71 law had been created against them and who had been othered by the media discourse with the label internautas, were in fact Spanish citizens and, crucially, potential Spanish cinema spectators. 4 Ese público que hemos perdido, no va al cine porque está delante de una pantalla de ordenador he added (de la Iglesia 2011). (See Pujol Ozonas 2011 for an analysis of the contradictory stance of de la Iglesia.) Looking back on 25 years of award ceremonies, it can be seen that de la Iglesia s polemic was nothing new for the Goyas, this most crucial coming together of Spanish Cinema as an institution. In previous years, the award ceremony had been a platform for expressing dismay at the PP government response to the environmental disaster that beset the Galician coast in 2002 when the Prestige petrol tanker ran aground. The following year, the protest was against the war in Iraq. However, two factors single out the 2011 collision: the party in power was no longer the PP, and the clash staged between de la Iglesia and González-Sinde, who are on the same side of the political cultural spectrum, was symptomatic of a deep cultural change sweeping Spanish cinema. The clash highlighted a basic generational divide in the understanding of cinema between those on the left who came of age cinematically speaking during Francoism (the auteurist generation) and the new cinephiles. Internet no es el futuro. Internet es el presente (de la Iglesia 2011) De la Iglesia s decision to side with the no internautas sino ciudadanos landed him in a political muddle. The Ley Sinde was initially vehemently opposed by the political right (above all the PP) and by the political far left, as well as by associations that do not seek a clear political label for different reasons. Documents such as the Manifesto en defensa de los derechos fundamentales de internet (see Dans 2009) show that fears about state intervention in Internet activities is linked for many web users with the potential curtailing of personal freedoms and from those fears stem the active opposition to the Ley Sinde (see Dans 2011). In short, the anxiety is that the state will turn a law that is geared towards protecting the rights of those who own contents into an instrument for censorship. Moreover, El País published on 4 December 2010 an article EEUU ejecutó un plan para conseguir una ley antidescargas in which it condenses a series of messages from the US Embassy in Madrid (obtained through Wikileaks), which detail how heavy pressure from the US trade department was a powerful incentive in the creation of the Ley Sinde (Elola 2010) The bullying from across the Atlantic was seen as a typical action by a world power in cultural production that generally turns a blind eye to transgressions in its own backyard while aggressively pursuing offenders in Europe and beyond. As John Thornton Caldwell explains, Hollywood antipiracy campaigns refuse to indict the extensive piracy 4 Internautas could be translated as the neutral web users but in the context of the debate came to mean web users engaging in illegal downloading.

8 72 Núria Triana-Toribio bhs, 91 (2014) practices at work within Hollywood itself. Rather than acknowledging culpability [ ] the MPAA erases most of the domestic traces of culpability on its global map so that criminality only occurs outside its borders (2008: 79). In standing up for the rights of Internet users through his resignation, de la Iglesia of course risked being perceived as a pawn of the right. During the Zapatero years, José Andrés Torres Mora, then PSOE executive secretary of culture, accused the PP of adopting the paradoxical stance on the matter of intellectual property, of being in favour of property, except when it comes to the property of literature, music or film professionals. In his own words, published in an opinion section of El País named La cuarta página: Es una batalla por el poder político. De ahí la paradójica actitud de la derecha española, tan proteccionista con la propiedad inmobiliaria, y tan ambigua, cuando no abiertamente crítica con los derechos de la propiedad intelectual. No se encontrará una explicación en la filosofía, en el derecho o en la economía para semejante contradicción. El ataque de la derecha a la propiedad intelectual es un ataque político. La derecha condena la politización de la cultura, en especial del cine o de la música, porque quiere una cultura ideológicamente neutra. [ ] No han dejado de intimidar a quienes apoyaron a José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero o a los que se opusieron a la Guerra de Irak. (Torres Mora 2009: 27) A week later and in the same section, Torres Mora s opposite number in the PP, José María Lassalle, argued that regarding the Ley Sinde, the PSOE was listening chiefly to the creators of content and their trade unions, thus excluding key players from the discussion. He went on to confirm that the PP demanded that culture should be depoliticized and he explained no se trata de neutralizar la cultura sino evitar su ideologización partidista (2009: 23). As well as making strange bedfellows of the right and non-kindred ideologies in opposing state legislation, this debate about the Ley Sinde and the consequent resignation of de la Iglesia has revealed other inconsistencies and contradictions about the context in which Spanish cinema found itself during those years and still does. And yet his resignation is significant for a further reason. De la Iglesia was seen as a true force of renewal and his departure a missed opportunity for the emergent ideas of new cinephiles about the role and value of Spanish cinema. Due to his status as a popular auteur, de la Iglesia had been hailed as the president who was supposed to put the Academia and the Spanish cinema establishment in touch with the audiences and with the general public: Quiero abrir la Academia a la gente, que vean cómo funciona, que cada día puedan ir a ciclos de cine español o europeo, proyectar películas que ya no se encuentran he declared (García 2009). His resignation meant that tradition had won over renewal, if not the match, at least the round. It is now time to try to map and identify these upholders of tradition and analyse the nature of their residuality.

