Spanish Cinema

When I was taking notice of billboards and outdoor advertising this past week, I also decided to focus on looking at Spanish cinema; which movies are shown, who goes to the theaters, and what Spanish citizens think about Spanish vs. Hollywood films.


At first I took a closer look at the advertisements I was seeing around me. “Come Reza Ama” and “Siempre a mi Lado” were the most common ads I was seeing in terms of cinema, and as we all know, those are Hollywood movies. When we first arrived in Spain, I was bombarded with advertisements for the newest Karate Kid movie, almost two full weeks after it had already been released in the United States. It has been difficult to find advertisements for Spanish movies altogether, but I did manage to see one on the way back to my house one day after school. Here is a report of the top movies in Spain since early May:

http://boxofficemojo.com/intl/spain/

As is clearly seen in the above chart, Hollywood movies always take the top spot. There are no Spanish movies listed whatsoever.


Current films that are being advertised on ecartelera.com include "The Social Network," "The Town," and "Harry Potter 7." Rarely are Spanish movies even advertised on the website, with the occasional exception. Here is a look at the Top 10 films in the Spanish Box Office for the weekend of October 8-10, 2010:

http://boxofficemojo.com/intl/spain/?yr=2010&wk=41&p=.htm

As you can see, the Top 10 Movies for this past weekend were American-made films. Coming in at #11 was a Spanish film called Amador, which only grossed $300,249 for that weekend. So, out of the top 11 films for the weekend $11,285,927 was grossed in total box office revenue, and out of that $11 million, only 2.6% of the revenue was thanks to Spanish-made films.

I decided to take this to my Spanish home, and I asked my señora and her children (who frequent the movie theaters) which were their favorite movies, what they thought of Spanish directors such as Almodovar and others. Carmen, my señora, much prefers Hollywood movies, as does my señor. The children are more excited to see Hollywood movies than Spanish movies, such as Shrek and Toy Story 3, and the upcoming "Ga'Hoole: La Leyenda de Los Guardianes." When I look around at the vast DVD collection that my señor has accumulated, I have surmised that more than 85% of his collection consists of Hollywood films. All in all, I think it's pretty safe to say that Spaniards can't get enough of Hollywood films.