As Councilor for Culture and as a fan of the seventh art, I can only rejoice in the celebration of a new edition of the Lanzarote Film Festival, which offers us a careful selection of excellent Spanish cinematography which, paradoxically, needs more than ever dissemination, support from the Administrations and the public in the theaters.
According to the latest study by the Observatory of Piracy and consumption habits of digital content, cinema is the economic sector of the cultural industry most affected by this practice.
38 percent of illegal downloads are movies. According to calculations in the report, the volume of films accessed illegally was 877 million, whose market value would reach 6,139 million. And when this happens, the cultural industry bears a VAT of 21 percent on its products, imposed by the Government of the Popular Party. A bad combination, without a doubt, and the direct cause of the suffocation suffered by the sector.
Cinema needs an audience to exist. Cinema needs crowded theaters, people willing to laugh and cry, to reflect, to travel, to remember old stories and to learn about new realities. And to exist, cinema needs imaginative and slightly crazy people on the sets, behind the clapperboards, lighting and looking for sets and investors.
Can you imagine life without Casablanca or Gone with the Wind? Can you imagine having gone through 2014 without having seen Spanish Affair? What would we do on Sunday afternoons without a good movie for dessert, in the cinema, on DVD or on TV?
We support cinema because it is made of the stuff of dreams. We will continue to sponsor the Lanzarote Film Festival because it allows us, for a few days, to enjoy the best films made in Spain.
And of course, we invite all the residents of Arrecife, all the residents of Lanzarote, all our visitors, to enter the magical world of celluloid and to attend the sessions of good Spanish cinema at the Insular Theater.
Don't miss it!
*Eva de Anta, councilor for Culture of the Arrecife City Council