9 bhs, 91 (2014) Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema 73 Saying goodbye to the father In Fans, cinéfilos y cinéfagos: Una aproximación a las culturas y los gustos cinematográficos, Pujol Ozonas (2011) engages with the subculture of cinephilia armed with the instruments of cultural theory and identifies four distinct subcultural groups in Spain: [C]uatro manifestaciones [ ] se dan en España (aunque tienen referentes y relaciones transnacionales) desde los años cincuenta hasta hoy: la cinefilia clásica ( ), la cinefilia moderna o post-68, que en España hará la transición ( ); la cinefilia pop (1950) y la cinefagia (1990) (2011: 111). In her study, each of these groups becomes defined and identified by practices and forms of consumption and particular relationships and accumulation of knowledge to and about the object of their love: cinema. But as she warns us, even if these groups seem to be divided by chronology, it may be the case that un individuo nacido en los años ochenta [ ] por tradición subcultural puede ser un cinéfilo clásico y compartir sus referentes gustos y mirada con las generaciones nacidas y educadas cinematográficamente en los años cuarenta y cincuenta. Y viceversa (2011: 111). We could argue that the first group of cultural actors and practices that fall under the label residual, which gives title to this article, are those that belong to the auteurist generation or, to be more specific, to the two groups of cinephiles that engage in the types of cinephilia that Pujol Ozonas describes as cinefilia clásica ( ) and cinefilia moderna (o post-68 que en España hará la transición) (2011: 111). As Pujol Ozonas further argues in her study, these conceptions of cinema as knowledge and culture, these cinephilias in short, have clashed with more contemporary modes of consumption and practices, in other words, with contemporary cinephilias, in the 1990s (see, for example, 2011: ). The clashes that took place in the Zapatero years were further and more acute manifestations of this phenomenon. Who are these auteurists? They were a generation of cinephiles caught astride the transition, and for whom acquisition of knowledge about cinema (art cinema) became aspirational and promised first generation urbanites a patina of modernity and middle-classness however ephemeral and late in comparison to other middle classes in democratic Europe (see Vidal 2010: 213). As Belen Vidal explains: The anomalies caused by historical ostracism and marginalization inform the formation of a cinephilic public culture in Spain. Suffice to cite the preface to a recent compilation of key texts from Cahiers du cinéma translated into Spanish, in which critic and academic Josep Lluís Fecé has described the experience of being a cinephile in Spain in the late 1970s as one pervaded by the feeling of arriving late to almost everything: to cinema, to pop music, to the sexual revolution, even to the postcinephilic moment of structuralism and the politicization of film theory. (Vidal 2010: 220) Although late, both classic and modern cinephiles did arrive, and not merely arrived but conquered: they have left a permanent imprint on Spanish cinema with canonical films that placed this national cinema on the world cinema map.

