Middlebrow Erotic: Didactic Cinema in the Transition to Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Spanish Cinema ◽  
Spanish Film ◽  
Film Language ◽  
The Erotic

This chapter explores what the author calls ‘the middlebrow erotic’ in Spanish cinema. It argues that after the abolition of censorship in 1977, eroticism in Spanish film ‘extended beyond subject matter and became the very grammar by which a new film language was constructed’. In turn, that new language was used to express the new freedoms afforded by democracy. The author illustrates this theory with a fresh reading of an important film of this period, Eloy de la Iglesia’s El diputado/Confessions of a Congressman (1978), demonstrating how the erotic is used to didactically explain previously forbidden political and sexual tendencies and, indeed, how these go hand in hand with each other.

Introduction: approaching performance in Spanish film

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Allbritton ◽  
Alejandro Melero ◽  
Tom Whittaker
Keyword(s):  
Film Analysis ◽  
Spanish Cinema ◽  
Spanish Film ◽  
Critical Scholarship

The importance of screen acting has often been overlooked in studies on Spanish film. While several critical works on Spanish cinema have centred on the cultural, social and industrial significance of stars, there has been relatively little critical scholarship on what stars are paid to do: act. This is perhaps surprising, given the central role that acting occupies within a film. In his essay ‘Why Study Film Acting?’, Paul McDonald argues that acting is not only crucial to understanding the affective charge of movies, but integral to the study of film as a whole (2004: 40). Yet, despite its significance, performance remains one of the most elusive and difficult aspects of film analysis. One of the reasons for this, according to Pamela Robertson Wojcik, is its apparent transparency (2004: 1). A ‘good’ actor supposedly renders their performance ‘invisible’, thereby concealing the process of acting from the audience, and engaging us within the emotional universe of the character. To this effect, discussion on acting is all too frequently evaluative: we think in terms of how convincing or naturalistic a given performance is, or are invited to appreciate the actorly skills and techniques that are brought to bear on the film....

Spanish Cinema

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin D'Lugo
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Mass Medium ◽  
Film History ◽  
Pedro Almodovar ◽  
Spanish Cinema ◽  
Spanish Film ◽  
Artistic Freedom ◽  
At Home

Far overshadowed by the cultural dynamism of its neighbors and constrained by its own slow industrial underdevelopment, Spain was not a propitious site for the development of a strong film industry or culture. When Spanish artists and businessmen did begin to engage in film-related activities, during the first decades of the 20th century, it was initially at the impetus of foreign entrepreneurs and the mediation of French or US artistic models. Not unexpectedly, the Spanish cinema that thrived in the years leading up to the Civil War (1936–1939) was a popular mass medium shaped in imitation of French and US models. After the calamitous Civil War, the Franco dictatorship’s censorship system helped maintain the impression, now debunked, that the film industry benignly functioned as the propagandistic arm of the state. It may be for that reason that no serious efforts at film history in Spain were attempted until the mid-1960s with the publication of Fernando Méndez-Leite’s wordy anecdotal history Historia del cine español (1965). Though something of an opposition cinema had begun to appear since the 1950s (Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis García Berlanga), it was not until the 1970s that we see the emergence of serious film scholarship by Spaniards. The Viridiana scandal of 1961 triggered interest in resistance cinema by foreign critics. The much heralded New Spanish Cinema of the mid-1960s, which brought Carlos Saura to international note through his third film, La caza (The Hunt, 1965), however, appeared to many as mere window dressing, the effort of the regime to suggest artistic freedom while little opposition at home was possible. Still, during the decade from the release of The Hunt an increasing number of opposition films, often disguised as allegorical narratives, won international praise at film festivals and suggested the birth of a growing film culture. Since the 1980s, the Spanish industry has gone through phases of growth with increased popular and artistic success at home and abroad. The meteoric rise of Pedro Almodóvar came to embody a new Spanish mentality reflected in the sexually liberated cinema of the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, Spanish film has diversified into new thematic areas—regional cinema, intensified gender representation, multiculturalism occasioned by the intensification of immigration to Spain from Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Yet such growth in substance and the advent of new overseas markets, principally in Latin America, has coincided with the marked decrease of Spanish film’s domestic youth market especially. Since the 2000s, Spanish cinema has increasingly been displaced by television and the accessibility of films on the Internet. Recent scholarship, in fact, has shifted to include substantive studies of television and audiovisual links to Latin America.

