Basque film industry still producing, but local conditions mean that Basque films have to look to co-production for financing San Sebastián. What's the current state of the Basque film industry? In the early 80s it was acclaimed as the most exciting Spanish production centre outside Madrid. Some of the architects of the then-called 'New Basque Cinema', most notably director/ producer Imanol Uribe later set up production camp in Madrid. But other production outfits have survived, and in some cases are well and truly kicking.
Two factors determine the current state of the Basque film industry: the minute nature of its local market, and the often positive legacies of the recent industrial past.
Ironically, a small local market means that Basque producers cannot make small local films. 'Given the size of the Basque Country, co-productions are a necessity,' says vet indie producer Angel Amigo, producer of political dramas (La fuga de Segovia, 1982; Ander eta Yul, 1987). And they can also be an advantage. Basque films have to appeal to their co-producers, whether in Madrid or abroad. The net result is a striking cosmopolitanism about many projects in their themes and also their styles.
Amigo's upcoming Todo está oscuro (director, Ana Díez), for instance, is a kind of bitter Missing: an executive travels to Columbia to investigate the death of her brother and finds out he was not the affable type she once ingenuously imagined.
Amigo's second feature, documentary Che Guevara: Les Films, to be directed by the prestigious Maurice Dujowson, will be a co-production with France's Cinétévé.
A second structure is to set up camp with a larger domestic production house. José Alberto Tellería's Vitoria-based Ikusmen, for example, has a deal with big Spanish outfit Cartel to co-produce two films a year until the year 2000. First-up of current projects co-produced with Cartel is the corruption thriller, Menos que cero, which bows this year. Ernesto Tellería will then shoot Suerte from February 1997. The third project, scheduled for September 1997, is the first film by José Luis Arano, working title En polvo te convertirás, from a screenplay by Tellería and Edorta Jiménez. The two latter features are likely to enter into Ikusmen's deal with Cartel.
In similar style, the indefatigable, Pamplona-based José María Lara has tapped finance from the powerful Madrid-based Star Line Productions for Daniel Calparsoro's third film, political drama A Ciegas, to roll from November. Lara and Calparsoro brought the project, Calparsoro's talent and Lara's production experience to the deal; Star Line has put up most of the finance.
Lara has three other projects: a co-production with France on pelota in the US, a Ricardo Franco drama about the forming of a torturer, and a new script by Ramón Barrea.
Subsidies do still remain significant for the Basque industry. In Bilbao, for example, the joint alliance of Sendeja's Ernesto del Río and Lan's Juan Ortuoste and Javier Rebello play off an ICAA three-film subsidy, plus a pta90 (US$736,000) million cash injection from Basque film board Euskal Media. Del Río's urban psychodrama, Hotel y domicilio has bowed; Rebollo's love triangle tale, Calor, opens this autumn; Ortuoste's Bilbao-set social comedy rolls probably late 1996.
Regional pubcaster ETB now looks set to put up some pta9 million (US$70,000) for Basque-language rights to films shot in Basque; the Basque Government has earmarked some pta75-80 million (US$595-635,000) for state production and development grants on features and shorts next year.
'What the original (1980s) subsidies achieved,' says José María Lara, was 'the creation of production companies and the formation of technical talent'. The production managers on some six upcoming Spanish features, all financed out of Madrid, are Basque, he points out. John Hopewell
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