Can Spanish mainstream successes like Volver and Pan’s Labyrinth save Spain’s struggling film industry?

Madrid must be one of the best places in Europe to see films. A stroll down the Gran Vía, the city centre's equivalent of Oxford Street, takes you past at least ten imposing cinemas, some of which until recently still used those wonderful old hand-painted advertising hoardings where the picture of Nicole Kidman might not actually have looked too much like her - in fact it looked more like Ronnie Corbett - but it didn't matter.

Off the Plaza de España, there are five cinemas - there are many more dotted over the capital - showing films in their original language: this is a city where a film called Black Cat, White Cat by the Serbian director Emir Kusturica was being shown to its unconditional fans at late-night screenings for almost a year.

All that's the good news. The bad news is that these cinemas are empty most of the time, with cinema admissions steadily falling year after year. Internet piracy - Spain is the king of European piracy - is often blamed, as is the fact that there are so many other activities vying for the leisure attention of the young. But what is most upsetting for the industry is that fewer and fewer of that falling number are interested in Spanish film - in 2007, for the first time, more Spaniards have been to see British films than Spanish ones (obviously, like everywhere else in the world, it's American movies which top the list).

Some people I know won't go to see a Spanish film on principle. They've been disappointed too often by low-budget attempts to imitate Hollywood genres (they prefer authentic Hollywood product every time), or depressed too often by the slice-of-life dramas - as one taxi driver told me, "I don't pay into a cinema to watch a film about taxi drivers".

There are just two Spanish directors, Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro Amenábar (known in some quarters as the Equipo A, or A-Team), who have made a recent mark on Hollywood. Both have won Oscars, and the work of both is guaranteed to form queues down the Gran Vía. The former has made his reputation by universalizing themes that are particular to Spain: there could be no film simultaneously more local and universal than his wonderful Volver. The latter, a superb storyteller who I referred to in a recent article as "Spain's finest Hollywood director", has shed all artistic pretensions and has made Hollywood conventions his own, though without patronizing his audience as so many Spanish producers do. If Spanish cinema wants Spanish audiences to love it again, it will have to look at the examples of these two, and learn from whatever it is they're doing right.

Talking movies

¿A tí te gusta el cine español? - Do you like Spanish cinema?

¿Has visto el último de Pedro Almodóvar? – Have you seen Pedro Almodóvar's latest?

¿Quieres ir al cine esta tarde? – Do you want to go to the cinema this evening?

¿Qué hay en cartelera? – What's on?

 
Yo prefiero el cine americano al cine español – I prefer American films to Spanish ones

Bajar pelis del Internet está dañando la industria del cine – Downloading films is damaging the Spanish film industry