Guest Post: Michael Pattison - Notes on Some Spanish Films at the Seville European Film Festival

     Though their country’s economic plight worsens daily, Spanish filmmakers are beginning to assess and get to grips with a political climate that is, in the final analysis, antagonistic to artistic endeavour. While films ineluctably express the complex, contradictory tensions that characterise the social context in which they are made, the aim and hope is that any historical period finds its artistic match: those works that grasp the matter at hand, embrace the difficulties ahead, and refuse to evade the work to be done. To this end, there were a significant number of Spanish films at the tenth Seville European Film Festival (SEFF) whose general focus and political persuasion spoke of a palpable discontent with regard to the current state of things. Not every film will be politically charged, of course, and so it is to SEFF’s credit that it waded through what I presume to be a large swamp of mediocrity in order to present, by and large, the strong selection it finally offered. These works speak to the present precisely because they convey an understanding – to varying degrees – of how they relate to the unfolding historical moment.

Costa da morte / Coast of Death

     I have written elsewhere – here and here –  on Lois Patiño’s Costa da Morte, but some further remarks won’t go amiss (I first saw the film in Locarno in August, and again at the Viennale prior to my arrival in Seville). An essay film on the eponymous Galician coastline – named so because of its history of shipwrecks – Patiño’s debut feature frequently surveys its region from afar, zoomed-in so as to flatten its landscapes and thereby deny a more visually harmonious vantage point. There’s something unnatural about such optical choices: as humans, we cannot, after all, get a closer look at an object without telescopic aid or without physically moving to a closer proximity. Consequently, the film enables an unspoken but ongoing commentary on its own function: in denying itself and its audience a postcard-friendly view of the Coast of Death, it suggests a better understanding of these locales might come from a more idiosyncratic view. By flattening the landscape in such a way, Patiño’s film pits a multiplicity of histories against one another, privileging none and including all. Just as every landscape is the sum of its parts, so the present is the sum of its pasts. Note the plural: at no point in history has there been a moment without contradictions – the remnants of a bygone time, the formations of an era to come. 

El Futuro / The Future

     El Futuro takes an aesthetically different approach to history. Set in the immediate aftermath of Spain’s 1982 General Election – which was won by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party – Luis López Carrasco’s debut feature confines itself to a house party attended by a group of increasingly inebriated twenty- and thirty-somethings hell-bent on indulging the post-Franco night away. When I saw the film at Locarno in August I couldn’t write the soundtrack list in its end credits down fast enough: this boasts an infectious selection of the Euro-synth and -punk of the period, and lends the narrative a real verve. There’s something futuristic about electronic music, of course, and yet ’80s synth – as well as other fashions from that decade – seems to have dated quicker than most. Likewise, the forward-thinking euphoria facilitated by a socialist party’s assumption of governmental responsibilities now seems a distant memory: López Carrasco’s ironically-named film is anything but optimistic, and the textured grain of his 16mm compositions reminds us at every turn of its own retrospection. Every smile, laugh and suggestion of a future appears as a ghost prohibited today by Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy’s enforced austerity.

El triste olor de la carne / The Sad Smell of Flesh

    Mariano Rajoy is a secondary character in El triste olor de la carne, the second feature by Cristóbal Arteaga Roza. Having his first state-of-the-nation address in February this year overheard in intermittent snippets here recalls Andrew Dominik’s similar employment of Barack Obama soundbites in Killing Them Softly (2012). Unlike that film, however, El triste olor de la carne has no time for allegory: a single-take trudge through Madrid’s urban sprawl, it takes one citizen’s financial loss to its logical, literal and inevitable (if no less powerful) conclusion. Said citizen is Alfredo (Alfredo Rodríguez), an uncanny cross between Boris Karloff and Peter Capaldi, his visibly fatigued face saying more than the character ever does, as he tries desperately to defer a meeting with the bailiffs who are coming to repossess his home.

     When a recession begins to affect the perfect image of a white middle-class nuclear family, you know you’re in trouble. Alfredo’s burnt-out businessman is a figure of belated if bewildered acceptance, and the only resistance he can summon rings, in the end, all too true. Though some critics might feel its persistent, unbroken take results in unnecessary bouts of dead time – such as when Alfredo is driving, or else travelling on a bus or in a taxi – this is precisely the film’s strength, lingering as it does on those unbearably long passages in which unthinkable stress drains a person’s life away. Indeed, the prospect of financial collapse is now too familiar a prospect for many Spanish people that contrived dramatics are no longer necessary.

