Lights, Camera, Action: Filming in the Modern Movement

The Modern Movement and Film

Architecture is no longer just a backdrop in film; it becomes increasingly more important until is another character in the story. The relevance of the locations is such that we could not understand certain films if we changed their settings. Could you imagine King Kong climbing a building that wasn’t the Empire State?

In recent years, Spanish fiction has been focusing its attention on buildings belonging to the modern movement. Increasingly, these types of buildings are being used as settings for film productions. As a result, those of us interested in modern architecture enjoy seeing what is on the screen all the more.

Paradigmatic Buildings

Among the buildings representative of the architecture of this period, there are some that appear in multiple films. The Torres Blancas building, designed in the 1960s by Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, an undisputed paradigm of the Spanish modern movement, is one of them. Its characteristic volume is the backdrop for feature films such as The Crack by José Luis Garci, Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control or Some Time Later by José Luis Cuerda. Even the singer C. Tangana uses it in several of his music videos.

Known as the “Crown of Thorns”, the Headquarters of the Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute is the only building that remains on the Earth in the post-apocalyptic future of José Luis Cuerda’s Some Time Later. And it is the perfect setting for a gala, with Antonio Banderas as the main guest, in The Skin I Live In by Pedro Almodóvar.

A New Kind of Watching: TV Series

The film industry has changed, not only because of the rise of streaming platforms and the decrease in visits to cinemas, but also because of the format. Television series are increasingly in demand, and they require a level of finishing similar to that of feature films. Several popular Spanish series are known for regularly using buildings from the modern movement, such as Bosé, for example, but, above all, Holy Family. The latter offers a very complete catalogue of examples of modern architecture and uses all kinds of typologies: churches, housing, and offices. Once again, we recognize Torres Blancas among its locations, both the swimming pools and the old restaurant, as well as the parish church of Our Lady of Guadalupe by the architects Enrique de la Mora Palomar, Félix Candela Outeriño, José Antonio Torroja Cavanillas, and José Ramón Aspiazu Ordóñez. It is also easy to recognize the ramp from the Torroja Institute by Eduardo Torroja Miret, Gonzalo Echegaray Comba, and Manuel Barbero Rebolledo.

Urban Music, the Cutting Edge in the Most Modern of Settings

The term ‘urban music’ covers a wide variety of musical styles, from hip-hop to reggaeton and trap, to name just a few. They are all characterized, among other things, by a very powerful visual image, both in their styling and their music videos. The well-known C. Tangana has filmed not only in Torres Blancas, but also in the Carvajal House. The video for Comerte entera has accumulated more than 20 million views, a great way to disseminate the heritage of the modern movement. Other singers like Cruz Cafuné and Martin Solveis have filmed at the Architects’ Association of the Canary Islands or La Muralla Roja. Paradoxically, they chose buildings built between the 1960s and 1970s – that is, more than half a century old – as settings for their videos to promote their latest musical successes.

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