Canary Islands Film, the Audiovisual Department of the Canary Islands Government, announced advancements in content production, including support for minority co-productions, the opening of Gran Canaria Studios, and the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the declaration of the audiovisual industry as a strategic sector. Let’s take a quick look at each of them.
Last year, 2023, a new line of subsidies for minority co-productions was launched, with the aim of allowing Canarian production companies to benefit from collaborating with those from outside the islands. A total of 18 projects were presented, of which seven were subsidized, with amounts ranging from 73,500 to 165,000 euros per project.
Among the subsidized films, we find three documentaries: "Moon Diary" by Vanessa del Campo, "Why I Don’t Write Anything" by Isabel Fernández, and "Muchedumbre" by Felipe Rugeles. Additionally, there are four fiction feature films: "Mother Bird" by Sofía Quirós, "Amoeba" by Siyou Tan, "Overlake" by Claudio Rosa, and "Cuántica Rave" by Paco Campano.
Another important milestone in the Canarian audiovisual industry is the opening of Gran Canaria Studios, which is an audiovisual complex that covers a total constructed area of approximately 6,000 sqm, made up of two sets of 1,200 sqm and 1,800 sqm with attached facilities straight in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The first “pilot project”, at the end of 2022, was the Swedish film "The Abyss" for Netflix, which had the production services of Seven Islands Film and they shot for 6 weeks on both sets simultaneously (plus another 4 weeks of construction and preparation). In 2023, the film "Deep Water" with Ben Kingsley and Aaron Eckhart was filmed on the sets. In January 2024, the year began with the filming of 2 films of the German saga, "The Investigators" (Die drei Fragezeichen), produced by the German production company Wiedermann & Berg Film GmbH for Sony Pictures. This filming took place on both the 1,800m2 set and the backlot for more than 3 months.
FInally, Canary Islands Film celebrated the 15th anniversary of the declaration of the audiovisual industry as a strategic sector. Canary Islands Film has become in these years a solid team that works in close collaboration with the Presidency, the Canary Islands Treasury, ZEC, Proexca and, of course, with the Film Commissions that manage the seven islands and the private sector.
The creation of the Canary Islands Audiovisual Cluster and professional associations, the reinforcement of the training offer and the promotion of the celebration of festivals and markets constitute other important milestones of these 15 years. Likewise, the provision of supercomputers and other technological advances, along with the construction of sets for interior filming, have represented another commitment to the sector on the islands.
The positive balance of these three decades of audiovisual as a strategic sector is also based on what the figures and data indicate: In just seven years (from 2017 to 2022) the number of filming of real image productions doubled (from 61 it went to 130) and quadrupled the number of animation productions (from 8 in 2018 to 34 in 2022). As for income, if the cinema left 35 million in 2017, that amount multiplied by six in 2022, exceeding 223 million, the year in which the Canary Islands broke all records (in 2023 the audiovisual activity experienced a slight decrease due to the writers strike but in 2024 has increased again). A progression that is expected to be resumed in the following year.
Another important factor is that the audiovisual industry in 2022 involved the direct hiring of more than 15,000 professionals. Added to this is the direct employment generated by audiovisual companies that have taken advantage of the ZEC, both real image, animation, post-production and visual effects, technical and other activities, and which have grown exponentially in recent years.