Leaving the Periphery Behind

Examines the contemporary Galician audio/visual fields as key areas of cultural deperipheralization and for reimagining Galicianess in the global map. It focuses on the emergence of a new generation of Galician creators, and focuses on the film Hotel Tívoli, directed by Antón Reixa, as a pivotal point of transition.

Made in Galicia: Making the Invisible Visible

Chapter 4 focuses on new conceptual approaches to the study of peripheral cinemas, and Galician cinema in particular. It examines the conditions that have shaped the development of Galician cinema historically and it explores different cinematic modes, from the cinema of migration or the folkloric “gallegada”, to the post-Franco boom in Galician cinema with the emergence of a viable commercial cinema, the establishment of an auteur tradition, and the appearance of new non-conventional experimental cinema trends.

Sound and Vision: All Roads Lead to Santiago

This chapter examine the interaction of roots and routes, tradition and mobility, in contemporary Galician audiovisual culture, focusing on the cultural resignification of the ancient pilgrim’s Road to Saint James (Camino de Santiago) in the global age, and the transformation of Santiago de Compostela into a global theme park of Galicianness. It examines several audiovisual productions by Chano Piñeiro, The Chieftains, and Carlos Núñez that metaphorically travel in time and space, where experimentation with cinema and Celtic music merges old and modern forms and transcends spatiotemporal barriers, repositioning Galician culture on the global map.

Peripheral Movidas: Cannibalizing Galicia

This chapter examines the profound industrial and cultural reconversion of Galicia during the years of the Movida galega, symbolically converted in a new Warholian “factory” of products for cultural consumption, through the internal self-cannibalization of its past and traditions, and its tense relation with the Madrid Movida. The analysis focuses on the development of the new Movida audiovisual urban culture, particularly on the avant-garde interdisciplinary performances of Rompente, the pioneering work of Bibiano Morón, Julián Hernández, Antón Reixa and Xavier Villaverde, and the creative works by the groups Siniestro Total and Os Resentidos.

A Peripheral Focus: The Rebirth of the Novo Cinema Galego

This chapter explores new conceptual models to approach the work of a new generation of experimental Galician filmmakers adopting a peripheral position, understood as a conceptual, ideological,and aesthetic positioning more than merely a geolocation, which questions the mainstream hegemonic values emanating from the center while aiming to bring visibility to the fringes. It examines the boom of the so called Novo Cinema Galego (New Galician Cinema), focusing on the border crossing and blending of fiction/documentary generic conventions, and analyses the most representative cases, such as Oliver Laxe, Xurxo Chirro, Lois Patiño, Peque Varela, Eloy Enciso, and Susana Rei.

The Galician Magic Kingdom: Nation and Animation from the Glocal Forest

This chapter focuses on the animation boom in Galicia of the last two decades. It examines the different strategies employed by Galician animation studios working in the global arena, analysing three different models and their results: Dygra, an independent studio behind 3D films with Galician roots and atmosphere (The Living Forest, Summer Night, Spirit of the Forest), rewriting the local for export internationally; Bren, a studio based in Santiago de Compostela, subsidiary of the giant Barcelona-based media conglomerate Filmax, with a diversified plan of international co-productions, films based on hybrid animation and live action scenes (Pérez, the mouse of your dreams, Pérez 2), combination of 2D and 3D (Gisaku, Nocturna) and 3D animation (Donkey Xote), where the global overshadows the local, with little apparent connection to the Galician reality. Lastly, a number of alternative and personal productions with highly innovative techniques, such as De Profundis by Miguelanxo Prado, which offer a symbolic journey to the depths and a final rebirth, an ecological allegory of Galicia’s cultural resurgence after the Prestige disaster.

Reimagining Galician Cinema: Utopian Visions?

This chapter addresses the problematic situation of Galician film production, in the larger contexts of the Galician audiovisual sector, the Spanish cinema industry and the transnational currents of economic and cultural globalization affecting national and subnational cinemas. It examines the lights and shadows of Galician cinema production in the representation of Galician cultural themes, the use of different genres, and the exploration of issues of identity, gender, nation and language.

Peripheral Visions, Global Positions

Chapter 1 aims for a perspectival shift in the approach to remapping contemporary Galician culture and the challenges and opportunities it faces in a global environment. The chapter follows a postnational, non-canonical, and multi/interdisciplinary cultural studies approach, reflecting issues of transnational mobility, migration and transatlantic studies, more in sync with the hybrid complexities of contemporary cultural production. My theoretical perspective is particularly sensitive to the multiple interactions between the local and the global, and the creation of “glocal” realities in complex relations of interdependence and interpenetration.

Smells Like Wild Spirit: Galician Rock Bravú, Between the Rurban and the Glocal

This chapter examines the explosion of Rock Bravú, a popular cultural movement that redefined traditional rural/urban relations and thus remapped modern Galician culture in the 1990s. It examines the convergence between the great indie rock explosion of the Galician movida and the strong Galician folk music revival movement developing in the 1980s, mediated by television. Culturally rooted in the local and the national, Bravú asserted a modern Galician cultural identity developing at the intersections of the old and the new, the rural and the urban, and the local and the global (where the new hybrid realities of the rurban and glocal occur).

Deterritorialization and Deperipheralization: Galician Studies at the Global Crossroads

This chapter focuses on the relocation of Galicia between the local and the global, and examine how Galicia’s geopolitical and cultural borders are being redefined in the global age. The analysis proposes the deterritorialisation of the Galician cultural map to overcome long-established exclusions based on gender, national origin, language or territorial demarcation, and the disjointing of the center/periphery dichotomy that has relegated Galician culture to the margins, which is coined as deperipheralization. The chapter questions the conventional relations between territory, culture, language and nation, and challenges the disciplinary limitations that have traditionally defined the field of Galician studies.