Alegrías de Cádiz / Joys of Cádiz

     Not every Spanish film at SEFF felt like it was making a significant contribution to the battle. Gonzalo García Pelayo’s Alegrías de Cádiz returns its director to filmmaking after three decades in other fields, and feels very much the product of someone lacking practice. (For a serviceably flashy take on García Pelayo’s venture into professional gambling in the 1990s, see Eduard Cortés’s The Pelayos (2012)). Anyone familiar with the director’s work – pseudo-cerebral, flesh-heavy forays into the beauty of women, the joys of sex, monogamy as a socially conditioned and therefore unnatural state, and so on – will not be surprised to hear this is a heavily indulgent work. Not without its lively moments, the film is an uneasy blend of a meta-comedy about a ménage-à-trois and a sincere essay film on Cádiz. As such, it keeps itself busy for its two-hour running time, but García Pelayo’s implication-cum-assertion, that the most interesting thing about a city is its women, seems like a perverted joke.

10.000 noches en ninguna parte / 10,000 Nights Nowhere

     Other films disappointed. 10.000 noches en ninguna parte, by Malaga-born writer-director Ramón Salazar, is a centrifugal triptych on themes of loss and – of course – love. Wide-eyed Andrés Gertrúdix plays the same character thrice, living in parallel dimensions: with a bohemian trio in Berlin, with a childhood love in Paris, and with his alcoholic mother in what I presumed to be Spain. A dull, cold visual palette – with shallow-focus camerawork – gives the film a terminally malaised look, and though a certain whimsicality forces its earlier passages along, the employment of Arvo Pärt’s overused ‘Fratres’ reveals an essentially juvenile sensibility at work. Indeed, at a certain point during the film I wrote in my notebook: these people don’t live in the same world as me – the real world, with financial pressures etc. 

Los chicos del puerto / The Kids from the Port

     Nor do the protagonists of Los chicos del puerto, by Alberto Morais. The film’s eponymous port is that of Valencia, and its kids are Miguel, Lola and Guillermo, three pre-teens who embark upon the ostensibly simple trek to a cemetery, to place an army jacket on the grave of the recently deceased friend of Miguel’s grandfather. The pilgrimage of course turns out to be more arduous than first assumed. The friends underestimate their bus fare; they journey to the wrong cemetery; they become lost; they grow hungry; they go broke. That one-note tone of dramatic seriousness – more familiar to French productions than to Spanish – sets in quickly: characters act not how people do, but for a desired symbolism, one which over the course of even a slim 78 minutes drains all would-be energy. Programme notes mention “sparse dialogue and a formal Bressonian minimalism”, but the invariably stilted interactions here are part of a wider filmmaking trend that may very well be indebted to Bresson but which provides too little social commentary to justify the comparison. Too many filmmakers seem to mistake this sullen, ploddingly mopey register for mysteriousness, for ambiguity, for poetry or for purity – or for any other apparently desirable trait.

     All the more refreshing, then, to watch more upbeat films like El Rayo, Un ramo de cactus and Las aventuras de Lily ojos de gato. The first of these, directed by Fran Araúgo and Ernesto de Nova, screened in SEFF’s ‘Andalusian Panorama’ section following a world-premiere at San Sebastian, and sees a defiantly high-spirited itinerant labourer trekking across Spain back to Morocco on a tractor. The second, which received its world-premiere at SEFF as part of the festival’s inaugural ‘Resistances’ strand, is a pleasing if sometimes technically amateurish comedy by Pablo Llorca, featuring a deceptively masterful central performance from Seville-born Pedro Casablanc, who has in recent years been ubiquitous on Spanish television. Casablanc’s deadpan style and pockmarked face recall Bill Murray, and his turn in Llorca’s film – as a fiftyish farmer at odds with his family’s acceptingly money-oriented ways – deserves much wider recognition. In contrast to a film like Los chicos del puerto, both Un ramo de cactus and El Rayo demonstrate that a serious film need not be glum.

