Month: September 2017

This week we are going to explore the dyad national/transnational, and how it works in the cinema and literature of twentieth-century Spain.  This week we do NOT have a reading by Pavlović; instead, on Tuesday we will discuss three articles that will help us understand this critical matter for our seminar.  The articles are Steven Marsh’s on National-Popular and García Berlanga’s ¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall!, Kathleen Vernon’s on Hollywood, trade wars, and transculturation, and Daniel Mourenza’s on Bardem and Hollywood Melodrama.

With Luis García Berlanga and Juan Antonio Bardem, ¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall (Welcome, Mr. Marshall!) (1953) on Wednesday we will see a representation of the national/transnational dynamics of economic independence after the good times of the Republic, another turn of the screw on the by then familiar españoladas,  and the way in which cinematic development plays with these dynamics.

On Thursday, we will read a segment of Mercé Rodoreda’s La plaça del diamant (In Diamond Square), and we will hear .  On Thursday, we will hear Ms. Tate present the article by Benet, “Historical Films During the First Years of the Franco Regime and their Transnational Models” (31-41)

By Saturday at 5PM at the latest, please post comments, questions, or doubts you have regarding this dyad of national/transnational, and how you see it represented in the cinema and literature we are going to discuss.

 

This week we are going to explore the correspondences between nostalgia and economic independence, and how historical memory begins to appear as cinematic pastiche in Spain.  The reading by Pavlović on Autarky and Papier- Mâché Cinema between 1939 and 1950, alongside the poem by Gloria Fuertes, “Off the Map” and the story by Rosa Chacel, “Chinina-Migone” will help us see how economics, independence, pastiche, and historical memory play critical roles in the development of the literature and cinema in the repressive frame of fascism.

By Saturday at 5PM at the latest, please post comments, questions, or doubts you have regarding this correspondence between economics, nostalgia, and historical memory, and how you see it represented in the cinema and literature we are going to discuss.

With Fernando Trueba’s Belle Époque (1992) we will see a post-Francoist representation of the first glimpses of economic independence during the good times of the Republic, the nostalgia that characterized historical memory of españoladas,  and the way in which cinematic pastiche points to the disasters of fascism to come after 1939.

.  On Thursday, we will hear Ms. Tate present the article by Benet, “Historical Films During the First Years of the Franco Regime and their Transnational Models” (31-41)

.  Recommended examples of historical memory as cinematic pastiche from the the 1940s: Juan de Orduña, Locura de amor (1948) and José Luis Sáenz de Heredia and Francisco Franco (aka Jaime de Andrade), Raza (aka Espíritu de una raza) [No English subtitles; Spanish audio]

.  PLEASE, NOTE: The deadline for paper 1: Engagement and propaganda of fascism and resistance to it has been moved to Monday the 25 at 10AM.  Print version (NOT by email), in my mailbox at the Department of Spanish during business hours, or under the door of my office (515 South Callaway) after hours.

This week we are going to explore the correspondences between film, literature, and the explosion of a three-year civil war (The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939), and how that short-and-long span of time resonates as other wars (both civil and international) in which Spain participated.  The reading by Pavlovic on cinema and the Spanish Civil War, alongside the poems by Federico García Lorca and Miguel de Unamuno, and the essay by Unamuno entitled “My Religion” will help us see how quarreling, division, censorship, control, and remembrance play critical roles in such development.

By Saturday at 5PM at the latest, please post comments, questions, or doubts you have regarding the topic of this endless war, and how you see it represented in the cinema and literature we are going to discuss.

With Basilio Martín Patino’s Canciones para después de una guerra/Song for After a War we will see these demons of war, nationalism, sociocultural splintering, bad memories, and surveillance that originated long before 1936, and lasted long thereafter, as Martín Patino’s 1971 film and the memory of the execution of García Lorca, as well as Unamuno’s philosophical resistance, demonstrate.

This week we are going to explore the advent of sound in film, and the explosion of Surrealism and the Second Republic as agents of parts of the cultural production of literature and cinema in Spain during the latter 20s and early 30s. Andrés Zamora’s article “Violence (Spanish Eyes) will help us understand the role that violence plays in this period of cultural development, while Pavlovic, Zambrano, and Jiménez will help us see how dreams, demons, nightmares, returns, and remembrances play critical roles in such development.

With Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves/Snow White we will see these demons, memories, violence, and eyes gazing around even in 2012, after it was all said and done.  Technically.