Editing Spanish Revolution of 1936 (section)

===== Film industry =====
The CNT's Entertainment Union was a model of organization and operation in the confederated media. It was significant that, between 20 and 25 July, the cinemas and theaters of Barcelona were one of the first and most resoundingly successful occupations by the activists from Barcelona's CNT. On 26 July, a Technical Commission was put in charge of preparing a project that defined the new framework of work in cinemas and theaters. That same day, the Catalan Generalitat, overwhelmed by events, created the {{lang|ca|Comisaría d'Espectacles de Catalunya}} which was not successful; the production of workers organized through the CNT union completely took over production.

From 6 August to May 1937, revolutionary enthusiasm organized and energized all the cinematographic and theatrical activities in Barcelona. The project began by standardizing wages for all job types in the film industry. Sickness, disability, old age, and forced unemployment benefits were established permanently. This whole system employed about 6,000 people and supported 114 cinemas, 12 theaters, and 10 music halls during that period. An opera company was even created at the Tivoli theater, in an attempt to bring the genre closer to the general public.

It can be said that it was one of the sectors that functioned the best economically, even building some cinemas such as the Ascaso (today's Vergara). Others were reformed or were finished building, such as the Durruti cinema (now the Arenas cinema).

At the political level, the collectivization of cinema was a new way of understanding art radically opposed to the bourgeois and capitalist system. There was no unity of criteria in the creative process, dogmatism was not allowed behind the scenes, and the "seventh art" incorporated a new form of journalism by taking cameras out into the street, to film what was happening there. A popular mobilization emerged to tell what they saw, and the message emerged as counter-information. The information of the people thus replaced that of power.

Between 1936 and 1937, more than a hundred films were produced, promoted by the production company and the distributor created by the CNT. The documentary genre was undoubtedly the most accomplished, as war news inevitably pushed out any other activity. [[SIE Films]] (Syndicate of the Entertainment Industry) and Spartacus Films were created for the production of films. The Union had two large studios with three ''plateaux'' for filming, and the "Palace of Belgium" was set up on the premises of [[Montjuïc]], for auxiliary services of sets and extras. However, the repression of May 1937 strangled the Social Revolution in the streets of Barcelona and, although films continued to be made, the previous production rate slowed considerably.

Anarchist film production was a large part of the creative life in Catalonia at the time; and it spread to Aragon, Madrid, and Levante through different models, adapting to the circumstances of towns and cities and the working people who made them possible. Although productive activity in Madrid was less important than in Barcelona, 24 films were shot, both documentaries and fictional.