ALL ABOUT SPANISH CINEMA

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Upper-Level

In this course we will study cinema as a medium, an art form, and an industry in twentieth and twenty-first century Spain. We will discuss twelve films, study the contexts in which they emerged, and analyze them in relation to theoretical debates in film and media studies. The evolving ways in which Spanish film has been financed, promoted, and marketed in Spain and abroad will also be part of the course. We will begin the semester by studying the representation of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in film, and then move to the debates that have marked Spanish cinema in the past four decades: the heritage of the Francoist dictatorship, the transition to democracy and the counter-cultural movement known as “la movida,” the refiguration of national symbols; the recuperation of historical memory; trauma and violence; immigration, globalization and transnationalism; and the current economic crisis.