The Colour of Kisses: Eroticism and Exoticism in Spanish Film Culture of the 1920s and ’30s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Woods Peiró
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Technological Mediation ◽  
Spanish Film ◽  
Printed Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Image ◽  
The Erotic

This chapter explores the erotic allure of the kiss in 1920s Spanish films, paying special attention to discussions about the cinematic kiss in the Spanish specialised press at the time. It reveals an obsessive fascination with the technological mediation of the Hollywood kiss on the one hand, and, on the other, a highly racialised discourse about Japan’s prohibition on kissing, used by the Spanish printed media to present a comparatively modern image of 1920s Spain.

Performance and Spanish Film

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Cinema ◽  
Spanish Film ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Screen Performance ◽  
Silent Era

While several critical works on Spanish cinema have centred on the cultural, social and industrial significance of stars, there has been relatively little critical scholarship on what stars are paid to do: act. Bringing together a range of scholars that attend carefully to the performances, acting styles, and historical influences of Spanish film, Performance and Spanish Film is the first book to place the process of Spanish acting centre stage. Comprising fifteen original essays, the book casts light on the manifold meanings, methods and influences of Spanish screen performance, from the silent era to the present day. It situates the development of Spanish screen acting in both its national and global contexts, tracing acting techniques that are largely indigenous to Spain, as well as unpicking the ways in which Spanish performance has frequently been shaped by international influences and forces. As the volume ultimately demonstrates, acting can serve as a powerful site of meaning through which broader questions around Spanish film practices, culture and society can be explored.

TRIANGULATION AND REPRESENTATION

2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-72
Author(s):  
Frederik Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Geometric Construction ◽  
Projected Image ◽  
Anne Carson ◽  
The Erotic

The erotic triangulation consisting of lover, beloved, lover’s image of beloved is a mechanism that automates a projection of self into a desired subject. The projection is provoked by the partly imaginary but reality inspired reconstruction of the beloved that takes place in the lover. The geometric construction is an attempt to categorize and name the elements we experience as seduction. One thing we can learn from the erotic geometry is that seduction is not exterior to the lover; it is instigated by him and takes place in him. This change in vantage point can be considered a sleight of hands. I choose to see it as an opportunity to consider the erotic ruse as a tool that can draw the observer into the ideas proposed in drawing of a space or drawing of a building, while using the observer’s empathy to generate meaning in a drawing that contain patches of yet indeterminate spaces, unknown programmatic functions and propositional subject matter that is ambiguous. The content of the triangulation (lover, beloved, image) is thus replaced by observer, drawing, and the observer’s projected image of the drawn proposition (this strategy can be described shorter and in terms familiar to the production of drawn exploratory propositions for architecture: fake it till you make it, or, keep drawing even if you have only a vague idea of what it is you are giving form, step back and allow yourself to add meaning to the drawn content with guidance from the detached spectator’s empathy). Caught in desire the lover is intensely present and vividly emphatic to what he desires. Through a number of drawn investigations I explore if a similar engagement between the observer and the imaginary content of the drawn architectural proposal can be a way into sealing or diminishing the gap between representation and realization, thus unloading the pressure from the representational yoke prominent in the production of architecture. Santrauka Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos architektūrinių piešinių prasmės. Meninio tyrimo pagrindu tampa autoriaus grafinėmis priemonėmis sukurti, tačiau fotografijų pavidalu pristatomi kūriniai, balansuojantys tarp piešinio atvaizdo ir paties piešinio. Eksperimentinės kūrybos procesas ir rezultatas yra apmąstomi, kontekstualizuojami ir konceptualiai plėtojami remiantis nevienalyčiais humanitariniais tekstais: Peterio Cook’o, Anne Carson, Rebeccos Solnit, Kester Rattenbury, taip pat Alfredo Hitchcock’s Vertigo filmo analize. Tiriamojo pobūdžio architektūrinius piešinius bandoma interpretuoti pasitelkiant trianguliacijos, kuri įvardijama kaip erotinė, analitinę struktūrą. Geometrinė schema naudojama siekiant apibrėžti reprezentacijos proceso komponentus: architektūrinį piešinį, jo suvokėją ir suvokėjo subjektyvų patyrimą, juos įvardijant kaip mylintįjį, mylimąjį ir mylimojo vaizdinį, ir išsiaiškinti jų sąveikos principus bei galimybes. Atskleidžiama, kad ši trinarė sąveikos struktūra yra dinamiška ir atvira, leidžianti naujai interpretuoti tai, kas vyksta daugiareikšmėje terpėje tarp reprezentacijos (idėjos vaizdavimo) ir architektūrinės realizacijos. Ieškoma galimybių išlaisvinti architektūrinį piešimą iš žanro suvaržymų, jam suteikiant suvokėjo kuriamų vaizdinių projektavimo plokštumos, savotiško geismo generatoriaus, lemiančio aktyvų suvokėjo dalyvavimą kūrybiniame procese, statusą. Daroma išvada, kad kuriančio piešimo naudojimas mažina atotrūkį tarp atvaizdo ir realizacijos, daro jį ne mažiau svarbiu realybės formantu nei realūs architektūriniai objektai.

