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Militant cinema as an energetic alternative in the 1970s in Spain
- Source: Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ), The, Volume 11, Issue 2, Sep 2022, p. 166 - 188
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- 30 Jun 2021
- 13 Dec 2022
- 21 Apr 2023
Abstract
This article will examine the significance of the alternative film scene, as seen in the Spanish militant cinema of this period, through an analysis of the film Les energies (‘The energies’) (1979–80) by the Cooperativa de Cinema Alternatiu (CCA – Alternative Cinema Cooperative) that helped to trigger the debate on the energy question in Spain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The militant Spanish cinema of that time was produced in some exceptionally precarious conditions as well as had limited access to financial resources and remained marginal to official film industry systems. The article will discuss how these production conditions led the CCA to adopt a specific material filmmaking mode with a low ecological impact. Emerging as a consequence of a production context marked by precariousness and (semi-)clandestinity, it was a mode of production developed in parallel to the rise of environmental awareness in Spain, which had – as the first part of this article explores – a decisive influence on the CCA. In turn, as the article goes on to discuss, the environmentalist discourse would itself end up determining the narrative content of one of the CCA’s most important films, Les energies.
Funding
- The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN), Spanish State Research Agency (AEI, 10.13039/501100011033) and the European Social Fund (Award RYC2018-024943-I)
- Fossil Aesthetics: A Political Ecology of Art History, Visual Culture and Cultural Imaginaries of Modernity (Award PIE 202010E005)
- CSIC and Economic Rationality, Political Ecology and Globalization: Toward a New Cosmopolitan Rationality (Award PID2019-109252RB-I00)
- Ecological Humanities and Eco-social Transitions: Ethical, Aesthetic, and Pedagogical Proposals for the Anthropocene (Award PID2019-107757-RB-100)
- Energy Humanities: Energy and Sociocultural Imaginaries Between the Industrial Revolutions and the Eco-social Crisis (Award PID2020-113272RA-I00)
- MCIN / AEI (10.13039/501100011033) / the European Research Development Fund