Spanish cinema 1973–2010

Auteurism, politics, landscape and memory

Maria M. Delgado, Robin Fiddian

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780719096587
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526141781
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

This collection offers a new lens through which to examine Spain's cinema production following the isolation imposed by the Franco regime. The seventeen key films analysed in the volume span a period of 35 years that have been crucial in the development of Spain, Spanish democracy and Spanish cinema. They encompass different genres (horror, thriller, melodrama, social realism, documentary), both popular (Los abrazos rotos/Broken Embraces, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and more select art house fare (En la ciudad de Sylvia/In the City of Sylvia, El espíritu de la colmena/Spirit of the Beehive) and are made in English (as both first and second language), Basque, Castilian, Catalan and French. Offering an expanded understanding of 'national' cinemas, the volume explores key works by Guillermo del Toro and Lucrecia Martel alongside an examination of the ways in which established auteurs (Almodóvar, José Garci, Carlos Saura) and younger generations of filmmakers (Cesc Gay, Amenábar, Bollaín) have harnessed cinematic language towards a commentary on the nation-state. The result is a bold new study of the ways in which film has created new prisms that have determined how Spain is positioned in the global marketplace.

Table of contents

• Front matter
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973): To Kill a Mockingbird as neglected intertext
• Cet obscur objet du désir/That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977): Buñuel’s technique
• Ocaña. Retrat intermitent/Ocaña. An Intermittent Portrait (Ventura Pons, 1977): the Mediterranean movida and the passing away of Francoist Barcelona
• El Dorado (Carlos Saura, 1987): the keys to El Dorado
• El sol del membrillo/The Quince Tree Sun (Víctor Erice, 1992): moving pictures – painting, drawing and fi lmmaking
• Vacas/Cows (Julio Medem, 1992): from Goya’s dining room via Apocalypse Now
• Tesis/Thesis (Alejandro Amenábar, 1996): delights and follies in filmic discourse
• Un instante en la vida ajena/A Glimpse of Other Lives ( José Luis López-Linares, 2003): domesticating the documentary archive
• Ninette (José Luis Garci, 2005): Paris revisited
• El laberinto del fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006): Spanish horror
• La noche de los girasoles/The Night of the Sunflowers ( Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo, 2006): palimpsests of genre, palimpsests of violence
• En la ciudad de Sylvia/In the City of Sylvia ( José Luis Guerín, 2007) and the durée of a dérive
• Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008): Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem acting strangely
• Los abrazos rotos/Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodóvar, 2009): talking cures
• V.O.S. (Cesc Gay, 2009): from Shakespearean comedy to national identity
• También la lluvia/Even the Rain (Iciar Bollaín, 2010): social realism, transnationalism and (neo)colonialism
• Index