The influence of Argentinian acting schools in Spain from the 1980s

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Ciller
Keyword(s):  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Freedom ◽  
Spanish Cinema ◽  
Familial Bonds

This chapter analyses the legacy of Argentinean performers and acting schools in contemporary Spanish cinema. It begins by studying how different waves of migration between Spain and Argentina resulted in rich collaborations, both in terms of industry and familial bonds (which favoured the appearance and continuation of families of actors such as the Alterios and Diosdados). The arrival of these Argentinean actors and actresses during the Transition to democracy contributed to the disappearance of traditional acting styles in Spanish cinema and promoted innovative modes and methods of performance. Thus, this chapter shows that the generation led by Cecilia Roth provided Spanish cinema with new ways of representing the body and performing femininity and sexual freedom, in films as influential as Iván Zulueta's Arrebato/Rapture (1979). The chapter concludes with a discussion on how the proliferation of Argentinean schools of acting, such as those of Cristina Rota and Juan Carlos Corazza, has contributed greatly to the success of recent generations of actors such as Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Bahía de Palma/Palma Bay (Bosch 1962): An allegory of late Francoism

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-375
Author(s):  
Alejandro Yarza
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
Spanish Cinema ◽  
Spanish Film ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Blue Print

Famous for having been the first Spanish film to feature the Franco-banned bikinis, Bahía de Palma/Palma Bay (Bosch 1962) is generally seen as a frivolous footnote in the history of Spanish cinema, but it is also a pioneering aperturista film, that deserves closer examination as the blue print for late Francoist cultural productions of the 1960s and beyond. This article argues that Bahía de Palma is a veiled allegorical representation of the social and political contradictions that characterized Spain’s reintegration into the international world order after the dark and disastrous period of international isolation during the 1940s and early 1950s.

Spanish Erotic Cinema

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Silent Films ◽  
Lgbt Rights ◽  
Spanish Cinema ◽  
Spanish Film ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of

This book covers a significant part of the history of Spanish film, from the 1920s until the present day. Starting with a study of the kiss in silent films, the volume explores homoerotic narratives in the crusade films of the 1940s, the commodification of bodies in the late Franco period, and the so-called destape (literally ‘undressing’) period that followed the abolition of censorship during the democratic transition. Reclaiming the importance of Spanish erotic cinema as a genre in itself, a range of international scholars demonstrate how the explicit depiction of sex can be a useful tool to illuminate current and historic social issues including ageism, colonialism, domestic violence, immigration, nationalisms, or women and LGBT rights. Covering a wide range of cinematic genres, including comedy, horror and melodrama, this book provides an innovative and provocative overview of Spanish cinema history and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document