Cinema in the Balearic Islands
After several failed attempts, the Lumière brothers held the first cinema screening in Paris, on 28th December 1895. The wonderful spectacle of this great invention managed to reach Mallorca two years later, with the first screening in Palma on 23rd January 1897 and two weeks later in Mahon, on Minorca. It did not arrive on Ibiza until 3rd April 1904.As far as we know, the first foreign fiction film was shot on Mallorca in June 1913. It was La sortija misteriosa [The Mysterious Ring] or El secreto del anillo [The Secret of the Ring] by Films Arte of Rome and was distributed in England, France and Italy.
By the 1920s, the cinema had already become entirely a leisure activity for the masses, because of its entertainment value and because it was cheap. Theatres and cinemas proliferated and every screening was crowded. The Madrid-based production company Atlántida, specialising in folklore, filmed Venganza isleña [Island Vengeance] on Mallorca in 1923.
In the 1920s, there were already 118 fully-functioning cinemas on the Balearic Islands and film production on the islands increased considerably, including local productions. In 1925 for example, the Balearic Film Company produced El secreto de la Pedriza [Pedriza's Secret](1926), dealing with a subject very familiar on Mallorca: smuggling.
The first film combining sound with pictures shown on the Balearics was Trafalgar, in 1930, and it has to be said that the audience's response to this innovation was rather cool. Comic content with background music was left behind, as the cinema began to reach maturity. The documentaries filmed about Mallorca, Minorca and Ibiza are the most noteworthy productions from the period of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-36). During the Civil War, almost all cinemas, except for the largest, were closed. Most of the films shown were German and Italian anti-communist propaganda boasting of their armies' achievements.
From 1939 onwards and very gradually, cinemas on the Balearic Islands were reopened. While the cinemas were reopening, cinema itself was shutting down, as it became subject to control and censorship by Franco's regime. Due to the general stagnation of the industry during the civil war, new films arrived en masse from the United States, Mexico and Argentina. An example was Spain's first screening of Gone with the Wind in 1951, twelve years late. Of the films shot on the islands during this period, it is worth mentioning: Un marido a prefio fijo [A fixed price husband] (1941); Black Jack (1949), the first Spanish-American co-production with George Sanders in the starring role; La ley del mar [Law of the Sea], also from 1949 and filmed on Ibiza; El correo del rey [The King's Mail] (1950), an adventure film directed by Ricard Gascón and shot on Minorca; Manchas de Sangre en la Luna (Come Die my Love - 1951) and Tres hombres y un bikini [Three Men and a Bikini] (1953), with a very young Joan Collins.
Between 1953 and 1969, people went to the cinema in great numbers and wide screens were installed. New films were produced, one after the other, and with the cinema industry finding the islands to be a perfect setting for productions, more films were shot on the Balearics during this period: at least 45 films of all types.
Sail into Danger (1957) was filmed on Cabrera; the 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1957) and Woman of Straw (1963), the latter with Gina Lollobrigida and Sean Connery, both had the town of Artà as a backdrop; Bahía de Palma [Palma Bay] (1962); Operation Double Cross (1965) was a Hispano-French co-production directed by Gilles Grangier starring Jean Marais and Marisa Mell; The Magus (1968) based on a novel by John Fowles, was directed by Guy Green and starred Anthony Quinn, Michael Caine, Anna Karina and Candice Bergen; the director José Luis Berlanga shot several scenes of his masterpiece, Not on Your Life or The Executioner (1963) on Mallorca; Jaime Camino's A Winter in Mallorca (1969), about Chopin and George Sand's stay on the island: F for Fake (1971), a colour documentary written and directed by Orson Welles, filmed on Ibiza, deals with the painter and art forger Elmyr de Hory and was not shown on Mallorca until 1978; and a great many more.
Some of the films made on the Balearics in more recent times are: Evil under the Sun (1981) by Guy Hamilton, based on the Agatha Christie novel with Peter Ustinov, Jane Birkin, Bette Davis and James Mason; Bearn (1982) by Jaime Chavarri, based on the well-known novel by Llorenc Villalonga, with Angela Molina, Fernando Rey and Imanol Arias; Island Wind (1987), set during the English occupation of Minorca during the 18th century, which represented Spain at the Berlin Film Festival in 1988; The Time of Happiness (1997) by Manuel Iborra; The Dutchman's Island (2000) by Sigfrid Monleón, which won the Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor Awards at the Lorca Spring Cinema Festival; Sword of Honour (2000) by Bill Anderson starring Daniel Craig; Julio Medem's Sex and Lucia (2001) was filmed in Madrid and Formentera.
Producers from the Balearics have also demonstrated their talent and filmed some of their films on the Islands: Antoni Aloy directed his 1997 short, Señores de Gardenia [Gentlemen of Gardenia], starring Marisa Paredes and Simon Andreu, winning several international awards, and in 1999 he directed the full-length feature Presence of Mind, starring Sadie Frost, Lauren Bacall and Harvey Keitel, which was filmed on the beautiful Raixa estate. Luis Casasavas directed the full-length feature Bert (1997), which was filmed in some of Mallorca's most beautiful locations.
Daniel Monzón directed Heart of the Warrior (1999), The Biggest Robbery Never Told (2002) and The Kovak Box (2005) with Timothy Hutton; the last two films were shot on Mallorca. Agustí Villalonga, the most prolific of all, with In a Glass Cage (1985), Moon Child (1989), The Sea (1999), based on the novel by Blai Bonet, and a documentary about the poet Miquel Bauçà (2005).
The Balearic audiovisual sector today
During the last two decades, the islands have experienced growth in the audiovisual sector, especially in cinema and television production services.Balearic production service companies have invested heavily in acquiring their own technical equipment: cameras, lighting, dollies, cranes, hot heads, silent mobile generators, transport, etc.; and in the construction of two modern soundproof studios, larger than 1,000 m², for rental to visiting production companies, with the most up-to-date lighting systems, workshops for building sets, storage, dressing-rooms, make-up and hairstyling rooms complete with all production services. This massive investment and the availability of a large number of experienced multilingual professionals have resulted in the Balearics being more competitive in the international online production market. With human resources and top-level technicians based on the islands themselves, costs in respect of travelling and living expenses have been considerably reduced.
Currently, more than a hundred advertisements are filmed on the islands every year. Internationally respected filmmakers like Peter Cattaneo, Mikael Salomon, Lasse Hallström, Harald Zwart, Gabriele Salvatores, John Mathenson, Remi Adefasarin, Espen Sandberg and Paolo Sorrentino have worked on advertisements filmed in the archipelago.
The filming of full-length features and shorts on the Islands is also on the increase. Recent productions like Ibiza Dream by Igor Fioravanti, The Kovak Box by Daniel Monzón, Aislados [Isolated] by David Marques, Four Last Songs by Francesca Joseph and the Mallorcan production Yo [I] by Rafa Cortes, which won the FIPRESCI (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) Award at the 2007 Rotterdam Film Festival and a Special Mention by the Jury at the 2007 Malaga Film Festival, were filmed entirely on the Balearic Islands.
The regional television station IB3, part of the public-sector company Radio Televisión de las Illes Balears, was inaugurated on the 1st March 2005. In setting up its own audiovisual media, the Balearic Islands region is attempting to strengthen territorial cohesion and the symbols of Balearic identity, by attending to cultural requirements and society's need for information. The new television channel, which broadcasts 24 hours a day, has outsourced the production of practically all its content, thereby assisting the growth and development of the private audiovisual sector on the Balearic Islands.