10 74 Núria Triana-Toribio bhs, 91 (2014) Classic cinephiles such as Carlos Saura ensured that Spanish cinema was represented at international events such as Cannes Film Festival in the 1960s at a time when Spanish culture was shackled by the strictures of Francoism. Once on the right side of the transition and democracy, the international visibility of this generation continued with films such as Carmen (Saura, 1983) and Los santos inocentes (Camus, 1984) that won coveted awards abroad such as Best Foreign Language Film at the British BAFTAs in 1985 and Cannes Palme d Or ex-equo to the actors Paco Rabal and Alfredo Landa in In short, these cinephile directors have to be credited with establishing the edifice of much of modern, democratic Spanish film culture, with constructing an image of Spanish cinema as art cinema outside Spain, and with creating international audiences for a national cinema that previously had none to speak of. As well as their success abroad, and in order to facilitate the apparatus that supported their own films, these filmmakers created the legislation and subsidies that funded their success, most notably with the so-called Ley Miró (created by this generational cadre of which Miró herself was a member). It has to be recognized that the same legislation gave access to the industry in the 1980s to new directors such as Pedro Almodóvar, whose career started in the early 1980s. Classic and modern cinephiles paved the way for the careers of new actors (Victoria Abril, Antonio Banderas) scriptwriters (Cuca Canals), producers (El Deseo) and, as de la Iglesia pointed out in his address to fellow Academia members, classic and modern cinephiles created the Academia itself. Thus, in the clash of ways to understand Spanish cinema that took place in the Teatro Real, de la Iglesia started his address by thanking the founders (producer Alfredo Matas, and 12 other film professionals, among whom were Luis García Berlanga and Carlos Saura) for having come together in 1985 to form the organization that ensured that Spanish cinema was represented before government institutions such as the Ministry of Culture and the rights of its professionals defended. (For the origins of the Academia, see Granado 2006: 13) As de la Iglesia pointed out, these founding members also united in 1987 to create the Goyas themselves. The role that this professional organization had in securing cultural legitimacy for Spanish cinema cannot be underestimated. It is in the combination of good press that Spanish productions were obtaining through their successes in the 1980s and research and archivist projects on which the Academia embarked that Spain arrived in the late 1990s with a national cinema legitimated as an object of study and research. For instance, the Academia teamed up with university film historians Carlos F. Heredero, Julio Pérez Perucha, Esteve Riambau and María Pastor to formalize the study of Spanish cinema through publications such as the emblematic Diccionario del cine español published in 1998 and supervised by the past president of the Academia José Luis Borau. This director and respected classic cinephile was endorsed by writing the prologue to the book, Peter W. Evans decisive edited collection for Oxford University Press Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition (1999). Inevitably, in overseeing these activities geared to the legitimating

11 bhs, 91 (2014) Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema 75 and cataloguing of film knowledge as key cultural knowledge for the nation, the Academia and its academic partners (in Spain and abroad) appointed themselves as the arbiters of classification and canon creation and, also inevitably, aligned Spanish film culture with high culture. It has to be remembered that at the time, Spanish cinema was in dire need of that association. As the Goya award ceremonies themselves show, this group of film professionals are slowly leaving the scene stage left. In some instances, literally, and the ceremony always engages in a moment of memento mori. There have been recent milestone deaths such as those of director García Berlanga (November 2010), and the legendary actors working in both art and popular cinema of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s such as José Luis López Vázquez (who died in 2009) Antonio Ozores (2010) and Florinda Chico, who passed away only days after the ceremony in Other film professionals, central to a particular idea of Spanish cinema which originated in the 1960s movements of Nuevo Cine Español and Escuela de Barcelona, have been metaphorically thanked and bid adieu with successive Goyas de Honor in recent years. In 2007, the recipient of that award was Alfredo Landa, and in 2011 the Goya de Honor was conferred on Mario Camus. Pujol Ozonas warns us that looking into these changing attitudes simply as generational change may be misleading. As the earlier disagreements about the Ley Sinde exemplify, allegiances are fractured and