Technical data
- Title: “CANARY ISLANDS”, 20th Century Fox in Lanzarote
- Original title: Canary Islands
- Year: 1925
- Production: 20th Century Fox
- Country: USA
Description and synopsis
The first filming on Lanzarote that we know of was carried out in 1925 by one of the best-known production companies in the United States, the legendary20th Century Fox.
From press reports at the time, we know that a documentary about the archipelago entitled Canary Islands was shown in cinemas in the USA in 1926. However, despite exhaustive searches, this film has never been found, and there were doubts as to whether or not it had been filmed on Lanzarote. However, a few years ago, the Canarian researcher Agustín Miranda Armas found what are believed to be offcuts from the documentary in the archives of the University of South Carolina in the United States, including valuable shots of Lanzarote and four other islands in the Canary archipelago.
In 1925, Fox sent a crew led by Benjamin Miggins to film material in Mediterranean countries and also in the Canary Islands, taking advantage of the stopover in the islands during the boat trip back to the United States. Although the full Canary Islands material is still to be located, this rescued discarded material is a visual treasure for the islands. In the Lanzarote part, there are striking scenes shot in Arrecife, Tías, Yaiza, La Degollada, Los Valles and Haría. The shots tell much of the island’s history, from its lack of water and the harshness of farming life to the clothing worn by the island’s population at the time. Classics from Lanzarote’s iconography such as the camel and the island’s architecture are present in this recording which is key to Lanzarote’s audiovisual heritage. The images can be viewed on the web portals of the Filmoteca Canaria and Memoria Digital de Lanzarote (www.memoriadelanzarote.com), as well as on the University of South Carolina website.
After this 1925 recording, several small documentaries were made on the island during the following decades, such as those filmed for NODO (official news and documentaries created by the Franco regime), which recorded visits made by various authorities of the dictatorship in the 1940s and 1950s. Some filming by amateur filmmakers from the mid-20th century has also appeared recently, although it wasn’t until the 1960s, with the international opening up of the country and the arrival of tourism, that Lanzarote began to turn into a real stage for major international productions.
