Cinema of Spain

The art of motion-picture making within Spain or by Spanish filmmakers abroad is collectively known as Spanish Cinema.

Only a small portion of box office sales in Spain are generated by domestic films. The different Spanish governments have therefore implemented measures aimed at supporting local film production and the movie theaters, which currently include the assurance of funding from the main television broadcasters. Nowadays, the Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA) is the State agency in charge of regulating the allocation of public funds to the domestic film industry.

The first Spanish film exhibition took place on 5 May 1895, in Barcelona. Exhibitions of Lumière films were screened in Madrid, Málaga and Barcelona in May and December 1896, respectively.

The matter of which Spanish film came first is in dispute. The first was either Salida de la misa de doce de la Iglesia del Pilar de Zaragoza –Exit of the Twelve O'Clock Mass from the Church of El Pilar of Zaragoza– (Eduardo Jimeno Peromarta), Plaza del puerto en Barcelona –Plaza of the Port of Barcelona– (Alexandre Promio) or Llegada de un tren de Teruel a Segorbe –Arrival of a Train from Teruel in Segorbe– (anonymous). It is also possible that the first film was Riña en un café (Fructuós Gelabert). These films were all released in 1897.

The first Spanish film director to achieve great success internationally was Segundo de Chomón, who worked in France and Italy but made several famous fantasy films in Spain, such as El hotel eléctrico (1908).

In 1914, Barcelona was the center of the nation's film industry. The españoladas (historical Spanish epics) predominated until the 1960s. Prominent among these were the films of Florián Rey, starring Imperio Argentina, and the first version of Nobleza Baturra (Juan Vila Vilamala, 1925). Historical dramas such as Vida de Cristóbal Colón y su Descubrimiento de América –The Life of Christopher Columbus and His Discovery of America– (Gérard Bourgeois, 1917), adaptations of newspaper serials such as Los misterios de Barcelona –The Mysteries of Barcelona– (starring Joan Maria Codina, 1916), and of stage plays such as Don Juan Tenorio (Ricardo de Baños [es], 1922) and zarzuelas (comedic operettas), were also produced. Even the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Jacinto Benavente, who said that "in film they pay me the scraps," would shoot film versions of his theatrical works.

In 1928, Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Luis Buñuel founded the first cine-club, in Madrid. By that point, Madrid was already the primary center of the industry; forty-four of the fifty-eight films released up until that point had been produced there.

The rural drama La aldea maldita –The Cursed Village– (Florian Rey, 1929) was a hit in Paris, where, at the same time, Buñuel and Salvador Dalí premiered Un chien andalou. Un chien andalou has become one of the most well-known avant-garde films of that era.