- The Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food have joined forces to extend Spanish Film Day to rural Spain
- The program ‘Extended Spanish Film Day’ will take the fourth celebration of the anniversary, which is commemorated every October 6, to 300 localities without projection rooms distributed by the 17 autonomous communities
- On the billboard there will be a dozen recent films from Spanish cinema, mostly directed by women filmmakers, such as ‘El agua’ by Elena López Riera, ‘Un amor’ by Isabel Coixet or ‘Secadero’ by Rocío Mesa
- With this initiative, which carries the slogan #Acer｟｠ ElCine, both ministries assume and defend that the cinematographic experience is accessible to all citizens regardless of place of residence
The Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are joining forces to extend the scope of Spanish Film Day to rural Spain. In the fourth edition of the event, which is held every October 6, the new program ‘Extended Spanish Film Day’ will carry out screenings in more than 300 locations where its inhabitants do not have access to the cinematographic experience, a decade in the Community of Madrid.
In addition, more than twenty municipalities without projection rooms will have the opportunity to share the viewing experience with open colloquiums, by people related to the title being projected. They will be professionals who have participated in the project or specialists with a special relationship with the subject and who, with their testimony, will enrich the projection.
In this way, the National Rural Women’s Film Cycle, which has been organized for seven years by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, acquires a new impetus thanks to the collaboration between the two ministries, allowing to expand the film experience in localities that do not have cinemas. The alliance will try to turn the ‘Spanish Film Day’ into an example of accessibility, egalitarian and plural, towards all people, their sensitivities and realities.
A generation of female filmmakers
There will be a dozen recent titles in Spanish cinema, mostly directed by women filmmakers: ‘Camino de la suerte’ (Jorge Alonso, 2023), ‘El agua’ (Elena López Riera, 2022), ‘Secaderos’ (Rocío Mesa, 2022), ‘O corno’ (Jaione Camborda, 2023), ‘Un amor’ (Isabel Coixet, 2023), ‘Los pequeños amores’ (Celia Rico Clavellino, 2024), ‘El bon auguri’ (Alba Bresolí, 2024), ‘Historias de pastores’ (Jaime Puertas, 2024), ‘As neves’ (Sonia Méndez, 2024) y ‘Sica’ (Carla Subirana, 2023).
In this way, this year the meeting with Spanish culture and cinema highlights cultural rights and, in particular, the universal right to culture through cinema, understood as a complete cultural expression accessible to all citizens. In this sense, the two ministries assume and defend that the cinematographic experience is accessible to all citizens regardless of where they reside.
Spanish Film Day 2024
The ‘Extended Spanish Film Day’ will be one of the novelties of the program prepared by the Ministry of Culture, through the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), to commemorate Spanish Film Day and which will be announced soon. As in previous editions, other activities and actions will also be carried out that will bring to the public the richness and diversity of Spanish cinematography throughout its history, including screenings, colloquiums, meetings, training activities, publications, exhibitions and communication actions.
Within this framework, Filmoteca Española –within its exhibition agenda– will offer the exhibition ‘The 100 meters free. Life and miracles of the Film School (1947-1976)’, as well as an extensive program of screenings organized in collaboration with different State and international film libraries. Thus, in their respective exhibition halls, special prominence will be given to ‘Todo sobre mi madre’ (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999), on the 25th anniversary of its premiere; and the restored version of ‘Los golfos’ (1959), the first feature film by Carlos Saura.
In turn, coinciding with the anniversary, the Ministry of Culture will award the National Prize for Cinematographic and Audiovisual Heritage, which it has been calling for since 2022 with the aim of recognizing the relevance of cinema as a great universal art of the 20th century and of the audiovisual as a living witness of our times, placing its value on an equal footing with the rest of the cultural arts and heritage. In its first two editions it fell to Ferrán Alberich and Ana Marquesán, for their outstanding contributions to the recovery, conservation and dissemination of this valuable heritage.
About Spanish Film Day
On March 9, 2021, the Council of Ministers, on the proposal of the Ministry of Culture, agreed to establish October 6 as Spanish Film Day with the aim of recognizing the role of professionals in the film sector, its influence and importance in the cultural and social life of our country and the role that Spanish cinema has played throughout its history and that it must continue to play. The date coincides with the end of the production of ‘That Happy Couple’, a film directed and scripted by Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis García-Berlanga and starring Fernando Fernán Gómez and Elvira Quintillá. Over the years, this film has become a symbol of one of the brightest generations of Spanish filmmakers.