The Filmoteca Canaria will screen the historic film ‘Familia Navarro Nieto en la playa de Las Canteras’ at the prestigious event Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy. This film, dating back to 1915, is part of the largest international retrospective dedicated to the origins of Spanish cinema, an initiative promoted by various national film archives and institutions.
In 2009, the Filmoteca Canaria received a deposited home movie filmed on Pathé Kok (28 mm), capturing images of a family on Las Canteras beach. It was donated by Miguel Curbelo Navarro, the grandson of one of the children appearing in the film, and automatically became one of the few surviving home movies from those years in Spain.
The film, known as ‘Familia Navarro Nieto en la playa de Las Canteras’, will be shown at one of the leading festivals dedicated to silent cinema. The exhibition will be part of the first international monographic retrospective on the beginnings of cinema in Spain (1896-1919), driven by collaboration with various film archives, archives, and heritage institutions.
Between October 5th and 8th, strategically coinciding with Spanish Cinema Day (October 6th), a total of 63 cinematographic works will be presented. The Canary Islands film will offer international audiences the chance to discover the evolution of the medium in Spain, from the arrival of the cinematograph to the first national production initiatives.
The presence of this film and others selected is an exceptional milestone for Spain's cinematographic heritage, made possible by intensive collaboration in preservation, research, and restoration of archives. The Filmoteca Canaria has worked with numerous institutions, including the Filmoteca Valenciana, the Arxiu del So i de la Imatge de Mallorca, the Filmoteca de Zaragoza, the Filmoteca de Galicia, the Nafarroako Filmoteka, the Filmoteca de Andalucía, the Euskadiko Filmategia, the Museu del Cinema de Girona, the Biblioteca de Catalunya, the Filmoteca de Catalunya, and the Filmoteca Española.
Furthermore, the project has international collaboration from the Institut Lumière, the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, the Cinémathèque française, the British Film Institute, and the Centre National de la Cinématographie et de l’image animée, with support from the Instituto Cervantes in Milan and the Research Project Spain on Stage (from the CSIC's Institute of History).
Part of the materials exhibited at the event will be incorporated, starting in October and coinciding with Spanish Cinema Day, into PLATFO, the public and free platform of the ICAA for the dissemination of Spanish cinematographic and audiovisual heritage, facilitating access to new audiences.
