Algarve close up
No need to keep you in suspense. The work of the Algarve Film Commission is to promote the region as the perfect place for film productions.
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Turn on the camera. Zoom in. No need for artificial lighting. A temperate Mediterranean-style climate, three thousand hours of sun per year, little rain, 150 kilometres of coastline, national parks, mountains, big European cities nearby, historic buildings everywhere you turn. The Algarve has natural attributes and excellent heritage for the cinema and television industry. That’s a fact.
But to be really film-friendly it needs more. It needs to facilitate productions, to discover and train local technicians, to offer financial incentives. It needs to entice filmmakers from inside and especially outside the country.
“To be doing this kind of promotion, it makes no sense to put billboards in the middle of cities or huge advertising on the side of buses”, says Paulo Pereira, president of the Algarve Film Commission. Unless, of course, it is on the route to Beverly Hills, which passes the front doors of important Hollywood producers and celebrities.
“Our work is surgical procedure. It is done through personal contacts, encouraging scriptwriters, directors and producers from all over the world to get to know the region and set their stories here”, he explains. He can’t resist listing the advantages of the Algarve: more hours of sunlight per day represents greater productivity for film teams. The diversity of landscapes allows for a variety of plots. There are the beaches of extensive sand, dunes and cliffs, the mountains, Roman remains, Muslim heritage, Christian castles and those left during the Age of Discoveries. Sagres is a unique symbol, Tavira a romantic backdrop, Vila Real de Santo António represents the 18th century. Then there are the logistical considerations. The Algarve is only two and a half hours flying time from London and Paris.
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Everyone’s a winner
The creation of the Algarve Film Commission came from the idea of exploiting the potential of this region situated in the far south of the country as a magnet for the audiovisual industry. Apart from the finely-honed contacts, they organize technical training courses to create a pool of professionals in the area. Through The Star Tracker network, the international project to identify Portuguese talents worldwide, they have discovered many people in important positions in the industry all over Europe, South Africa, Canada and the United States: “Obviously, we have easier contact with these people, which may be a window of opportunity for the Algarve. They set out to send projects here, speak about us to other professionals. They are vital”, says Paulo Pereira.
But what does the Algarve stand to gain in all this? In truth, from the initial idea through to the opening night a film involves around 100 professionals, from the writer to the projectionist. Along the way there are carpenters, electricians, lawyers, accountants, extras, dressmakers, picture editors… The hotel business also gains, as do restaurants, catering companies and shops.
The package also includes visibility for the region, advertising on the cinema screen. Market research shows that a great percentage of the tourists who visit Paris do because they have seen the city in a film. Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona had proven impact on tourism to the city. Ten years later, The Lord of the Rings still brings visitors to New Zealand. Not to mention Mamma Mia, a real two-hour advertising plug for Greece.
A caravel in Cannes
There are some places you just have to go. In 2008, the Algarve Film Commission team went to the International Market at Cannes, an event parallel to the Film Festival. They entered the port, overcrowded with vulgar 50-metre yachts, at the head of the Caravel Boa Esperança, a perfect replica of the boats used during the time of the Portuguese discoveries. It was a masterstoke. Heads turned and in the days that followed, the caravel received visits from professionals from all over the world and functioned as the meeting room for Ibermedia, which represents 17 Iberian-American organizations.
“The film-making process is a long one. Forrest Gump took ten years, Avatar took fifteen. You need to develop the idea, write the script, structure your finances, organize a cast, check actors’ availability. We want to capture those productions during that process”, confesses Paulo Pereira. The Seville Film Festival, which has a fair devoted to locations, is another target for the Algarve Film Commission.
Using these strategies, the Algarve has hosted 50 productions over the last three years, including fiction, documentaries, advertising and photography. The teams have come from various parts of the world and done everything: an advert for the Bank of Angola, a Spanish historical film, some Chinese adverts for mobile phones, a German film about demons, a Japanese advert… Long gone are the days when all that was filmed in the region had a title which included the words fishing, almond tress, legends, sardine, Sagres, moors and navigators. The spell was already broken by 1969, when two science fiction films were made here. The Spanish SOS Invasión and the British Doppelganger.
The Algarve as a double
One of the advantages presented by the Algarve Film Commission is that the region can serve as a double for other parts of the world. “We have been asked for landscapes that look like Florida, South America and Morocco. Some people say the Algarve does very well for Afghanistan”. Paulo Pereira is a strong believer in the schizophrenic nature of the Algarve landscape. Porto da Baleeira, in Sagres, has served as Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the 19th century – after taking down some electric streetlights and hiding the plastic lifebuoys – and doubled as a Dutch port. The Swedish film Millenium II opened last October. The cinema adaptation of Stig Larsson’s bestseller is moving millions. In Scandinavia alone it attracted 480,000 cinema-goers on the first week, which featured scenes filmed at Praia da Galé beach. An Algarve postcard, no doubt. But what was being portrayed was a beach in the Caribbean.
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By Manuela Carona
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