One of the first "films" that was ever seen in
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was in 1896. It was called The Derby and it was made by Robert William Paul, an English inventor and a pioneer of the
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.
Of course it was
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, and it lasts less than one
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!
This was the
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time that
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in Galicia had ever seen moving images. The event was held at the Teatro-Circo in A Coruña, on 2nd September 1896. The moving images were shown on a KINETOGRAPH, invented by Thomas Edison: one of the
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that led up to the creation of the cinema.
A Room with a View. The Derby. Licencia YouTube
The
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brothers' invention, the CINEMATOGRAPH, was used in Galicia the next
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. On the 17th April 1897 films such as "The arrival of a train", by Louis Lumière were shown on the cinematograph in Pontevedra, accompanied by the local orchestra and a guitarist.
Lucas Arrival of a train Licencia YouTube
The first moving
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in Galicia were filmed by José Sellier, a pioneer of Galician cinema who was born in France but lived in A Coruña. There he showed his "films" of scenes such as "Waves in Orzán".
The first
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with music was shown in Galicia on the 14th March 1930, and it starred the
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who was The Jazz
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. Do you remember his name? Yes! It was Al
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, and this film was his second film, The Singing Fool. Sound movies came to Galicia a little later than the rest of Spain because there was a
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adapting the theatres to the new
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. In fact, even in 1935 only half the cinemas in Galicia could show talking films.
The
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War and the years during which Francisco
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was
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in Spain were not good for cinema in this country. Some films were made in Galicia but really cinema came to life again in this part of Spain in the 1970s.
People who were interested in the cinema formed groups of amateurs who made short films: some of the most well-known were Euloxio Ruibal, Roberto Vidal Bolaño or Enrique Rodríguez Baixeras.
The first
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film produced by Galicians was Malapata, directed by Carlos Piñeiro in 1980, and the first very successful one was Mamasunción, by Chano Piñeiro (Forcarei, 1954-Vigo, 1995). He was also the
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of Sempre Xonxa (1989), one of the most famous Galician films.
Amigos de Casteleiro Sempre Xonxa Licencia YouTube
There are also Galician animated films. The first animated film made in Europe using the three-dimensional stop-motion technique is Galician: O Apóstolo, directed by Fernando Cortizo in 2012.
One of the most widely-seen films in the Galician language is A Esmorga, directed in 2014 by Ignacio Vilar (Petín, 1951), adapted from Eduardo Blanco Amor's brilliant book.
A Esmorga filme. A Esmorga. Licencia YouTube
In the year 2019 a film was made in Galicia by a Galician director that became a great hit internationally, O que arde (Fire will Come), directed by Oliver Laxe. We will be looking at this film in the next part of this project.