Speak the Culture: Spain: Be Fluent in Spanish Life and Culture

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1. Identity: the
   building blocks of
   2. Literature
   and philosophy
   3. Art and
   architecture
   4. Performing
   arts
   5. Cinema
   and fashion
   6. Media and
   communications
   7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
   the details of

Lights, camera...shuffle out of the church

Alright, so they weren’t exactly plot boiling

blockbusters, but at least Spain’s early efforts in film

were among the world’s first.They emerged in 1896,

within months of the Lumière brothers’ early Parisian

films. And anyway, the nascent Spanish audience

that watched the likes ofSalida de la misa de doce

de la Iglesia del Pilar de Zaragozawould have been

rapt, mesmerised by the sorcery that brought the

commonplace scene of a congregation leaving church

to life.This early – probably first – Spanish film was

made by Eduardo Jimeno Peromarta and his son using a

projector bought in Lyon, the Lumières’ home town.

Other, similar documentary-style work followed from

various pioneers, much of it bearing a very Spanish

preoccupation with faith, and specifically scenes of

people entering or leaving church. Despite these

promising early forays, the Spanish film industry had

a rather sluggish first decade. Spaniards were only

beginning to find their way to newly industrialised cities,

and making or watching films weren’t high priorities.

By 1907 Madrid had around 25 cinemas compared with

Paris’ hundred or more.

The first Spanish directors

While Spain couldn’t match the early filmic binge north

of the Pyrenees, it did produce some genuine directors

in the early 20thcentury.The first dramatised film was

Riña en un café(1897), made by Fructuós Gelabert.

It depicted a punch-up in a café. Gelabert, a Barcelonan

carpenter-cum-photographer, knocked up his own

version of the Lumières’ cinematograph and would

later further the medium by dubbing sound over silent

images and including intertitles in the likes ofBaño

imprevisto(1909), which translates tantalisingly as

Unexpected Bath. Segundo de Chomón was even more

Screen test
The first film screening for
a paying Spanish public
took place in Madrid’s
Hotel de Rusia on 14th
May 1896, when work
by the Lumière brothers
was shown.

Eddie’s other passion
When Spain’s first film-
maker Eduardo Jimeno
Peromarta wasn’t
travelling around giving
people a first look at
home movies, he ran a
waxworks show in Bilbao.

The studios head south
In the 1920s and early
30s the focus of Spain’s
fledgling film industry
moved from Barcelona to
Madrid, where a clutch
of small studios did what
they could to compete
with the Hollywood giants
sending over dubbed and
remade Anglo-flicks by the
boatload. The Compañía
Industrial Film Española
SA (Cifesa), founded in
1934, was the largest
operation and would
remain Spain’s biggest
native production
company for many years.
Cifesa guided Rey, Perojo
and Buñuel through some
of the best Spanish films
of the early sound era.

5.1.2 Moving with the times: early adventures in film