The Malaga Film Festival achieves unanimous support from the sector and the city in its most challenging and helpful edition
The 23rd Malaga Film Festival, held from 21st to 30th August, ended with the unanimous support of the sector, the city, the public and the institutions, which applauded the success of an edition that its director, Juan Antonio Vigar, described as the bravest and most necessary in the history of the event. Marked by exhaustive hygienic-sanitary protocols, this 23rd edition has demonstrated, according to the opinion of the numerous voices that have supported it, that cinemas and theatres are safe spaces when adequate measures are applied and that it is possible - and more useful than ever for the sector, the public and the city - to hold cultural events in these times of pandemic.
Thus, this edition has meant a qualitative leap in the consideration of the Festival as an international event dedicated to cinema in Spanish, thanks also to a successful combination of the presential and the virtual, which has allowed the public and the press to get closer to all the teams of the films participating in the Official Section and to all the honoured ones, a section in which there have been such prestigious names as those of Arturo Ripstein, Retrospective Award - Malaga Today; Carlos Marques-Marcet, Malaga Talent Award - La Opinión de Málaga; Tatiana Hernández, Ricardo Franco-Film Academy Award; and Kiti Mánver and Óscar Martínez, Biznaga Ciudad del Paraíso. The Málaga - Diario Sur Award was presented by surprise at the opening gala to health professionals for their work in the fight against COVID-19.
The Official Section brought together some very prominent names from our cinema, proof of the growing confidence in the Festival among the most experienced directors, combined with very promising new names, consolidating the Malaga event as a discoverer of new talent. This fact has been confirmed yet again in the Festival's list of winners, with Pilar Palomero's Las niñas (The Girls) and Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson's Summer White winning the Golden Biznagas for best Spanish and Latin American film respectively.
The number of films programmed in the 23rd edition has been 152 and the number of sessions, 262, in an edition focused on the exhibition and the cinematographic fact and in which the activities and social events have been eliminated with the aim of avoiding crowds of people. This has been the case with the traditional red carpet at the Cervantes Theatre, which has been converted into a large photocall for the media at the Gran Hotel Miramar, through which the main faces and personalities of Spanish cinema and culture have passed.
The 23rd edition had almost 65,000 spectators and participants in its different activities, including the 16,000 tickets issued as well as those attending those other activities with direct access, with accreditation or invitation, and the exhibitions. It should be noted that all the screenings and activities have had a maximum capacity reduction of 65%, in compliance with current health regulations.
On the other hand, MaF - Málaga de Festival 2020, which took place from 20th February to 12th March, before the postponement of the Festival due to the coronavirus, which also forced the suspension of part of the activities programmed in MaF from the 10th, brought together almost 38,500 people in its 147 activities distributed in more than 59 spaces in the eleven districts of the city. Málaga de Festival, the prologue to the Málaga Film Festival, which celebrates culture with cinema as a theme, based on a cultural model of collaboration and participation between the main parts of the city's cultural fabric, addressed the climate emergency, the cinema of the 70s, Fellini and African women in its lines of discourse. He had the collaboration of "la Caixa" Foundation as the main collaborator of the event.
The number of people accredited at the 23rd edition of the Festival was 1,302, of whom 765 corresponded to guests and 537 to press professionals belonging to a total of 227 media outlets, including the 18 foreign media that covered the Festival, from countries such as Argentina, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Montenegro and Portugal, among others. To these 1,302 must be added the almost 800 industry accreditations in March.
As far as the MAFIZ (Malaga Festival Industry Zone) is concerned, Málaga Film Festival has adapted to the new situation since the beginning of the pandemic, which is why the Málaga Work in Progress (Málaga WIP) and MAFF (Málaga Festival Fund & Coproduction Event) events were held online. In the coming months it will be the turn of Spanish Screenings - Málaga de Cine, which will be held from the 17th to the 20th of November with a clear objective, the promotion, diffusion and international sale of Spanish language cinema.
In the field of security, the 23rd Malaga Film Festival also provides some interesting figures to assess the enormous organisational and economic effort made to preserve the health of all. Thus, 8,100 surgical masks have been used; 7,000 latex gloves; 110 floor stickers to mark distances; 35 stickers with a QR code to inform of anti-COVID measures; 37 digital thermometers; 159 litres of hydro-alcoholic gel; 18 nebulisers for cleaning surfaces; and 75 tensabarriers or pivots for managing queues, spaces, etc., among other elements.
To these measures we must add the special and approved masks that the Malaga Festival has put on sale with a design donated in a completely selfless way by the Málaga artist Javier Calleja.
With regard to the Festival's presence on the Internet, and according to data from Google Analytics, the Festival's website (www.festivaldemalaga.com) registered almost 250,000 visits from 6 to 31 August (the period before and during the Festival) with nearly two million-page views. Almost 13,000-page visits are related to the Festival's TV website.
Once again, there has been a significant increase in the Festival's presence on social networks, with a total of 38,260 fans on Facebook as of August 31, 2,420 more than last year (35,840). Since the presentation of content (August 7), the total reach of the Facebook page has been almost 500,000 people and the videos on this network have had a total of 150,000 views, with a total of 75,000 minutes played.
As for Twitter, the total number of followers has increased to 99,200 (96,250 in the last edition), thanks to the 400 tweets launched from @festivalmalaga in this period. The total number of impressions was three million. The videos on Twitter have had almost 450,000 views, with nearly 140,000 minutes viewed. With these figures, the Malaga Festival continues to be the first in terms of Twitter followers among all the film festivals held in Spain.
Instagram has reached 43,000 followers (it had 31,900 at the end of the last edition), thanks to the almost 100 images published and the almost 750 stories launched during the Festival, a total of more than 5.5 million impressions. As for the official app of the Malaga Film Festival, it has received 4,207 downloads (915 in iOs and 3,292 in Android).
The Málaga Film Festival, in its 23rd edition, adding up the expenses made in the months of March and August, as well as the investment linked to MaF, has made an important economic investment in the city in its different productive and service sectors. The hiring by the Festival of companies, professionals and personnel from Malaga is estimated at 640,000 euros, while the hiring of services for production (modules, audiovisuals, lighting, sound, etc.) is estimated at 720,000 euros. Hotel and catering services are valued at 250,000 euros, while those related to communication, media and image reach 220,000 euros.
All of this means that the budgetary management carried out by the Festival in this year 2020 has meant a total direct expenditure in the city of Málaga of 1,830,000 euros, which means the application to the socio-economic development of the city of almost all of the annual contribution of Málaga City Council to the Festival (1,845,000 euros). This management recovers in full for each citizen the 3.5 euros per year that the cost of the Festival per Málaga citizen/year represents.
In detail, this investment has meant the hiring of 105 direct jobs of temporary staff (public relations, production staff, contents, press, etc.), as well as 19 local collaborators and the hiring of 204 Málaga companies in the different logistic and production tasks for the realization of the Festival's activities.
This investment represents an important boost for different economic sectors in Málaga, which have particularly appreciated the celebration of this 23rd edition at a very difficult time, especially in the hotel and catering sector.
Finally, the Festival has already set the dates for its 24th edition, which will take place from 4 to 13 June 2021. This postponement of the event, which is expected to return to its March date later, is due to the need to have enough productions to make an adequate selection, at a time when filming has also been postponed by the pandemic. Once again, there will be 10 days dedicated to Spanish-language films, during which the organisation hopes to return to its usual model, always respecting the security measures applied on those dates.