Movie theaters that do resist: seven decades of projections at the University of Granada | Spain

The first session of the Granada film club was in 1949. On Tuesday, February 1, in the now-defunct Aliatar cinema, an experience for the city was inaugurated that a few years later would become a university film club and that today continues every Tuesday and Friday offering jewels from the cinema to a loyal audience that repeats show after show. The culprit of that was Eugenio Martín, a man from Ceuta transferred to Granada, a lover of cinema and poetry, who at the age of 24 insisted on starting the experiment. In 1943, the University of Granada (UGR) sponsored the project and took it over as its own. It is now 70 years of it with some substantial changes. One that breaks myths is that the screening is no longer followed by the cineforum, that later discussion about the film so genuinely associated with this format.

That February 1, 1949, the Granada film club was born with a triple session, something common then. “A documentary or newsreel, a short film and the star movie,” explains Juan de Dios Salas, its current director. That first program was under enemy skiesby William Wyler, a “very interesting documentary” that showed “the efforts of North American aviation in the fight against Germany”, recounted a brief chronicle of the newspaper Ideal the next day. Next, To the big fishanother documentary in which Walt Disney “does a magnificent teaching on the fight against malaria and mosquitoes”, according to Ideal. finally the movie a killer among us, a German film directed by Fritz Lang. William Wyler, Walt Disney and a Lang horror. An unbeatable start.

The Granada film club was created with an eye on the first to be founded in Spain. It was the Cineclub Español, directed by Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Luis Buñuel in 1928, after the creation of The Literary Gazette, pioneering magazine in the avant-garde cinema of the time. Between that and the one in Granada there were others in Malaga, Valencia or Barcelona. Not long after starting its activity, the project from Granada faced the inevitable and had its own we have come across the Church, Sancho. Eugenio Martín and those who collaborated with him prepared some texts for each film that they delivered to the audience outside of censorship. Until the church found out. One day they received notice from a Jesuit who wanted to see them. The message was clear: the texts had to pass ecclesiastical control, the only authority to decide what could be said or how the films should be interpreted. There ended the story of Martín with his film club. He went to Madrid and began a career as a film director. He passed away a few weeks ago in Madrid, on January 23, at the age of 97.

After the clash with the Church, the University of Granada was on the fence and took over the project in 1953. Juan de Dios Salas, director since 1995, began, he recalls, “as a box office and doorman.” Almost 30 years later, Salas has projected, in a rough estimate, around 1,500 films. But above all, he has achieved a loyal audience that follows him every Tuesday and Friday at the projections in the Sala Máxima of the Espacio V Centenario of the UGR, the current headquarters of the film club. For a film club, that fidelity is crucial. “We have a capacity of 300 seats and our average occupancy is around 200, of which 60 or 70 are permanent. Some even come without even knowing what exactly we are broadcasting.” That is the only certainty for them. Day, time and place. The rest is entrusted to Salas.

Enrique Bonet is 55 years old and has been a regular since the late eighties, when he was a Library Science student and then a Fine Arts student: “Then I went to all the sessions, like now when I try to go to all of them. In some periods, when he had small children, he could not go as much ”. Bonet explains the reasons for his fidelity, beyond his love for cinema. “The faithful go because even if we have seen the films, here we see them on the big screen, always in the original version, in good quality and in a context to which Juan de Dios makes sense.” Bonet remembers having especially enjoyed the Billy Wylder cycle, which has been programmed, interspersed with others, for three or four years, and has reviewed all of his cinema “ordered, explained and with context”.

From political turmoil to fleeing from the commercial circuit

This film club, like society, has gone through different phases. In the seventies, “they were a weapon with enormous political and social content,” says Salas. The cineforum, the talk, and sometimes discussion, later on the film, was as important as the projection. Not anymore. “So it made sense in a context of political and social mobilization. Now it has less. Added to this is the practical reason that we finish at 11 p.m. and it is late, ”he explains. But the audience continues to receive an explanation: before the screening, Salas offers a comment on what he considers relevant in the film. And at the beginning of each cycle, Salas also offers a free seminar.

Programming has also changed substantially. “It is no longer a question of proposing films chronologically without further ado, not even by theme. It makes more sense to do it by authors, actors or type of cinema, classic, contemporary, silent, etc. ”, clarifies Salas. With 35-millimeter films, he recalls, he had no choice but to “organize the cycles according to the available material.” Now with digital, it is much easier to broadcast what you want. The most difficult thing, he says, is not getting the film, but finding the owner of the rights. Being largely off-the-beaten-track tapes, it’s hard to know who to pay. “We pay less than in the commercial circuit, but even if the public doesn’t pay, we pay the rights”, clarifies the director. “Sometimes, we find films without rights but it is very rare. There are even relatives of the creators who do not want to charge. At the other extreme, film libraries here and there restore films and, suddenly, revive for them rights that were extinct”.

The university film club of Granada depends on La Madraza, the center of contemporary culture of the UGR. And it does honor to it because it has not remained anchored in the history of cinema. One of its recurring cycles is the filmmakers of the 21st century, with Paul Thomas Anderson or David Fincher as protagonists. It is the way to rejuvenate the room. In a return to the origins of the city’s film club, Salas admits that his public exceeds the university audience and has been complemented by “many people from the city who come because they like cinema or the one we propose.” Therefore, there is no fear of the future. Perhaps, just a little on football and Champions Tuesdays that leaves some part of the public at home.