unevenly distributed across the political fields and also across age groups. There well may be treintañeros who belong to the new type of online cinema consumer, but there are also those within that age group who display the attitudes and practices of the classical cinephiles (the consumption of cinema in art house cinemas, the purchase of certain film criticism magazines, for instance). Classic and modern cinephilia is not confined to those who founded the Academia but very much alive in the younger critics who attack genre cinema and staunchly defend cine social (see, for instance, the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma España) and cine de autor. Young and middle-aged film professionals (including Ángeles González-Sinde herself) are clearly modern cinephiles at heart. Does anyone go to the cinema any more? As far as residual ceremonies belonging to previous ages of cinephilia, the act of cinema-going itself is perhaps the clearest example. De la Iglesia was very clear about that point, which is obvious to everyone except perhaps the Academia members: many people do not go to a movie theatre to watch films any more; they watch them on their phones/computers instead. That there should be a practice or a mode of consumption that would detract from the engagement with film on the fabled silver screen enclosed in a brick-and-mortar space is terrifying for a vertically integrated industry. As Charles R. Acland (2003) explains, the construction of multiplexes throughout Europe was integral to the US film industry strategy to recoup revenue that it could no longer generate simply through the home market due to changes

12 76 Núria Triana-Toribio bhs, 91 (2014) in forms of consumption in the US. Therefore we have to remember that this phenomenon is part of a trend. In the discourse of the industry, it seems as though technologies have queued up to rob cinema of its legitimate film theatre audiences time and again (after television came VCR, DVD and lately the Internet). It seems to be the case that Spanish cinema has a particular difficulty in connecting with its natural audience and problems with theatrical exhibition. Gregorio Belinchón (2011a) reports that in 2010 European cinema had been popular with local audiences and several countries including France, Italy, and Germany witnessed an increase in ticket sales that obviously translated into a higher market share for national films. Reports such as these made critics reflect on whether Spanish cinema was any longer truly serving the needs of the nation: Según un estudio hecho público en la revista de la Academia y confirmado por varias fuentes, de enero a septiembre el cine español hizo una caja de tan sólo 30 millones. La peor marca desde Sólo en 2007, donde se recaudaron 37, se le acerca. El año pasado, siempre de enero a septiembre, la cifra fue de 41,6. Eso sí, en el último tramo de 2009, al calor de las navidades, se registraron cifras de récord gracias a películas como Ágora, Planet 51, Celda 211 o Spanish movie. De este modo, la cuota de mercado (porcentaje español del total de lo recaudado) ascendió por encima del 15 per cent. (Martínez 2011; bold emphasis in the original) In the lead up to the 2011 Goya ceremony, the Spanish film industry had a stark reminder of the fact that its cinema was both bucking the European trend for theatrical exhibition and revealing a sharp drop in box office takings and the average market share of Spanish films, particularly when compared with recent years, as Martínez reported in El Mundo. No one expected the conservative newspaper to pull its punches when it came to relating bad news about Spanish cinema likely to embarrass the PSOE then in power, but the more sympathetic El País did not sugar the pill either. It pointed out the woeful picture by citing de la Iglesia s lament No hemos conectado con el público (Belinchón 2011b) because the figures were very poor indeed. De la Iglesia hinted in his address at the Goyas Award Ceremony that the problem had to be approached creatively and realistically by the industry. One of the key issues that compounds the predicament of the dwindling audiences is that it is not simply a question of audiences rejecting Spanish cinema, as the figures seem to indicate. What has to be addressed as well are the film viewing practices of the younger audiences and how they diverge from those of the auteurist cinephiles. As de la Iglesia pointed out, new cinephiles do not require the traditional protocol and ritual activity of buying a ticket and sitting in a darkened theatre to consume film. Unfortunately the índices de audiencia use that mode of consumption and the revenue that is generated through that practice of box office receipts as their main marker of success. Ignasi Guardans, director of ICAA between April 2009 and October 2010, hinted at the start of his mandate that the state would ensure that the number of lawful downloads would be part of the measure of

