Alicia G. Arribas |
Madrid (EFE).- Los Feroz celebrate their tenth anniversary, an anniversary that “comes to be the affirmation of some awards that nobody expected or believed they were needed”; however, “they have opened our eyes to new creations and have put artists like Los Javis (Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo) on the map, who are a bit of a metaphor for our own existence.”
The consideration belongs to María Guerra, president of the Association of Film Informants of Spain (AICE), the entity that grants these awards to the best of Spanish cinema of the year, and since 2016, also to television series, this year, with a new award for best series script, and with Pedro Almodóvar as godfather and Honor Award.
Guerra, re-elected in 2022 for a second term, assures that she maintains “the torch of foolishness and daring” of the first Feroz and hopes to maintain “the challenging look” with which the association was born.
Ten years ago, Spanish journalists specialized in cinema -series had not yet come to the fore with the current momentum- saw problems and deficiencies in the way in which the cinematographic information machinery worked, imbalances that caused, each time more often, a discomfort that is difficult to explain.
It was 2013 and a group of young reporters, colleagues and friends who had started working at the same time in different media outlets did not take well to the fact that the “traditional” media looked down on those who reported from media outlets with disdain, even superiority. digital.
“David Carrón, Pedro Vallín, Laura Seoane, Pablo López, David Martos and others were a generational replacement that had suddenly arrived in a profession that resisted change and in which we had to elbow our way into it,” he told EFE. Fernando de Luis-Orueta, founder of the IAEC and then director of a digital medium.
Many talks and much time stolen from sleep at film festivals later, the group took the “leap into the void.”
«When the journalistic world was turning completely, they burst into the festivals and began to question the traditional criteria and the privileges of the press. But what press? Is it that there was only one press with credibility?”, points out María Guerra.
The AICE, considers the veteran journalist, director of La Script, “appeared at a time when digital was changing everything, and even then I found its courage and arrogance wonderful, which for me has been very refreshing.”
Carrón -then a cultural journalist at La Razón- assumed the first presidency and later Vallín -editor of Culture at La Vanguardia- was elected to the position in the first elections, already with 180 members (now close to three hundred).
And as a flagship, the Feroz Awards. But creating prizes out of nothing was not easy, much less at a time when the Goyas themselves had financial difficulties.
“At that time, Gas Natural sponsored film activities and we convinced them for the first push, but they did not put up enough money to produce the gala, so we did it by taking vacations in our media,” explains Fernando de Luis-Orueta. And they also assumed debts, even personal ones.
The employment situation of some members of the team -and the multiple praise for that first gala, which was a complete success- pushed them to reconcile their journalistic profession with the production of events: La Tropa Produce was born, today a consolidated company that he continues to take care of the Feroz, among many other activities.
«That was ‘Hollywood’, we managed to do it on the Gran Vía, in the Callao cinema -we raised all the seats for the first time-, and the City Council let us occupy the entire square. The thing was so big -remembers David Carrón for EFE- that Álex de la Iglesia, former president of the Academy, told me: ‘You are bastards because you have achieved what I did not achieve with the Goyas’, and that it was a red carpet outdoors in Madrid, because he had to put it in a tent when they were made at the Teatro Real ».
Today, the president is aware of the “biggest problem” of the association: “Precariousness, which is also invisible, not only for citizens but for the industry itself”, and which causes “the appearance of a ‘fan’ journalism – Guerra defines it -, which moves in a very diffuse territory in terms of credibility ».
“You have to be critical, but the journalist has to have money to eat,” warns the president of the reporters, who will undoubtedly address the issue in her emblematic speech at the Spanish “Golden Globes” party, which will return to Saragossa.