Las aventuras de Lily ojos de gato / The Adventures of Lily Cat Eyes

     Las aventuras, meanwhile, is a night-in-the-life-of tale centring heavily on inebriation as a means to forget. Working as a PR for a bar in Madrid, Lily (Ana Adams) meets a bleary-eyed customer with whom, after hours, she solemnly swears to drink till she hits the ground – and perhaps would if real-life events didn’t get in the way. To be sure, Lily is drinking away the hurt of a break-up, but her temporary escape is frustrated by more pressing matters: a friend’s pregnancy, her new pal’s paralytic state, an abusive employer, and so on. A more systemic understanding of things might be beyond Boix and his film; I would have preferred a less cartoonishly cruel boss, for instance. And though these are palpably more universal features with which to pepper a story – as opposed to the characteristics of the Galician landscape, or the political fate of Spain – the film nevertheless has an undeniable strength, in taking an otherwise insufferable young drunk and accounting for her self-destructive behaviour in a non-evasive way. Played by British actress Adams – who speaks Spanish fluently – Lily has a rugged, get-on-with-it edge, which makes her charming even when she’s actively derailing a blues performer’s final song in a late-night bar.

Michael Pattison is a freelance film critic based in Gateshead, UK. He blogs at idFilm and Tweets @m_pattison.

Not-Entirely-Within-the-Remit-of-this-Blog Viewing: Pablo Larraín edition

This post has been moved to my new blog - it can be found here.

Anatomy of a Scene: Los lunes al sol / Mondays in the Sun

This post has been moved to my new blog - you can find it here.

Tangled Ideas, part 2

So, having rewatched Biutiful, and started to do a close reading of a couple of sequences of Los lunes al sol, I have come to some conclusions in relation to the points I raised in my previous post on the subject.

1. I can no longer see whatever it was in Biutiful that so strongly pushed me towards Los lunes al sol (or only at a very superficial level - Bardem's performance in the later film is in many ways a physical reversal of what he did in the earlier one). This is more than a little irritating.
2. Given the length of what I want to write, I think I have two separate ideas - one that relates to how Bardem's performance style and star image coalesce (and reinforce one another), and one that is about how Bardem's presence in a film shapes Spanish critical reception of that film. There is an overlap between the two things, centring around the issue of genre, but I think they can be separated out. Hopefully.
3. My intention is to start with the first idea - mainly focussing on Los lunes al sol but also bringing in Biutiful (and some of his other films - yet to be decided). But I need to come up with a central 'hook'.
4. I find the issues raised by the second idea intriguing, but I don't currently want to be looking at the reception side of things - I need to focus on the films themselves for a while. So this may be something I come back to, but in a smaller way.
5. I'm going to have a think about how I would word an abstract for the first idea, to see if that can focus my argument.
6. I have been working on a close reading of Los lunes al sol's longest sequence - the seven-minute-long argument in the bar - which I may work into an 'Anatomy of a Scene' post as a way of getting started with thinking specifically about his performance.

In addition to that, I am also starting to research a more general piece about Spanish stardom (covering a broader period than I have previously investigated) - as I start to watch films for that, they'll appear as 'random viewing' posts, but otherwise the blog will be pretty quiet as I try to get to grips with these two 'projects'.

Open Your Eyes

Abre los ojos (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997)

Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001)

