INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES Y EXPERIENCIAS CINEMATOGRÁFICAS

The Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas was the first film school in Spain. After its demise as an independent institution, when its role was integrated into regular University studies, it was missed by a body of professionals who had been trained in the institution. It produced key personalities of Spanish film: directors like Luis G. Berlanga, Juan Antonio Bardem, Basilio Martín Patino, José Luis Borau, Carlos Saura, Julio Diamante, Mario Camus, Paul Naschy, Pilar Miró, and Iván Zulueta; cinematographers like José Luis Alcaine and Javier Aguirresarobe; and actors like Charo López and Mario Pardo, among many others.

Inaugurated in 1947, the degree was awarded after a carefully structured three-year course, taught by a wide range of industry professionals, although, for a few years, the title did not grant member-ship to the film professional's union.This suggests a certain tension between the official film industry (studio personnel and commercial filmmakers) and the artistically minded and politically dissident students who attended the Institute. Even though funding and resources were extremely limited, alumnae were grateful for the opportunity to work with technical materials. It was also a meeting point for professionals, which soon became a hotbed of dissidence and non-conformism.

Berlanga, Bardem, and the Salamanca conversations group of filmmakers critical of the Francisco Franco regime were early students. The first director of the institution was Victoriano López García, a liberal. When he was replaced in 1955 by the fascist censor José María Cano Lechuga, students protested, and Lechuga was in turn replaced by the also conservative but more open-minded director José Luis Sáenz de Heredia.

In 1962, the IIEC became the Escuela Oficial de Cine (EOC), and it remained a training institution for film professionals until 1976. After film was introduced as a university subject in 1971, the government regarded the EOC as redundant. The decision to close it down was polemical. Students claimed the place was unique in combining practical and theoretical training (something that did not happen at university), and defended the specificity of the institution against the more compromised university curricula.