Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2013

This special issue of Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas contains selected contributions presented at the international conference ‘In Transition: Historical, Political and Cultural Changes in Cinema and Television’, held in November 2012 at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Both the conference and the articles included in the following pages explore technological connotations of ‘the transitional’ from historically conscious and comparative perspectives in an effort to better understand and appreciate the impact of transnationalism for the field of Hispanic and Latin American studies. While ‘the transnational’ has already been explored by other scholars in film and media studies, the articles to follow add a strong political dimension to the field as they present a variety of case studies of transnational practices in the cinemas of Spain and Latin America. By placing the studies of transnational activities in Spanish and Latin American contexts, we are better able to assess the implications of these different types of transition for the Hispanic world, both from a national and a transnational level.

In this article I analyse the German movie Das Lied in mir/El día que no nací by Florian Cossen (2010) as an example of the European narration of crimes committed by the last Argentinian military junta. Latin American dictatorships are symbolic places of memory which suggest and permit a moral reflection about the crimes of the state in global terms. My point of departure is that the movie, which deals with the illegal appropriation of children, has various potential receptions that are enabled by both the story and intermedial references. I focus on how the film introduces a new approach in the discussion about the politics of memory by relating it to other Argentinian movies and intellectual discourses about this topic. Against this background, the article discusses two different interpretations: first, from an intercontinental perspective, the movie reminds us of the ignominious European responsibility for crimes committed by South American dictatorships. Second, without this historic-political reflection, it suggests an existentialist meaning directed at an international public.

This article examines the career of the Spanish writer Lola Salvador, also known as ‘Salvador Maldonado’, popular for her work in films like El crimen de Cuenca/The Cuenca Crime (Miró, 1979) and Las bicicletas son para el verano/Bicycles Are for the Summer (Chávarri, 1984). The aim is to analyse her scripts for Televisión Española during the 1970s. The recovery of these works, which have been forgotten, allows us not only to analyse the beginnings of literary adaptations on television, but also to consider the history of television in Spain and its pedagogical role during the Transition. In this regard, it is relevant to reflect on the incorporation of women as creators, who rose to prominence in Spanish television at this time. By focusing on the analysis of the dramas, this article argues that Lola Salvador is a television auteur whose plots and representations of gender reflect the political and social transformations that took place during the Spanish Transition.

Many Spanish film-makers who began their careers in the years immediately following the death of Franco felt the urgency to recover through their works all the freedoms that the repression and censorship of the forty years of the Franco regime had disrupted in such violent and radical ways. This was a moment of transition, in which some films emerged that finally dared to question the prevailing public opinion and proposed approaches to reality and national history that were decidedly unorthodox and polemical. Among this group of films, which included both documentary and fictional works, a number approached the hitherto interdicted themes of homosexuality, transsexuality and transvestism.

This article proposes to investigate how and why titles such as Cambio de sexo/Change of Sex (Aranda, 1976), El transexual/The Transsexual (Jara, 1977), Ocaña, retrat intermitent/Ocaña, an Intermittent Portrait (Pons, 1978) and Un hombre llamado Flor de Otoño/A Man Called Autumn Flower (Olea, 1978) came to stand as sites of transgression – that is, as ‘impertinent’ portraits – in a libertarian Spain. The eagerness of this transitional generation to make films based on previously prohibited themes was inevitably bound to face resistance from various quarters.

This article explores the theoretical writings on cinema and television that were published in the underground media promoted by the Partido Comunista de España (PCE, Communist Party of Spain) and in a series of bulletins edited by workers’ commissions devoted to the audio-visual sector. This research takes the 1st International Symposium on Film Schools as a starting point and ends in 1977, when the PCE was legalized in Spain.

The importance of horror films made in Spain has long been obscured by the greater public presence of other genres and the force that auteur cinema has had in the contexts of production in recent decades. Spanish horror cinema, however, may also boast of a tradition with important directors such as Jesús Franco, Amando de Ossorio, Paul Naschy, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador or Juan Piquer Simón. The purpose of this article is to investigate the discourses around the films of these authors, among others, produced in the aftermath of the Franco years and during the Spanish Transition involving political content, social criticism and militant attitudes, marked in allegorical styles and shaped by the coordinates of the horror genre. The research aims to determine the level of political, ideological and social criticism that these largely forgotten films contain, and which constitute an authentic history of the ‘other Spanish cinema’.

Although found footage as aesthetic expression was common in documentary and avant-garde cinema, it was not until the end of the 1990s that it was adapted for use in the horror film. This sub-genre gave film-makers a new means of cognitive and emotional connection with the spectator. Paco Plaza and Jaume Balagueró’s films [REC] (2007) and [REC] 2 (2009) recycled the format, creating films rooted in the national while at the same time projecting a post-national image of the genre. [REC] turned the found footage film into a commentary on Spanish tabloid television, its vapid journalistic presentation and the public’s appetite for scandal. [REC] 2 adapted the form further, expanding it from a single to several cameras, and expanding the narrative to issues of political and religious ideology. The [REC] films present a directly lived representation through found footage, where the spectator has limited scope of knowledge that goes beyond mere subjectivity to the limits of visualization and knowledge the form depicts. [REC] moves beyond the use of found footage as a tool for horror, and transitions it into a commentary on filmic presentation and spectatorial engagement, re-positioning contemporary Spanish horror film into a post-national context.

As in past years, the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival continued highlighting Spanish and Latin American cinema. Many of these films were characterized by their slowness or the ‘cinema of deceleration’ (Gemünden). Prominent proponents of this new aesthetic are Sebastián Lelio’s film Gloria (for which Paulina García won the Silver Bear), Neus Ballús’ first feature length semi-documentary La plaga, Ana Guevara Pose’s and Leticia Jorge Romero’s Tanta agua and Isabel Coixet’s slow-moving, science fiction Ayer no termina nunca, among many others. Of particular note was the workshop given by Argentine Lucrecia Martel.

New mythological figures in Spanish cinema: Dissident bodies under Franco, Pietsie Feenstra (2011) Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 325 pp., ISBN: 978-9089643049, Paperback, $45.00

Visual synergies in fiction and documentary film from Latin America, Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page (eds) (2009) Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 272 pp., ISBN: 978-0-230-60638-8, Hardback, $105.00

The war that won’t die: The Spanish Civil War in cinema, David Archibald (2012) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 210 pp., ISBN: 978 0 7190 7808 8, Hardback, £60

Emilio Fernández: Pictures in the margins, Dolores Tierney (2012) Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 198 pp., ISBN: 978-0-7190-8844-5, Paperback, £14.99