During this short week we are going to read two chapters of the book on Spanish cinema, local genres, global films: Jordan, “Spanish Cinema and the ‘National / Transnational’ Debate” and Oliete-Aldea, “Questions of Transnationalism and Genre.” On Wednesday we are going to watch the film by Isabel Coixet, Cosas que nunca te dije (Things that I Never Told You) (1996).
On Thursday, we are going to hear three presentations: one, the Databases and resources orientation (Mandatory attendance, Woodruff 312) by Phil MacLeod; and then we are going to hear the presentations of the studies by Besas, on “The Financial Structure of Spanish Cinema” and Loyo, “Local Responses to Universal Sufferings in Isabel Coixet’s Transnational Melodramas.” I ask that you pay close attention to the relationship between finances, suffering, and melodrama.
These readings and presentations will help you begin to develop an understanding of an important link for the rest of the semester, which I present to you as a tripartite question that I want you to try to consider in order to write your blogposts for this week: what is the relationship between finances and transnational melodrama? Is transnational melodrama, in other words, a result of the financial structure of Spanish Cinema? Or, conversely, did the financial structure of Spanish Cinema depended on the emergence of the genre of melodrama as a transnational event? The blogpost comments and questions are due on Saturday October 15 at 5PM at the very latest.