This collection of essays offers a new lens through which to examine Spain's cin
ema production following the decades of isolation imposed by the Franco regime.
The seventeen key films analysed in the volume span a period of 35 years that ha
ve been crucial in the development of Spain, Spanish democracy and Spanish cinem
a. They encompass different genres (horror, thriller, melodrama, social realism,
documentary), both popular (Los abrazos rotos/Broken Embraces, Vicky Cristina B
arcelona) and more select art house fare (En la ciudad de Sylvia/In the City of
Sylvia, El espiritu de la colmena/Spirit of the Beehive) and are made in differe
nt languages: English (as both first and second language), Basque, Castilian, Ca
talan and French. Offering an expanded understanding of 'national' cinemas that
negotiates the global co-production networks that fund the production of contemp
orary films in Spain, the volume offers treatments of key works by Guillermo del
Toro and Lucrecia Martel alongside an examination of the ways in which establis
hed auteurs (Almodovar, Jose Garci, Carlos Saura) and younger generations of fil
mmakers (Cesc Gay, Alejandro Amenabar, Iciar Bollain) have harnessed cinematic l
anguage towards a commentary on the nation-state, wider issues of landscape, and
the politics of historical and cultural memory. The result is a bold new study
of the ways in which film has created new prisms (indeed one could argue stereot
ypes) that have determined how Spain is positioned in the global marketplace."
