The Disintegration of Spanish Cinema

Abstract

A subjective consideration and objective analysis of the multiple ways in which the subject, form and academic discipline of Spanish cinema may, for better and worse, be understood to have undergone disintegration in recent years. Beginning with the dissolution of Spanish cinema as a national cinema and progressing to a fragmentation of Spanish identity into regional and community cinemas that is partly spurred by academic methodologies and frameworks, this article then turns to the effects of the digital revolution and finds that the process and format of filmmaking have been transformed too. A concluding examination of the disintegration of viewing practices in Spain, the surge in online production and distribution, and the decline of the art-house cinema leads to the case study of contemporary Basque cinema and a demonstration of how this disintegration is not necessarily a negative development for regional cinemas, aspiring filmmakers and academics who aim to close the gap between academic research and actual filmmaking.

Key words:

• national cinema
• regional and community cinemas
• art-house cinema
• digital revolution
• Basque cinema
• filmmaking

Notes

1 Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh, trans. Abigail Israel (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1983), 4–5.

2 Linda Williams, Hardcore: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1989).

3 Peter Besas, Behind the Spanish Lens: Spanish Cinema under Fascism and Democracy (Denver: Arden Press, 1985); John Hopewell, Out of the Past: Spanish Cinema after Franco (London: British Film Institute, 1986); Virginia Higginbotham, Spanish Cinema under Franco (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1988); Marvin D’Lugo, The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1991); Marsha Kinder, Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993); Paul Julian Smith, Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar (London/New York: Verso, 1994); Peter W. Evans, The Films of Luis Buñuel: Subjectivity and Desire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

4 Barry Jordan & Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, Contemporary Spanish Cinema (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 1998); Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition, ed. Peter W. Evans (Oxford/New York: Oxford U. P., 1999); Susan Martín Márquez, Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999); Núria Triana-Toribio, Spanish National Cinema (London/New York: Routledge, 2003); Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Longman, 2002).

5 Chris Perriam, Stars and Masculinities in Spanish Cinema (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2003); Isabel Santaolalla, Los ‘Otros’: etnicidad y ‘raza’ en el cine español contemporáneo (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias/Madrid: Ocho y Medio, 2005); Santiago Fouz-Hernández & Alfredo Martínez-Expósito, Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (London/New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007); Tatjana Pavlović, Despotic Bodies and Transgressive Bodies: Spanish Culture from Francisco Franco to Jesús Franco (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2003); Sally Faulkner, Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema (London: Tamesis, 2004), A Cinema of Contradiction: Spanish Film in the 1960s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U. P., 2006) and A History of Spanish Film: Cinema and Society 1910–2010 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013); Steven Marsh, Popular Spanish Film under Franco: Comedy and the Weakening of the State (Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

6 Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction. The Struggle for Modernity, ed. Helen Graham & Jo Labanyi (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1995); Refiguring Spain: Cinema/Media/Representation, ed. Marsha Kinder (Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 1997); Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice, ed. Jo Labanyi (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2002); Gender and Spanish Cinema, ed. Steven Marsh & Parvati Nair (Oxford: Berg, 2004); Spanish Horror Film, ed. Antonio Lázaro Reboll (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U. P., 2012); Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre, ed. Jay Beck & Vicente Rodríguez Ortega (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2008); Spain on Screen: Developments in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, ed. Ann Davies (Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Spanish Cinema 1973–2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory, ed. Maria Delgado & Robin Fiddian (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2013).

7 Ann Davies, Daniel Calparsoro (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2009); Isabel Santaolalla, Iciar Bollaín (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2012); Peter Buse, Núria Triana-Toribio & Andy Willis, The Cinema of Álex de la Iglesia (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2007).

8 Rob Stone, Julio Medem (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2007); Rob Stone, The Cinema of Richard Linklater: Walk, Don’t Run (New York: Columbia U. P./Chichester: Wallflower, 2013).

9 A Companion to Spanish Cinema, ed. Bernard P. E. Bentley (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008); A Companion to Spanish Cinema, ed. Jo Labanyi & Tatiana Pavlović (Malden/Oxford/Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013); Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema, ed. Lisa Shaw & Rob Stone (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2012); Hispanic and Lusophone Women Filmmakers: Theory, Practice and Difference, ed. Parvati Nair & Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2013); Erotic Spanish Cinema, ed. Santiago Fouz Hernández (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U. P., 2015); Performance and Spanish Film, ed. Dean Albritton, Antonio Melero Salvador & Tom Whittaker (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2015).

10 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, sel. & trans. Annette Lavers (London: Granada Publishing, 1973).

11 Georg Sorenson, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

12 Dialogues with Hollywood: World Cinema's Relationship with American Film Culture, ed. Paul Cooke (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

13 Rob Stone & María Pilar Rodríguez, Basque Cinema: A Cultural and Political History (London/New York: I. B. Tauris, 2015); Rob Stone & María Pilar Rodríguez, Cine vasco (Sevilla/Salamanca: Comunicación Social, 2015).

14 Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 1991), 125.

15 Basque Heritage Cinema (Rob Stone, 2013), <https://vimeo.com/86379258>.

16 Buñuel, My Last Sigh, trans. Israel, 149.