Soccer legend Pelé kneeling to tie his boots in the seconds before kickoff at the 1970 World Cup and the Puma brand on show is a legendary image; less well known is that it was engineered by a Canary Islander.
Hans Henningsen, widely cited as a father of modern sports marketing, is now the subject of a documentary, “The Puma King,” from Las Palmas- and Tenerife-based Videre. And its exactly the kind of title that the Canary Islands have brought to Sunny Side of the Doc to sell, a homegrown story with wide appeal.
“It’s like living on a goldmine of stories for documentaries that’s still pending development,” Pablo Hernández, president of the Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC), tells Variety, as the archipelago makes documentary the latest front in a 17-year drive to diversify a tourism economy into screen production. “If you come and set up here to manage the IP, you’re going to have an amazing amount of stories.”
Having built recognized industries in live action, animation, VFX and video games on one of Europe’s most aggressive incentive packages, the islands, with some exceptions, have spent barely three years drilling into non-fiction.
“The opportunity is no longer simply to come and film in the Canary Islands,” says producer Oscar Fernández of Videre and sister company Mediareport. “It’s to build projects from the Canary Islands.”
