In 1925, the American company Fox recorded images in Lanzarote and other Canary Islands for a documentary that would be released a year later, and of which no copy is preserved. The discards from the filming of that documentary were rescued and preserved at the University of South Carolina (USA) and located by the historian Agustín Miranda. Later, the Filmoteca Canaria would make an ordered edition of these images that it projected in theaters on several islands. Now, the rescued fragments of Lanzarote can be seen on the Memoria de Lanzarote portal, www.memoriadelanzarote.com, thanks to the collaboration of the Filmoteca Canaria.
“This is excellent news that enriches our Memoria de Lanzarote portal, which also offers recordings made between 1952 and 1954 by Jan Blaauboer, an amateur filmmaker who made several ethnographic films for the Tropical Institute of Amsterdam and whose material has been obtained thanks to the collaboration of the Archive of the Cabildo of La Palma”, explains the island councilor. Paula Corujo.
Other rescued video pieces are the fragment of Lanzarote in the documentary 'Les îles Canaries', made in 1959 by the National Audiovisual Institute of France and the documentaries of the Ministry of Agriculture on the cultivation systems on the island.
The Memoria de Lanzarote portal, after a search and documentation work, also offers access to the visualization of all the newsreels (NO-DO) where the island appears and, in addition, with the possibility of downloading the programs that were made for this purpose. Thus, you can see images of the visit of Francoist authorities in 1947 to Lanzarote and La Graciosa, a report on the artist César Manrique and his home in Madrid in 1962, or the inauguration of the Farmer's Monument in 1968.
Domestic cinema of Lanzarote from the 60s and 70s
Paula Corujo also announces that “thanks to the collaboration of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and the Filmoteca Canaria more than 130 rolls of films recorded on Super 8 cameras on our island have been digitized”.
Thus, at www.memoriadelanzarote.com you can see the images filmed by Francisco Armas of the arrival of the first desalination plant in Lanzarote in 1964, or the important collection of amateur reports made by Julián Martín, Felipe Álvarez and Manuel Perdomo, among others. Fragments of the documentary Der Feuerberge un der blinde Krabs, made in 1974 by BR of Germany, or recovered images of tourists who visited Lanzarote in that decade are also offered.
A participatory project
Memoria de Lanzarote is managed by the Data Center of the Island Council, which is also responsible for the contents of La Casa Amarilla. For this reason, it has recently made public the videos used in the exhibitions that have been held in that space since its opening to the public in 2015.
In fact, Memoria de Lanzarote is a participatory process in which citizens give their old photographs and other audiovisual materials so that the Cabildo can carry out their digitization, documentation and dissemination.
The contact method for this is the email datos1@cabildodelanzarote.com or the telephone 928 81 01 00 (extension 3000) or directly at La Casa Amarilla, located at Calle León y Castillo, 6 de Arrecife.
So far, more than 100,000 images, audiovisuals and documents have been digitized. The project is developed by the Data Center of the Cabildo de Lanzarote and its technology has been approved and is shared by the National Library of Spain and by Europeana, the great library of the European Union. It has also collaborated with the Destiladera and Muestrario de una pandemia projects, both carried out by the Lanzarote Film Festival.