What are we seeing on TV today? The question is already a classic in our homes thanks to the generalization of subscriptions to payment platforms with audiovisual content. CaixaForum has just joined this offer, an online platform developed by the “la Caixa” Foundation, a pioneer in our country with a wide catalog of cultural proposals and scientific dissemination.
And it is a pioneer for three reasons. The most obvious is that it draws on themes with a minority presence on other platforms, such as art, literature, scientific dissemination or music. In addition, it is free and without limit of simultaneous devices from which it can be accessed with the same account. And, as if that were not enough, it is the only platform that offers video content and podcasts.
CaixaForum started up last December. A highly anticipated launch with an initial catalog of more than 300 video titles and a thousand content capsules to which new releases are added every week. Viewed all of them in a row, they would add up to more than 580 hours of programming. It is just the starting signal, because in the coming months weekly premieres will be arriving until the 400 titles are counted in the first year alone. Along with video content, you can also find various podcasts.
Almost half of the offer are original productions from the ”la Caixa” Foundation. The catalog is completed with collaborations with other national and international cultural institutions, as well as with the purchase of pre-existing content rights that complement the different editorial lines.
Caixaforum was born with an innovative approach. It does not come to offer more of the same, but more and different. Some of the proposals that you can already see are the documentary series En Compañía, which follows the staging of four plays from the first reading of the script to its premiere in the theater; In the studio, an invitation to sneak into the studio of artists such as Carlos Bunga, Ignasi Aballí, Miki Leal or Luis Gordillo; avant-garde audiovisual creations in Espacio-pantalla; an x-ray of the cartoon of the hand of the spaghetti monster, Eneko Las Heras, 72KILOS or Soy Cardo in La lucidity of the brief; and various contents of scientific dissemination, from the human body to microorganisms.
Of course, there will be no shortage of the great arts, such as photography, literature, cinema or music from an unusual, daring and groundbreaking perspective. In At the foot of the page, some of the most important writers on the literary scene talk about the book, the character and the author who marked them forever. In Continuous Session, Arturo González-Campos reels off the ins and outs and cinephile anecdotes of great titles of Spanish cinema, such as Amanece que no es poco, La cabina or Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall. In Portadas, Ricardo Moya analyzes some of the most impressive album covers, from Rosalía to Aretha Franklin, and Rossy de Palma does the same in Prêt à regarder! with films where fashion has a leading weight.
One of the great incentives of programming is that the arts arrive narrated by their own protagonists. The projects have well-known names in their fields such as Fernando Trueba, Blanca Portillo, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Julio Manrique, Soledad Sevilla, Emilio Morenatti, Bernardo Atxaga or Santiago Auserón. The duration of the pieces ranges from just two minutes, in some micro-documentaries, to ten hours, in conversations between great creators.
All titles are available in their original version and are subtitled in Spanish. In addition, practically all of the original content also has subtitles in Catalan and subtitles in Portuguese and English will be added progressively. An ambitious proposal that aims to become a reference in Spanish-speaking cultural and scientific dissemination.
Fiction for large audiences is the highlight of most of the audiovisual platforms available in our country. To this we must add those specialized in sports or gastronomic content. Viewers increasingly consume more content through the screens, but they also demand more variety, including leisure and cultural content. A bit of Einstein among so many dragons, parallel worlds and police dramas. This project was born from that concern in 2019.
The months of confinement corroborated that feeling. They also served to speed up the start-up of the project and to fine-tune its development with a clear idea: it had to have original, quality content accessible to all audiences. Open to experts in each of the disciplines, but also to the curious. This is how CaixaForum took shape, a platform governed by the same principles with which the ”la Caixa” Foundation defines the programming of its cultural centers: rigor, accessibility, dissemination, singularity and universality of its contents.
This Thursday the 6th, six new episodes of the Backstage series will be released, in which prominent professionals who have passed through the CaixaForum centers talk about their experience in fields as diverse as fashion, comics or science. Among these new chapters is the one starring the filmmaker Carla Simón, whose film Alcarràs (winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin and a complete critical and public success) reaches the 2023 Goya Awards with 11 nominations, including Simón's for Best Director and best original screenplay.
In addition, this February CaixaForum reviews the work of the director Agnès Varda in collaboration with the Barcelona Film Fest and A Contracorriente Films. Viewers will be able to get closer to the work of this pioneer of feminist cinema and one of the great references of the Nouvelle Vague with the documentary 'Varda por Agnès' and the film 'Cleo from 5 to 7'. Both will be available on the platform from February 1 to 28.
The 'Maestros del Periodismo' podcast, produced by the Madrid Press Association, premiered a new episode dedicated to Carmen Sarmiento on January 30. In the coming weeks, at the rate of a fortnightly premiere, new content dedicated to Victoria Prego, Juan Luis Cebrián, Fernando Ónega, Pura Ramos, Luis Ángel de la Viuda and José María Carrascal will be programmed.
For their part, lovers of the pictorial arts now have 'Tríptiko' available, a short film in which some of Bosch's capital works that are housed in the Museo Nacional del Prado 'come to life'.