13 bhs, 91 (2014) Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema 77 how successful a Spanish film is, but during the Zapatero years this measure was not put into practice, even thought his replacement ( ), Carlos Cuadros, announced that the plan to count spectators, not only at the box office but also via legal Internet downloads and film festivals, was ready to be sent to the interested parties at the end of December 2010 (García 2010). Everything seems to indicate that audiences in Spain shun Spanish cinema, but the measuring methods could be one of Spanish cinema s problems tickets sold, box office returns. When de la Iglesia claimed Internet es la salvación de nuestro cine before the audience at the Teatro Real he was addressing the practice of audiences watching films online. They may be downloading and not paying, but, more vitally, unless systems for working with these audiences are created, it may be a question of not simply losing revenue but also of not finding out whether Spanish films are in fact consumed. Spanish cinema s appeal or its failure to connect with audiences cannot be measured until all its screens and consumption sites can be taken into account. Who paid for the resilient producción casi casera? During the Zapatero years, many films were made. Some would say too many, for instance Smith (2011: 23) hints at that fact in an essay cited at the start of this article. Luis Hernández de Carlos, as president of the association of film distributors, also made declarations to that effect to the influential industry journal Screen International in Spain produces between 125 and 140 films per year, when a more healthy figure would be a maximum of 70 (Wallerstein 2008: 2). In the same report, Fernando Evole, then CEO of Spain s largest cinema multiplex chain, Yelmo Cineplex, added: We have no film industry to speak of [ ] just hundreds of producers jumping through hoops to be eligible for funding, making impersonal, low-budget films with little or no thought about whether they are going to [ ] connect with the public (Evole, cited in Wallerstein 2008: 2). It is no secret that many measures put into place during the Zapatero years, particularly the Film Law of 2007, were developed to support national independent producers and filmmaking; and it is also clear that national films are not the kind of films favoured by distributors and exhibitors, who traditionally make their profit from Hollywood fare. State subsidies that resulted in such an unhealthy amount of films were of course celebrated by the industry s professional organizations, such as the Academia. The Academia continued to lobby for the system of public/private state finance or the biased privatization of State interests as Riambau puts it (quoted in Beck and Rodríguez Ortega 200: 18) to be preserved. This financing model, which was introduced by the PP government in 1999 (Yáñez 2009: 29), was destined to have an indelible effect on the industry, as television companies increasingly called the shots on all aspects of filmmaking and its impact was felt fully during the Zapatero years. However, having to invest in film projects was far from being accepted by the television companies, which fought against it incessantly (see García and Gómez 2009).

14 78 Núria Triana-Toribio bhs, 91 (2014) In 2011, President de la Iglesia had more pressing concerns, so he did not address the issue of the contested contribution from television in his speech, but he had done the year before. In his 2010 Goyas award speech he directed a plea to the television companies not to discontinue their involvement in film production: Televisión Española sigue demostrando su compromiso, sin el que, les aseguro, sería muy difícil la existencia del cine en España. A las restantes no les pedimos su generosidad, sino que les ofrecemos nuestra disposición a trabajar, para demostrarles que juntos podemos acercarnos a lo que todos queremos: la mayor calidad para nuestros espectadores. Las televisiones han ayudado a levantar películas que gozan de un éxito internacional inimaginable hace unos pocos años, proyectos rentables con un enorme prestigio y una imagen extraordinaria para sus productores. Eso sólo lo consigue el cine. Por favor, no lo olviden. (de la Iglesia 2010) Spanish cinema was and continues to be built on shaky ground if the 5 per cent is so contentious, but there was also another worrying schism in the financing system that came to light particularly during this period. As film critic Elsa Fernández-Santos (2011) explains, during the Zapatero years El cine español pasa por una de sus transiciones más críticas, cada vez más polarizado entre grandes y costosas producciones y un cine de bajísimo presupuesto y producción casi casera que intenta abrirse paso al margen de los circuitos comerciales al uso. When he was head of ICAA, Guardans supported a system of state subsidies geared to squeeze out those small-budget films unlikely to be distributed commercially. To this effect, the órdenes that developed the Ley del Cine