This collection offers a new lens through which to examine Spain’s cinema production following the isolation imposed by the Franco regime. The seventeen key films analysed in the volume span a period of 35 years that have been crucial in the development of Spain, Spanish democracy and Spanish cinema. They encompass different genres (horror, thriller, melodrama, social realism, documentary), both popular (Los abrazos rotos/Broken Embraces, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and more select art house fare (En la ciudad de Sylvia/In the City of Sylvia, El espíritu de la colmena/Spirit of the Beehive) and are made in English (as both first and second language), Basque, Castilian, Catalan and French. Offering an expanded understanding of ‘national’ cinemas, the volume explores key works by Guillermo del Toro and Lucrecia Martel alongside an examination of the ways in which established auteurs (Almodóvar, José Garci, Carlos Saura) and younger generations of filmmakers (Cesc Gay, Amenábar, Bollaín) have harnessed cinematic language towards a commentary on the nation-state. The result is a bold new study of the ways in which film has created new prisms that have determined how Spain is positioned in the global marketplace.

A camp lipsynched routine by three air stewards distracts unsuspecting passengers from the fact that their plane is to make a crash landing. Performance functions as a diversion from unsavoury realities. In this way, Pedro Almodóvar's 2013 film I'm So Excited adopts a strategy of subversive anti-establishment censor-evading filmmaking practices under Franco. Contemporary cinematic performance in Spain intersects with politics to provide a platform for views and voices that do not conform to the dominant political narrative. An essential text for scholars, students and aficionados of Spanish cinema, Subversive Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Performance is the first single-authored monograph to focus on performance in this context. The book analyses interactions between performance and politics in technical and conceptual terms considering, for example, performance styles, the narrative role of performance and political interventions by actors such as Javier Bardem and Juan Diego Botto. Ultimately, Subversive Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Performance posits performance, within the specific context of contemporary Spanish cinema, as a politically-potent device and proposes that it is precisely for this reason that the arts have borne the brunt of aggressive austerity measures enforced by Spain's conservative government in recent years.

Fashioning Spanish Cinema provides a critical examination of the intersections between fashion, costume design, and Spanish cinema.

This book brings together recent Spanish fictions and films that point to individualism as the root problem driving diverse circumstances of social, economic, and psychological suffering in the present and recent past. The works privilege sensation, movement, and emotion—rather than identity—as the core elements of existential experience. However, the works also problematize notions of intersubjectivity, confronting ideals of affective immersion and cultural nomadism with the concrete contexts that shape particular lives and social formations. This confrontation underlies a series of ‘crossroads’, or productive engagements, that guide the book’s five main chapters: locally rooted identity and global cultural circuits; historical contexts and universal modes of being; personal authenticity and consumer culture; migration and cultural identity; Spain's historical underdevelopment and impending future crises. All of these issues make affective connection and attachment the greatest existential challenge facing individuals and collectives in the contemporary world, both in Spain and elsewhere.

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.

The book explores post-Franco Spanish film’s tacit or explicit, but always resolute, essays from 1975 to 2000 to make over Spain’s national, in fact post-national, identity.

While studying the theory and contemporary impact of ‘embodied’ viewing, this book celebrates the emergence and development of Visual Studies as a major subject of research and teaching in the field of Hispanic Studies within the UK over the last thirty years. By exploring current routes of investigation, as well as analysing future pathways for study in the field, seven highly distinguished Spanish and Latin American scholars examine their own entry into Visual Studies, and discuss the major trends and changes which occurred in the field as matters of the visual gradually became embedded in higher-education curricula and research trajectories. Each scholar also lays out a current research project, or interest, concerning Spain or Latin America within the visual field. The projects variously explore different media – including film, sculpture, photography, dance, and performance art – spread across a wide array of geographical locales, including Mexico, Cuba, mainland Spain, and the Canary Islands. Offering a map of current and future research in the field, this book provides the first history of visual studies within UK Hispanism. It will be of lasting value to a wide range of scholars and advanced students of Spanish and Latin American cultural, visual, and film studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies.