Postscript: ‘la travesía del desierto’

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Notes

1 Organized by Magí Crusells (Vice-Director of the Centro de Investigación Film-Historia) with conference secretary Francesc Sánchez Barba, and hosted at the Faculty of Geography and History, Barcelona University, 3–5 September 2014.

2 I am thinking in particular here of José María Caparrós Lera, El cine español bajo el régimen de Franco, 1936–1975 (Barcelona: Edicions Univ. de Barcelona, 1983) and El cine español de la democracia: de la muerte de Franco al ‘cambio’ socialista (1975–1989) (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1992), but Caparrós Lera has, of course, now produced numerous other publications on Spanish and world cinema, on documentary and fiction film, and on the process of writing about film. For a list of selected publications listed on his University web-page at <http://www.ub.edu/dphc/caparros.htm> include: Arte y política en el cine de la República (Barcelona: Siete y Medio/Univ. de Barcelona, 1981); 100 películas sobre historia contemporánea (Madrid: Alianza, 1997); Historia del cine europeo (Madrid: Rialp, 2003); Historia del cine español (Madrid: T&B Editores, 2007); Historia del cine mundial (Madrid: Rialp 2009); 100 documentales para explicar Historia (with Magí Crusells and Ricard Mamblona) (Madrid: Alianza, 2010).

3 Caparrós Lera wrote for El Mundo from 1975 to 1982: this and the information that follows was provided in an interview with him conducted by me on 4 September 2014.

4 Caparrós Lera's research would lead to a joint publication with Jaume Miravitlles (El cine republicano español [1931–1939] [1977]) and the single-authored, El cine político visto después del franquismo (1978), both published with Barcelona University Press. See: Pierre Sorlin, Sociologie du cinema (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1977); Marc Ferro, Cinéma et histoire (Paris: Editions Denoël, 1977); Feature Films As History, ed. Kenneth Short (Knoxville: Univ of Tennessee Press, 1981); The Historian and Film, ed. Paul Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1976); Nicholas Pronay, ‘Film Section: British Newsreels in the 1930s. 1. Audience and Producers’, History, 56:188 (1971), 411–17; Nicholas Pronay & Derek W. Spring, Propaganda, Politics and Film, 1918–45 (London: Macmillan, 1982).

5 Professor Claramunt was Dean of the Faculty of Geography and History from 1980–1992. For more detail on the development of the Centre see his prologue to the commemorative 25 aniversario del Centre d’Investigacions Film-Història, ed. José María Caparrós Lera (Barcelona: Univ. de Barcelona, 2009), 9–11, and for more on State approval of Caparrós Lera's courses see his own account in the same edition (15–24).

6 The British Association of Media and History, IAMHIST, was established in 1977. See <http://iamhist.org/about-us/iamhist-council/>.

7 For an account of similar resistance to the introduction of film to the Modern Languages curriculum, see Professor Peter Evans’ account in Núria Triana-Toribio, ‘Miradas distintas: el estudio del cine español en Gran Bretaña’, Secuencias: Revista de Historia del Cine, 28 (2008), 46–60 (pp. 51–52).

8 The award for the film went to Víctor Erice's El Sur (1983). Other academics and directors awarded this prize include: Ángel Luis Hueso, Marc Ferro, Jean Mitry, Emilio García Riera and José Luis Guerín, Juan Antonio Bardem, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, José Luis Borau, Mario Camus and Lluís Josep Comeron, and Akira Kurosawa. See José María Caparrós Lera at <http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/b3w-231.htm> (accessed 14 September 2014).

9 For more on the journal, which has a prestigious international editorial board that includes well-known names such as Virginia Higginbotham and Marsha Kinder, see Rafael de España, ‘Nuestra revista especializada’, in 25 aniversario del Centre d’Investigacions Film-Història, ed. Caparrós Lera, 25–28.

10 See Robert A. Rosenstone, History on Film/Film on History (London/New York: Routledge, 2014).

11 For more detailed information, see <http://www.filmhistoria.com/2014/09/clausura-del-iv-congreso-internacional.html> (accessed 13 November 2014).

12 The schedule combined discussion with film viewings, including a documentary on the creative writer and intellectual murdered by the Guatamalan government, Alaíde Foppa. La sin ventura (2014) by Marí Carmen de Lara and Leopold Best, and a documentary on the Spanish Civil War exile and photographer, Julio Mayo: bracero con cámara (2014) by John Mraz.

13 Seguín is a long-term collaborator with Caparrós Lera, and the author of Histoire du cinéma espagnol (Paris: Fernand Nathan, 1994), published in Spanish as Historia del cine español, trad. José Manuel Revuelta (Madrid: Acento, 1995).

14 Interestingly, given the focus here on reciprocal international Anglo-Hispanic relationships, the first of these, The Spanish Cinema: An Historical Approach, trans. Carl J. Mora (Barcelona: Centre for Cinematic Research ‘Film-Historia’, with the aid of the US-Spanish Joint Committee for Cultural and Educational Cooperation, 1987), was published in English after Caparrós Lera and his colleague, Rafael de España were awarded a grant to teach courses on Spanish film history in Texas and New Mexico.

15 Free access to the on-line version has been available since 2001 at <www.pcb.ub.es/filmhistoria>.

16 <http://caparroscinema.spot.co.uk> and <https://twitter.com/FILMHISTORIA>. For a more detailed account by Caparrós Lera on the development of the Centre, see 25 aniversario del Centre d’Investigacions Film-Història, ed. Caparrós Lera, 15–24.

17 25 aniversario del Centre d’Investigacions Film-Història, ed. Caparrós Lera, 25.