mentioned above were harshly criticized for trying to encourage a threshold of productions of at least 2 million euros by proposing to make it much more difficult for smaller films to access state funds. When this measure was announced in the autumn of 2009, a group of filmmakers appealed to the European Union in Brussels to have the decision reversed (El País 2009a: 32). Guardans argued that these small films were not sustainable. However, his critics, such as small producer Antonio Félez, objected that es la primera vez que las ayudas del Ministerio de Cultura toman como baremo de referencia y como criterio discriminatorio el coste de las películas, en lugar de tener en cuenta su calidad o aceptación por parte de los espectadores, algo que hasta ahora no había sucedido nunca en España, ni siquiera con los gobiernos del PP. (Cited in Heredero and Reviriego 2009: 58) Luis Martínez, from El Mundo, is one critic of these measures: los perjudicados son siempre los pequeños, los proyectos independientes. Es decir, aquellos que justifican que la ley salga de los despachos de Cultura y no de los de Industria (cited in Heredero and Reviriego 2009: 58). As Carlos F. Heredero and Carlos Reviriego further argue, these tiny budget films (humildes as they call them) are often the starter projects of new directors who bring el mayor prestigio internacional (2009: 58) to the national cinema when these films are selected for festivals. In the middle of this debate about subsidies to tiny budget productions, one editorial article in El País defended

15 bhs, 91 (2014) Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema 79 this cinephile belief of putting quality above every other consideration. It is clear that with these criteria, these critics pin their colours to the auteurist cinephiles, the defendants of the type of practices, ceremonies and strategies that were fading away during the Zapatero years. While the editorial writer understands that most of the Spanish films that ICAA funds never recoup the money that has been invested in them, and many do not even reach any screens, his/her argument is that [e]l estado ha de proteger tanto a una industria audiovisual solvente como al riesgo estético, dos apuestas que no son incompatibles. Es necesario dar amparo a la ambición artística, muy difícil de evaluar desde despachos administrativos [ ] (El País 2009a). It is a central article of faith within the auteurist approach to apprenticeship of the classic and modern cinephiles (following Pujol Ozonas s classification (2011: 111)) that filmmakers should train via trial and error by making small films, hence the need for state-funded sandboxes. In the end, backing this measure, which would have saved costs (among other disagreements with the Ministry of Culture), resulted in Guardans having to resign his post. Screen International quotes the dismay of an unnamed producer, when reporting the news of Guardans resignation: This was a bolt out of the blue. With the new film fund in place and attracting big projects like Juan Antonio Bayona s The Impossible, starring Ewan McGregor, and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo s Intruders, starring Clive Owen, we thought finally the industry was moving in the right direction, one leading producer told ScreenDaily. Now we don t know what to expect under another new director general. I just hope we don t revert back to supporting small budget local cultural films only. (Evans 2010) Something became clear in the eight years in which the PSOE took the reins of the political and cultural agenda after two terms in opposition. Regrettably for some, there is no going back to the type of film and consumption patterns of the past and to the time when the PSOE s cultural protectionist policies had such a dominant role in the shaping of the institutions that have made Spanish cinema what it is today. Partly because those who upheld those agendas are disappearing and partly because the context in which cultural production takes place changed radically in those years and so have the demands of the audiences for whom cultural contents are destined. Finally, we have to take into account that new generations of cultural creators do not see traditional auteurist strategies for production and dissemination as the only game in town, as we have seen. Market-oriented practices, different conceptions of target audiences and of the role of cinema in society came into sharp focus during the Zapatero years. As a result, we have to accept a much more heterogeneous idea of what Spanish film cultures are.

