A preparatory meeting was held at the Spanish Cultural Institute “Cervantes” in presence of the guest directors ahead of opening the first Spanish Film Festival, which includes Spanish films and other ones from South America.
Directors Gonthalo Tabia and Billard Pakiro from Spain, Salvador Agairi from Mexico and Sergio Caprira from Columbia attended the meeting, according to the daily al Nahar.
The meeting focused on the American films, which are more appealing to the audience than the European ones. Caprira attributed the reasons for this to publicity and financial power which Hollywood has calling for confronting this huge productions on the world screens through supporting the European cinema. He sees this cinema as semi absent from the world screens even the European ones. He noted that the price of the ticket to see one of his films which costs one million dollars is the same price of a ticket to see a 100,000-dollar American film.
The Mexican director Agairi said the official economic cooperation agreement between the US and his country imposes a de facto situation of the domination of the American films on the screening venues leaving no chance for the local films.
Agairi directed one film in which he tackled the Mexican identity featuring the immigrants to the US who came from the poor class. The Spanish directors expressed their hope for the European films to dominate the world screening venues one day through stronger publicity -- Albawaba.com
