Delegation of Culture
y Educación
Palacio de los Condes de Gabia
Plaza de los Girones, 1
18009 Granada (España)
Diputación de Granada’s new Film Office has collaborated in four national productions and is preparing various shootings for 2021
The province of Granada has hosted more than 200 audiovisual projects throughout history, mostly feature films, but also series, documentaries, reports, music videos and advertisements. Among the feature movies you can find mythical films such as “Doctor Zhivago”, “C’era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West)”, “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”; and also more recent ones such as “Caníbal” or “Intemperie”. During the last decade, television series have gained ground to feature films here and Granada has become the perfect setting for large episodic productions such as “Black Mirror”, which located in 2019 an episode in Gorafe; or “Inés del alma mía”, which premiered last Friday on Amazon Prime, and has several scenes going in the spectacular Castle of La Calahorra.
With this background and with the agreement of the Provincial Plenary, the Diputación de Granada has launched during the confinement the new provincial office of Cinema and promotion of filming “Film in Granada”. The office constitutes a public service that depends on the Delegation of Culture and Historical Memory and works with its own personnel and means. Julio Grosso Mesa, journalist from the institution and professor of the Audiovisual Communication degree of at the UGR, has been in charge of the new project since May.
The provincial deputy for Culture and Historical Memory, Fátima Gómez, took stock of the first months of the project and pointed out that “Film in Granada has two main objectives: to facilitate filming projects in the province, advising city councils and collaborating with producers in the search of locations and the management of permits; and to consolidate the Granadian audiovisual sector, promoting and giving visibility to its professionals and companies”.
About the second point, Gómez highlighted that “we have started the project by designing the first Guide for Professionals and Audiovisual Companies of Granada, which aims to bring together all the creators, technicians and companies in the province who are trained to work in the media industry, either in cinematographic, tv or advertising productions. In this way both the professionals and Film In Granada, as a team, will be able to set a common goal, and consolidate a strong local audiovisual panorama. 60 professionals and companies from Granada have already joined, belonging to a vast variety of categories in the media sector ”.
In addition, “Film in Granada” is working in collaboration with most Granadian municipalities in the creation of a Directory of Cinematographic Locations, a database that collects the great diversity of scenarios in the province. It is now working on the collection of unique landscapes, beautiful natural spaces and a huge monumental heritage.
The Deputy for Culture added that “the city councils are the ones that know their territory best and also those that can best identify their own filming spaces, always with the advice of Film in Granada. In just a few months we have already received proposals from 30 Granadian municipalities”.
Both the Professionals Guide and the Directory of Locations will soon be available on a website, which will become the office’s main showcase. Until the site is launched “Film in Granada” has other communication channels at the service of municipalities and professionals, such as a YouTube channel, a Twitter account and a Facebook profile. There news and content related to audiovisuals are and will be collected.
Four shootings in 2020
In its first nine months of operation, the “Film in Granada” office has actively collaborated in the filming of four national projects: the recording in the Alpujarra of an episode for the program “Volando voy”, two TVE documentaries and a music video with the tenor Zapata and the “Orquesta Ciudad de Granada”.
The program “Volando voy” by Jesús Calleja was filmed in the month of July in the municipalities of La Taha, Soportújar, Pampaneira and Capileira. It had the support of the Provincial Tourism Office and involved the displacement of a 25 professionals crew during a week to the Alpujarra. It aired on Cuatro on October 22 and was watched at some point by more than 3.3 million people, with an average audience of 907,000 viewers.
The two TVE documentaries are still pending release. One of them is an episode of the series “Guardianes del Patrimonio”, shot in August at the Museum of Fine Arts. The other is an episode of “La Aventura del Saber”, one of La 2’s educational programs, which was recorded in September and is about the characters of Aixa and Isabel de Solís. It was filmed in iconic locations, such as the Alhambra, the Dar Al-Horra Palace, the Corral del Carbón and the Alcázar Genil Palace.
In December, the Granadian tenor José Manuel Zapata, together with the “Orquesta Ciudad de Granada” and the singer Marina, recorded a live, symphonic version of the Christmas Carol “Los Campanilleros”. The shooting took place at the “Centro José Guerrero” and the “Manuel de Falla Auditorium” and was carried out by the Granadian producing company Plano Tetera, one of the companies that are part of the “Film In Granada” Guide for Professionals and Companies. The music video went viral on social media last Christmas.
New projects
“Film in Granada” is already working on new projects that will begin shooting in 2021, as long as the COVID situation allows it. Specifically, it is collaborating in the pre-production of two Spanish films, a fiction series for a digital platform and an internationally produced documentary. In all of them, the film office of the Provincial Council is negotiating with the producers a percentage of hiring professionals and local companies that are associated with the Professional Guide.
Likewise, collaboration agreements are being prepared with several Granadian institutions in order to speed up the management of filming permits and facilitate the accommodation of production teams that want to film in the province of Granada.