16 80 Núria Triana-Toribio bhs, 91 (2014) Works Cited Academia del Cine, n. d. [Online: Official website.] Available at: com/la_academia/objetivos.php?id_s=1&id_ss=27 (accessed 28 April 2012). Acland, Charles R., Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Balfour, Sebastian, The Reinvention of Spanish Conservatism: The Popular Party since 1989, in The Politics of Contemporary Spain, ed. Sebastian Balfour (London: Routledge), pp Beck, Jay, and Vicente Rodríguez Ortega, Genre in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press). Belinchón, Gregorio, 2011a. El cine español se asoma al abismo, El País.com, 7 February. Available at: / elpepucul_4/Tes (accessed 28 April 2012)., 2011b. No hemos conectado con el público, El País.com, 22 January. Available at: elpais.com/articulo/cultura/hemos/conectado/publico/elpepucul/ elpepucul_1/tes (accessed 28 April 2012). Borau, José Luis (dir.), Diccionario del Cine Español (Madrid: Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España/Alianza Editorial). Caldwell, John Thornton, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Camporesi, Valeria, Para grandes y chicos: Un cine para los españoles ( ) (Madrid: Ediciones Turfán). Dans, Enrique, Manifiesto en defensa de los derechos fundamentales en internet. Available at: (accessed 28 April 2012). De la Iglesia, Alex, Discurso del presidente de la Academia, El País.com. Available at: elpepucul/ elpepucul_5/tes (accessed 28 April 2012)., Discurso íntegro de Alex de la Iglesia en la entrega de los Goya, El País.com. Available at: puint/ elpepucul_9/tes (accessed 28 April 2012). Elola, Joseba, EEUU ejecutó un plan para conseguir una ley antidescargas, El País.com. Available at: elpepuint/ elpepunac_52/tes (accessed 28 April 2012). El País, 2009a. Patinazo de cine: Bruselas paraliza la orden que fijaba los nuevos criterios para la subvención del cine español, El País, 29 November: 32., 2009b. Un bisturí en la controversia web: Representantes del mundo de la creación cultural, Internet, la abogacía y el Gobierno discuten en la sede de El País la polémica ley antidescargas, El País, 5 December: Evans, Chris, Spain: All Peer-to-peer Activity May Soon be Outlawed, Screen International, 1696: 20., Carlos Cuatros to replace Ignasi Guardans as ICAA director, Screen International online, 22 October. Available at: -ignasi-guardans-as-icaa-director/ article (accessed 28 April 2012). Evans, Peter W., Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fernández-Santos, Elisa, aniversario de los Goya, El País.com, 13 February. Available at: cul _1/Tes (accessed 28 April 2012). Granado, Verónica P., años de Goyas al cine español (Madrid: Aguilar). García, Rocío, De la Iglesia quiere dirigir la Academia, El País.com, 19 May. Available at: (accessed 28 April 2012)., El cine español a cruzar fronteras, El País.com, 19 December. Available at: elpais.com/articulo/cultura/cine/espanol/cruzar/fronteras/elpepucul/ elpepucul_7/

17 bhs, 91 (2014) Residual Film Cultures: Real and Imagined Futures of Spanish Cinema 81 Tes (accessed 28 April 2012). García, Rocío, and R. G. Gómez, El cine español no sobrevivirá, El País.com, 23 Decembber. Available at: (acces - sed 28 April 2012). Heredero, Carlos and C. Reviriego, Nueva Orden, nueva polémica, Cahiers du cinéma. España, 25: 58. Hernández, Marta, El aparato cinematográfico español (Barcelona: Akal 4). Hopewell, John, Out of the Past: Spanish Cinema After Franco (London: British Film Institute). Hjort, Mette, and Scott Mackenzie, Cinema and Nation (London: Routledge). Lassalle, José María, Más libertad, propiedad y legalidad, El País, 29 December: 23. Martínez, Luis, La peor taquilla de toda la década del cine español, El Mundo.es, 1 February. Available at: (accessed 28 April 2012). Mesonero Burgos, Jordi, A Festival Epidemic in Spain, Film International, 34: Pujol Ozonas, Cristina, Fans, Cinéfilos y Cinéfagos: Una aproximación a las culturas y los gustos cinematográficos (Barcelona: Editorial UOC). Riambau, Esteve, La década socialista: , in Historia del cine español, R. Gubern et al. (Madrid: Cátedra). Smith, Paul Julian, Marks of Identification, Sight and Sound, 21: 23. Torres Mora, José Andrés, Menos virtuales y más virtuosos, El País, 15 December: 27. Triana-Toribio, Nuria, Spanish National Cinema (London: Routledge), Auteurism and Commerce in Contemporary Spanish Cinema Directores Mediáticos, Screen, 49: , FICXixón and Seminci: Two Spanish Film Festivals at the End of the Festivals Era, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 12: Vidal, Belén, Memories of Underdevelopment: Torremolinos 73, Cinephilia, and Filiation at the Margins of Europe, in Cinema at the Periphery, ed. D. Iordanova, D. Martin-Jones and B. Vidal (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press) pp Wallerstein, Claire, Lost in the Crowd, Screen International, Special Issue: Spain. Yáñez, Jara, La aritmética de la creación: Entrevistas con productores del cine español contemporáneo (Alcalá de Henares: Festival de Alcalá de Henares Comunidad de Madrid). Filmography Balada triste de trompeta. 2010, dir Alex de la Iglesia (Tornasol Films, La Fabrique2, Canal + España, Castafiore Films, Televisión Española). Carmen. 1983, dir. Carlos Saura (Emiliano Piedra, Televisión Española) Los santos inocentes. 1984, dir. Mario Camus (Ganesh Producciones Cinemátograficas, Televisión Española).

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