Film cultures in Spain's transition: the “Other” transition in the film magazine Nuevo Fotogramas (1968–1978)

Abstract

In the story of the fight for democratic freedom and the drive to bring Europe and the world closer to Francoist Spain, Nuevo Fotogramas (NF) deserves a central position. Fuelled by the spirit of May 1968, the long-running Barcelona-based magazine Fotogramas became NF in 1968 and set out to define the pro-democracy struggle in contrast from the Madrid-based film cultures. It also set out to engage with European cultural production as if censorship and being closed off from European modernity were simply temporary situations. NF helps us to write the transition differently, by debunking the myth of its having been a process led solely by the film-makers and critics who engaged in direct confrontation. Explaining the different approach that NF had to documenting and taking part in the cultural industries of the transition helps us to locate resistance in the “trivial” and “female” world of consumption rather than exclusively in the production sector, more often associated with visible and well-documented acts of opposition. Three aspects of the magazine contribute to this reconfiguration of inherited ideas about the transition, particularly the ethos of the publication, the writers who collaborated in it and what seems to be more “marginalia”: its letter section, “El consultorio de Mr. Belvedere”, and its advertisements.

Keywords:

• Film magazines
• film culture
• Spanish transition
• censorship

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the anonymous readers at JSCS, Charles Young, Peter W. Evans and Peter Buse for their help. I want to thank Cristina Pujol Ozonas for starting me on this path.

Notes on contributor

Nuria Triana-Toribio is Professor and Head of Hispanic Studies and Co-director of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Film and the Moving Image at the University of Kent, UK. She is the author of several books and articles on Spanish cinema. She is working on a book called Spanish Film Cultures for the BFI series Cultural Histories of Cinema. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1. “Modern” and “European” are to be understood as synonymous in the period of study. They are used indiscriminately throughout the sample analyzed.

2. Fotogramas was NF between 29 March 1968 and 7 May 1980, when it ceased to be published. It reappeared on 11 February 1981 (Ponga, “Aquellos” 41). Other incarnations have been Fotogramas y Video during the 1980s and part of the 1990s. Nowadays, it trades as Fotogramas and has been owned by the Hachette Filipacchi editorial group since 2007 (see Delclòs), now part of Hearts Magazines International. For a complete history, see Riambau (373) and Monterde (Fotogramas, 22–24).

3. A large amount of critical writing is devoted to the iconic, if short-lived, journal Objetivo (see, for instance, Hopewell 57; Monterde, “Objetivo” 639–40; and Gubern “Film Magazines” 456). For Nuestro Cine see Nieto Cine en papel.

4. NF retail price in the period of study went from 10 pesetas in 1968 to 35 in 1978, in keeping with contemporary revistas del corazón such as Garbo, which cost 10 pesetas in 1969.

5. See Juan Antonio Bardem's memoirs Y todavía sigue for the creation of Objetivo.

6. Bourdieu's “habitus” and “class habitus” are notoriously capacious concepts. For the purposes of this study, Randal Johnson's observation that it “is often described as a ‘feel for the game’” which comes with class, agency and education has proven very useful for reading Nadal and her collaborators (“Editor's Introduction” 5).

7. See also Nadal's statements in no. 2000. (Ponga, “Aquellos” 38–42).

8. See Chapter 5 in Antonio Lázaro-Reboll.

9. The evidence suggests that writers and contributors to the main sections of the magazine (reportajes, entrevistas, secciones fijas, actualidad and críticas) all had similar status during the period this study focuses on (1968–1978). Therefore, it would be a form of rewriting history to focus more on any of those contributors simply because their later careers were successful. Some became acclaimed novelists after their time in NF: Terenci Moix, Rosa Montero and Maruja Torres, for instance. Both Terenci Moix and Rosa Montero “recycled” and reflected on their work in NF.

10. This closure did not affect the timely publication of 1369, which came out on 10 January 1975.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the British Academy [grant number 21810] and the University of Kent (Strategic Research Development Fund).