This book explores the work of Elias Querejeta, Spain's most important and political producer, through a particular emphasis on the representation of landscape in his films. In doing so, the book examines the ways in Spanish history has been shaped by geographical change since the 1960s.

When it began, modern Spanish cinema was under strict censorship, forced to conform to the ideological demands of the Nationalist regime. In 1950, the New Spanish Cinema was born as a protest over General Francisco Franco's policies: a new series of directors and films began to move away from the conformist line to offer a bold brand of Spanish realism. In the 1950s and early 1960s, filmmakers such as Juan Antonio Bardem, Luis García Berlanga, and Luis Buñuel expressed a liberal image of Spain to the world in such films as Muerte de un ciclista (Death of a Cyclist), Bienvenido Señor Marshall (Welcome Mr. Marshall), and Viridiana. The emergence of new directors continued into the sixties and seventies with Carlos Saura, José Luis Borau, Víctor Erice, and others. After Franco's death in 1975, censorship was abolished and films openly explored such formerly taboo subjects as sexuality, drugs, the church, the army, and the Civil War. The Spanish cinema was no longer escapist and entertaining but, at long last, mirrored the society it depicted. While established directors like Saura, Bardem, and Berlanga continued to produce distinguished work, the "new wave" of Spanish cinema included brilliant films by the likes of Montxo Armendáriz (Tasio), Fernando Trueba (First Work), Imanol Uribe (The Death of Mikel), and Pedro Almodóvar (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). In the last couple of decades, exciting works by established filmmakers and newcomers alike continue to be produced, including Alejandro Amenábar's Thesis, José Luis Garcí's The Grandfather, and Almodóvar's Talk to Her and Volver. In Great Spanish Films Since 1950, Ronald Schwartz presents a compendium of outstanding Spanish films from the pre-Francoist era through the Spanish New Wave of the 80's and 90's and into the present day. Schwartz provides background, plot, and commentaries of key films from six decades of Spanish cinema. In addition to identifying

The endurance of the Frankenstein narrative as a modern cinematic myth is undeniable. Its flexibility has produced classic and contemporary horror film-most notably the Universal films of the thirties-but it has also resulted in unusual hybrids, such as musical horror-comedy (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), hyperbolic parody (Flesh for Frankenstein), and science fiction (the Alien and Terminator series). This sourcebook provides a complete guide to all of the story's filmic incarnations-including essential information such as cast, creative personnel, and plot summaries-and also guides the reader to relevant primary texts such as scripts, posters, production histories, and newspaper clippings. Utilizing an approach that is both popular and scholarly, and including spotlight essays that deal with contemporary academic approaches to the subject, The Frankenstein Film Sourcebook reveals the depth of the cinematic range of interpretations of a classic modern myth. Comprehensive in its scope, The Frankenstein Film Sourcebook provides an alphabetical guide to two hundred films that incorporate the Frankenstein narrative. It also delves into both primary and secondary perspectives and includes discussions of aspects of the films, such as their depiction of women, which is relevant to current scholarly critiques.

Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, who began his career under the censorship of Franco's regime, has forged an international reputation for his unique cinematic treatment of emotional and spiritual responses to repressive political conditions. In films such as Carmen and El Dorado, where reality and fantasy are deliberately fused together, Saura reveals the illusions of Franco's mythologized Spain--a chaste, Catholic, and heroic Spain of the Golden Age--that tend to isolate Spaniards from the rest of Europe, from each other, and from their own individuality. In this first English-language book on Saura, Marvin D'Lugo looks at the social and artistic forces behind this film auteur's highly personal cinema. Tracing Saura's career over three decades, D'Lugo discusses each work from Hooligans (1959), a realist film about a Madrid street-gang member trying to become a bullfighter, to The Dark Night (1989), a film dealing with the persecution of the religious reformer St. John of the Cross in the late sixteenth century. Throughout he argues that Saura's cinematic style results from a highly original response to the political and historical constraints of Spanish culture. D'Lugo shows how in order to explore the complex cultural politics of "Spanishness" as it was institutionalized under Franco, Saura frames his narrations through the eyes of characters who question the forces that shape personal and collective identity. Moving beyond the limits of traditional auteur studies, this book addresses the relationship between the filmmaker and the cultural ideology that historically has thwarted and manipulated the expressions of individuality in Spanish society.

From the surrealist films of Luis Buñuel to the colourful melodramas of Pedro Almodóvar, Spain has produced a wealth of exciting and distinctive film-makers who have consistently provided a condoning or dissenting eye on Spanish history and culture. For modern cinema-goers, it has often been the sexually-charged and colourful nature of many contemporary Spanish films, which has made them popular world-wide and led directors and stars such as Almodóvar, Banderas and Penélope Cruz to be welcomed by Hollywood. Using original interview material with Spanish Cinema luminaries such as Carlos Saura, Julio Medem, Imanol Uribe and Elías Querejeta, Rob Stone charts a history of Spanish Cinema throughout the turbulent Francoist years and beyond. The book aims to provide a broad introduction to Spanish Cinema, the nine chapters divided into four types: chapters on Spanish Cinema during the Dictatorship and following the transition to democracy survey current debate and opinion while tracing the development of themes and film movements throughout those periods. chapters on early Spanish cinema and Basque cinema present vital and fascinating aspects of Spanish cinema that have previously been ignored chapters on childhood in Spanish cinema, and sex and the new star system offer new pathways into the study of Spanish cinema chapters on Carlos Saura, Elías Querejeta and Julio Medem offer specific case studies of film-makers who are emblematic of different periods in Spanish cinema and, indeed, Spanish history As with other titles in the Inside Film series, the book is comprehensively illustrated with representative stills and has a thorough bibliography, index and list of resources.

In this, the first full-length treatment of the child in Spanish cinema, Sarah Wright explores the ways that the cinematic child comes to represent ‘prosthetic memory’. The central theme of the child and the monster is used to examine the relationship of the self to the past, and to cinema. Concentrating on films from the 1950s to the present day, the book explores religious films, musicals, ‘art-house horror’, science-fiction, social realism and fantasy. It includes reference to Erice’s The Spirit of The Beehive, del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Mañas’s El Bola and the Marisol films. The book also draws on a century of filmmaking in Spain and intersects with recent revelations concerning the horrors of the Spanish past. The child is a potent motif for the loss of historical memory and for its recuperation through cinema. This book is suitable for scholars and undergraduates working in the areas of Spanish cinema, Spanish cultural studies and cinema studies.

The first few minutes of a film orient the viewer, offering cues for a richer, more nuanced reading. With this premise, the author provides many insights into the history of Spanish language film, encouraging an enhanced understanding of the Spanish/Hispanic canon commonly taught in courses on film. The author explores El espiritu de la colmena (1973), La historia oficial (1985), Fresa y chocolate (1994), El crimen del padre Amaro (2002), Abre los ojos (1997), Te doy mis ojos (2003) and Carlos Saura's flamenco trilogy--Bodas de sangre (1981), Carmen (1983) and El amor bruno (1986), among others.