The limits of low-cost cinema in Spain: an analysis of the #Littlesecretfilm movement

Abstract

The self-styled #Littlesecretfilm phenomenon is a low-cost film production and distribution movement that was launched in Spain in 2013. Based on a reconstruction and examination of its development from its foundation (with the publication of a manifesto in the form of ten commandments) through to its products (a full survey of which are presented here), this article offers a meaningful and not entirely uncritical snapshot of a conscious proposal of a low-cost production model in contemporary Spain. In our conclusion, we tie this film movement in with international debates about the viability of a low-cost approach in the context of a national film industry that has been left badly battered by the financial crisis that began in 2008.

Keywords:

• Low-cost film
• contemporary Spanish film
• independent cinema
• Spanish film industry

Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Pablo Maqueda and Haizea G. Viana for the documentation provided and for agreeing to be interviewed. We are also grateful to Miguel Larraya, Jordi Costa, Elena Manrique and Borja Crespo for granting access to their films.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Antonio Loriguillo-López, PhD in Communication Sciences and Postdoctoral Research Associate in Audiovisual Communication at Universitat Jaume I of Castellón, Spain.

Agustín Rubio Alcover Lecturer in Audiovisual Communication at Universitat Jaume I of Castellón, Spain

Notes

1 This interview was conducted by video conference on 25 April 2017.

2 Calle 13 is a television channel specialising in thrillers and action films. It is owned by the local branch of Universal Studios Networks, and has been available on most cable and satellite television platforms since 1999.

3 Canal + Award at the 2015 Málaga Festival for Todos tus secretos; Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay Awards at the 2015 Málaga Festival for Todo el mundo lo sabe; People’s Choice Award at the 2015 FKM Fantasy Film Festival in A Coruña for Neuroworld; Premio Noves Visions: Emergents at the 2014 Sitges Festival for Amor eterno.

4 Rather than the situation of the large-scale industry of business, movie microeconomics deals with the particular conditions in which film practice (typically a definite film project) is developed.

5 The uncertainty has been responded to on the fringes of the industry with one of the most popular strategies in contemporary audiovisual production: crowdfunding, whose biggest initiatives, launched both by industry veterans—for example, The Apostle (O Apostolo, F. Cortizo, 2012)—and by newcomers—The Cosmonaut (El cosmonauta, N. Alcalá, 2013)—have already been explored in other studies on Spain (Martínez Gallardo and Alberich Pascual 2013; Altabás Fernández 2014) and Greece (Papadimitriou 2017).

6 A notable exception is the case of the aesthetically marked flashbacks in Círculo interno, which were produced by the creators of the Spanish web series Croatian Files (JJ Torres and Miguel Ortiz, 2013–2014).

7 Although this hybridisation is pointed out in most Spanish film research (Davies 2005), in recent years the scales seem to have tipped decidedly towards the genre niche if we take into account that the works of filmmakers like Alejandro Amenábar or Jaume Balagueró (Goss 2017) have helped turn them into ‘directores mediáticos’, or media-friendly directors (Triana-Toribio 2008, 260). Notable recent projects, such as the production of HBO-style series (García-Mainar 2016) like Crematorio (J. Sánchez-Cabezudo, Canal +, 2011), appear to confirm this trend. For some Hispanists, this genre specialisation of Spanish cinema is significant in that it represents the decline of a recognisably Spanish film tradition, a role destined to become the exclusive property of romantic comedies for all audiences (Buse and Triana Toribio 2015) like Ocho apellidos vascos (E. Martínez Lázaro, 2014).

8 This is a classification, moreover, always dependent on the film boards regulating the commercial circuits, but not a crucial factor in the case of autonomous online distribution (as noted by Huang, Markovitch, and Strijnev 2015, 53).

9 The tensions among the nuclei of Spanish film industry, traditionally based in Madrid and, to a lesser extent, in Barcelona, have changed in the last decades in connection with the implantation of “The State of Autonomies”, the constitutional system of articulation of the territory. Just as certain regions did—the so-called “historical nationalities” (Galicia, Euskadi and Catalunya), considered as such for having vernacular languages—, all of the 17 recognised autonomous regions have tried to launch distinguishable cinematographic models since the dawn of the Spanish transition to democracy. The results, as much in ambition as success, have been disparate. Additionally, and as a result of both the global economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent territorial unrest, the polarisation between the Madrilenian model and the Catalonian model has grown to the point of embodying, grosso modo, the paradigms of alternative, mutually exclusive, paths. The former, a commercial will, circumscribed to fiction films. The latter, a more experimental, documentary(mockumentary)-bound, sponsored by formation programmes such as the Master in Creative Documentary (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and centres such as the Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisual de Catalunya. Against this falsifier Manichaeism—which omits, among others, the work of relevant working groups on the documentary in Madrid, and also the rise of prominent leading figures in the field of fiction film from Barcelona, such as director Juan Antonio Bayona—, #Littlesecretfilm sets itself up as a wake-up call.

10 Notable exceptions are Obra 67 and Amor eterno, two of the most widely acclaimed films of the movement. The former film was produced in one ‘peripheral media hub’ (Sanson 2014) in Spain, Seville. The latter was produced in the other ‘media city’ (Foord 2009) of the country, Barcelona.

11 A plainly astute strategy given that the one-hour format of the films would make it unlikely for them to be picked up for screening in commercial theatres.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades del Gobierno de España for the research project "Participación ciudadana y medios de comunicación públicos. Análisis de experiencias de co-creación audiovisual en España y en Europa" under Grant code RTI2018-093649-B-I00; by the Universitat Jaume I for the research project "Análisis de identidades en la era de la posverdad. Generación de contenidos audiovisuales para una Educomunicación crítica" under Grant code 18I390.01/1; and the Valencian Community and the European Social Fund through the post-doctoral scholarship program, under grant number APOSTD/2019/068.