Starting Points: Catalan

Mar 11, 2010

Barcelona Journal - Trumpeting Catalan on the Big Screen

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

BARCELONA, Spain — Here in the principal city of Catalonia, the native language, Catalan, is heard just about everywhere except in the movies. But that may be about to change because the local government is expected to pass a bill requiring that at least half the copies of every film from outside Europe, including all major American productions, be dubbed in Catalan.

That prompted 576 of the 790 movie houses in Catalonia, a region slightly bigger than Maryland, to close for a day last month in protest.

Industry leaders recalled that Catalonia’s government, which enjoys a broad measure of autonomy from Madrid, made a similar proposal in 1998 but backed down in the face of opposition from theater owners, film distributors and foreign production companies. “They say it’s necessary for the government to make a rule, because the private sector doesn’t do it,” said Camilo Tarrazón Rodón, president of the Association of Film Businesses in Catalonia, which opposes the bill.

Film attendance has declined in recent years, he said, with the exception of an uptick last year thanks to the arrival of digital and 3-D. “Banks are not lending, companies have business problems and kids look at films on cellphones,” Mr. Tarrazón said. “How can we pay for it?”

With an influx of immigrants to prosperous Catalonia — about one million of the 7.3 million population are newcomers — the region has been struggling to maintain what it considers its Catalonian soul. The bill is but the latest attempt to assert Catalan culture and its language — similar to Spanish, but also to French and Italian — yet with its own history, poets and prose writers.

By law, schoolchildren are required to receive their education in Catalan. In a further blow to Spanish culture, a referendum before the Catalan Parliament would end bullfighting, another Spanish passion, here altogether.

The draft film law comes at a time of deep uncertainty for the central government in Madrid, which is struggling with a severe economic crisis and high unemployment. But it also highlights Barcelona’s curious role in Spanish culture, even as it seeks to assert its distinctness.

Oddly, Barcelona is the capital of Spain’s publishing industry, and roughly three-fourths of all books purchased in the region are in Spanish, said Joan Manuel Tresserras, 55, a former communications professor who is now the Catalan culture minister. Half of all radio programs are heard in Catalan and a majority of plays in the city’s theaters, with the exception of musicals, are in Catalan.

“We think we need a more diverse cinematic culture, a wider range of opportunities,” he said, seated under two big canvases by the 20th-century Catalan painter Miquel Barceló. Under Franco, the use of Catalan was discouraged, Mr. Tresserras said. That eased after Franco’s death in 1975, but even two years later, Mr. Tresserras, then serving in the army, said he spent three days in solitary confinement after officers overheard him speaking Catalan.

Mr. Tresserras says moviegoers do not go to films in Catalan because so few are shown — about 3 percent of all movies — that they are not aware they might have that alternative. But theater owners and distributors say there are few films in Catalan because moviegoers do not want them.

The magazine Cineytele said that in tests at a multiplex in Barcelona, only 12 of 131 moviegoers chose Catalan when offered the choice of seeing the same foreign film in that or Spanish.

Not everyone is convinced. “Most theater is in Catalan, and there are no complaints,” said Rosanna Rion, 46, who grew up speaking Catalan and teaches English at Barcelona University. “These tests — I’m not so sure about them.”

What major film producers, including American majors, have told the government here is that they fear, in addition to the additional cost, a possible knock-on effect. “They fear that Galicia or the Basque countries, or even the Bretons or Corsica, in France, could be next,” said Joan Antoni Gonzáles, 61, who is secretary general of Catalonia’s Federation of Audiovisual Producers, which last year broke away from Spain’s national organization. The draft law would not affect films that were shot in Spanish, or European films unless more than 15 copies are circulated, so the brunt will clearly be felt by American productions.

Mr. Gonzáles says he believes that Parliament will “make the law sweeter for the majors,” possibly by having the government pay for the dubbing — a task made easier by the introduction of digitalized films. Last year, box office revenue at Catalonia’s film theaters rose by almost 10 percent, thanks mainly to the introduction of digital and 3-D blockbusters like “Avatar,” he said.

He cited a recent film, “Elegy,” by the Catalan director Isabel Coixet, an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel in which a college teacher becomes obsessed with a student, played by Penélope Cruz. “Elegy,” he said, was shown in seven theaters in the original English with Catalan subtitles, and was a total success.

Some visitors to Barcelona feel the city is sufficiently cosmopolitan to absorb any languages. “Most of my courses are in Spanish, though my American literature courses are in English,” said Luigi Suardi, 23, an Italian exchange student at Barcelona University. He said his friends spoke a mix of Spanish and Catalan. “People living in Barcelona don’t have strong feelings” about language, he said, adding, “It’s difficult for small countries.”

Enric Juste, 33, a documentary filmmaker, said that above all, Catalonia lacked original films with subtitles. “There is no tradition here of using subtitles,” he said. “People are not used to such films.”

He favors the draft law, dismissing critics who say films in Catalan do not draw viewers. “But there are so few films in Catalan, you’re talking about a situation that, at the moment, is fiction; you cannot talk about a situation that doesn’t exist.”