Publications

The nineties came to a close marked by great optimism and promise. The Spanish short film scene was stepping out into the new millennium full of hope; with ambitious goals and major expectations as regards the potential lying in wait for the future. Some have been met, other touched on, while others have been left by the wayside. The ten years elapsed from 2000 to 2009 have however, doubtless seen huge advances and significant improvements on the road to the holy grail of autonomy and independence for short films from features, and in relation to their claim to being a valuable creative tool in their own right.

As a necessary follow-up to the publication entitled A Prodigious Decade, Spanish Short Film in the Nineties (José M. Velázquez and Luis Ángel Ramírez, Alcalá de Henares – Comunidad de Madrid Film Festival, 2000), this text has been produced employing its predecessor as a starting point to provide a two-part overview, the aim of which is to describe the most important milestones during the following ten years from legal, administrative and industrial points of view (the first section of the book) and as regards formal and aesthetic creation (including the titles of pieces and the names of those involved, in the context of trends and genres, and making up a second more interpretational section).

The first decade of the XXI century has witnessed a huge spread in the use of video (the true audiovisual revolution of the millennium), and adopted the employment of Internet as an essential tool (still to be developed) in the areas of cinematographic production and distribution. As far as Spanish short films are concerned, the start of the millennium saw the consolidation of the commitment made by an increasing number of autonomous regions through their systems of grants and subsidies, as well as the establishment of new distribution systems; with levels of dissemination never achieved before. Factors and conditioners of this kind can be looked at in the book with the ultimate objective being to define as best as possible the industrial situation of short films in the Spanish audiovisual sector, and their relevance in terms of the creative contribution they make. In sum, A Measure in Time, Spanish Short Film in the Noughties, seeks to champion the essence of short film (its length) as a unique and independent characteristic for the development of unlimited creativity, and also to attempt to allude to its ability, to a greater or lesser extent, to adapt to the range of phenomena playing an important part in the development of the decade."