“Cinema enriches our country. And I’m not just talking about money.” • Audiovisual production

The full speech of Mariano Barroso, Chairman of the Board of Directors Film Academyon the occasion of the party Joya Awards 2022:

Good evening, friends, friends, president, president, ministers, deputy mayor.
Good evening guys.

On that day someone stopped me as I was going to enter the supermarket near where I live. He was a neighbor that I saw on our streets other times but we never spoke. He approached me and said, “You’re from Goya, aren’t you?” I told him, yes.. I am one of the Goyas. Then he said to me, ‘Well, besides making films, what do you do?’

It’s a phrase we’ve all heard here at some point.

I kept thinking and told him… Do me a favor, sit on this bench and I’ll tell you what I do for a living. The man looked at me, as if surprised or frightened… He must have seen me looking like I was going to chat with him and told me that he had to go, that he was in a hurry, that he arranged to eat… and left.

If he had stayed, I would have explained what I’m doing. which we do.

I was going to tell him, look, the first thing we do is make up a story. Or base it on something we know. idea. Ideas are in the air, they belong to everyone, until someone comes along and picks them up and writes them down on paper. So it all starts with the written word.

A screenwriter or screenwriter writes one word, then another, then a sentence, a paragraph… and it ends up becoming a script. The text describes who the characters are, what they do, what they say, what they don’t say… It’s the map for everyone on the team. A script like the one written by someone dear to all of us, Honorary Patron of the Film Academy Foundation. Almudena beige. Almudena wrote in a very special way. He has written about the other side of life, about the B side, and about the lesser known, or least talked about, parts of reality.

The five stories vying for the Goya Award for Best Film today have one thing in common: They talk about the least obvious part of reality and have another way of looking at it.

Texts, stories like those by Almudena, those written by all our screenwriters, are the root of everything, and that is something we have to learn about here today. Without the scriptwriters, there wouldn’t be a single movie. None of us will be here today.

I was going to tell my neighbor that I wanted to be a film director, and one day I asked Mario Camus how he managed to direct the actors. Because I saw Holy Innocents And I was very impressed by what Paco Rabal, Alfredo Landa, Terelli Pavez, Juan Diego…

I asked Mario Camus, and he answered me with his usual humility: ‘I do nothing. We filmmakers are not needed. All we have to do is go to the photoshoot to make sure the actors arrive on time.”

I would keep telling him (Gary) that the words that screenwriters write are said by actors and actresses. One of the actresses with the most Goyas could say it, at least four. An actress who did something that many actors are forced to do: give their joy and light to their characters, and through them to their audience. She keeps her pain on herself. Veronica Forky.

No one concealed his pain in such a beautiful way.

Actors and actresses represent the largest group in our profession, as well as in the academy. A quarter of academics are representatives. They are the lowest paid employers. Only one in ten days has a job. Unemployment is still around 90 percent. It’s an impressive number. That is why we spoke with the Minister of Social Security so that they would be given the same protection as other professions. They don’t want more. But they want nothing less, either.

Since the public system does not cover them, the actors have organized themselves and created a kind of parallel social security. It’s called the AISGE Foundation and it caters to our representatives in need, with pensions helping them pay rent. The president of AISGE for many years was another beloved colleague, Pilar Bardem. Apart from making films, Pilar devoted herself to these things.

I would also tell my neighbor. I would like to remind him that our profession is a profession that contributes to the enrichment of our country. And I’m not just talking about money.

I would like to congratulate Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Alberto Iglesias and Alberto Milgo on their Oscar nominations. !! our end!!

Well, this is all to tell you what I cannot tell my neighbor. Some of the things we do apart from making films.

I also wanted to explain what the Academy does, except for Goyas. We are making housing for our screenwriters, Luis García Berlanga Research Grant, next summer we will celebrate the Diversity Campus for Feature Film Projects here in Valencia, in collaboration with the City Council.

But I would have summed it up better: I would have told him that if the Film Academy were a person, it would be someone very similar to Alodena Grandes, Mario Camus, Veronica Forky, or Pilar Bardem. If Spanish cinema had a face, the teacher’s face would be the reference. This partner is José Sacristán, to whom we will be awarding the Goya of Honor.