Tangled Ideas

    You develop a funny attachment to films that feature in your thesis. Not all of them (there are a few that you'd have to pay me to watch again), but I think certainly the ones that find themselves woven into the central fabric of your central argument; you are infinitely aware of their defects and flaws (you've pored over their minutiae for months, taking them apart and holding them up to the light), but you bristle slightly if someone else points them out. But once you've submitted, the idea of revisiting one of those films (for enjoyment!) doesn't appeal; it's difficult to view those films from any other perspective than the one through which you wrote about them in such detail. But this is where the funny attachment comes in for me because there are some that I nonetheless regard with what can only be described as affection, of which Los lunes al sol is one. There is something about the film that moves me no matter how many times I watch it, or how I've dissected it in the past: it is a film about solidarity, loyalty, about people being stronger together, and about how friendship can keep you afloat in the worst of times. Much of this centres on Bardem's character, Santa, the pillar of a group of friends laid low by unemployment. If I were told that I could only watch one Bardem performance again, this is the one I would choose; in part because it is a perfect encapsulation of what 'Javier Bardem' and his star image mean within Spanish cinema, but also because I personally think that he has yet to better this performance.
     But I thought that I was 'done' with the film in terms of writing about it. Then in September 2011 I watched Biutiful and throughout the film Los lunes al sol kept tugging at my consciousness. A week or so later I watched León de Aranoa's film for the first time in at least two years. But you can see from this post that I couldn't quite articulate what it was that kept snagging in my brain, other than it centred on Bardem's performance (try not to laugh at my hugely optimistic assertion that I would write about the two films together within the next month - although, that said, I have found what I initially started writing in 2011; more than 3000 words, all of them about Los lunes al sol) and the feeling that Biutiful was a turning-inside-out of his earlier performance. And then life got in the way. I wrote a few of New Year's resolutions at the start of 2013 and one of them was 'Write the Bardem Los lunes/Biutiful article'. My attempts to restart my research focussed on my conference paper in the first half of the year, but it finally seems like time to actually get on with the bloody thing. So I rewatched Los lunes al sol this past weekend (I'd actually forgotten that I'd watched it in 2011 - I thought it was four years since I'd seen it) with fresh eyes and a sense of relief that this 'old friend' had not changed beyond recognition. I'll now have to rewatch Biutiful as well, but one step at a time.
    Performance is still at the centre of what I want to pick apart between the two films but in combination with the issue of genre and the associations that Bardem brings with him. I'm not sure whether I've got two ideas fighting each other, or just one that I've not properly untangled yet. 
    My intention is to look at the associations that Bardem's presence generates (at least in Spain) particularly in relation to cine social, before moving on to his performances in the two films, alongside criticism of the films that specifically relates to genre and their treatment of social issues. I think that Los lunes al sol addresses its themes, and wears its social conscience, with greater skill than Biutiful, but also better utilises Bardem and certain elements of his star image. It's not that there are obvious similarities between the films (they are quite different in terms of both visual style and their treatment of their respective subjects) but rather that Bardem's character and performance in the latter strongly reminded me of the earlier film because of the way that the performance seems (to me) to be a turning-inside-out of the earlier one. I don't think that Biutiful is cine social by any straightforward definition (but is genre ever clear cut? Los lunes al sol could be viewed as containing elements of melodrama as well) - but what is interesting is how it has been shoehorned into that genre by certain critics (particularly in Spain), and then judged as having failed to meet 'the standard' (again, particularly in Spain - both films have received their share of scathing critical commentary*). I think that this shoehorning is partly because of the associations that Javier Bardem brings with him for a range of reasons, but namely his style of acting (which is where the performance/genre overlap comes in).
    What I may do initially is use the blog to write about his performance in each film, so as to ground myself in them and to clarify what I'm grasping for by actually having to put what I think he does through his performances into written words. And then I'll have to do battle with genre and sort out my argument. But I think that if this nugget of an idea has stuck with me for two years while I've flailed around doing other things, then I should probably follow it. I'm putting all of this up here so as to hold myself to it because I find it far too easy to carry around ideas in my notebook without attempting to develop them - so feel free to give me a nudge if nothing appears on here in the next month!



*One of my favourite 'takedowns' of Los lunes al sol comes from Fecé and Pujol, who describe the film as ‘bienintencionada […] aunque conviertan el paro y la lucha de clases en una hipotética canción de Eurovisión cantada en esperanto: Si todos los parados del mundo caminasen cogidos de la mano’ ['well-intentioned [...] although they convert unemployment and the class war into a hypothetical Eurovision song sung in esperanto: if all the unemployed of the world could walk along hand in hand'] (2003: 161-162) - which is cutting but nonetheless makes me chuckle every time I read it. Biutiful's scathing commentary is more wince-inducing than funny (I think I tweeted some of my favourites when I watched it).

New Book - A History of Spanish Film: Cinema and Society 1910-2010

Faulkner, S. (2013) - A History of Spanish Film: Cinema and Society 1910-2010, London: Bloomsbury. ISBN: 9780826416674

    This book uses the concept of Spanish middlebrow cinema to explore the representation of class and social mobility across a century of Spanish cinema: 'A History of Spanish Film explores, first, the cinema's representation of upwardly and downwardly mobile groups on-screen, and places this representation, second, alongside class realignments in Spanish society off-screen' (p.1). As Faulkner points out in her introduction, by examining Spanish cinema decade-by-decade rather than the traditional narrative of 'key dates' approach (often centring on whether a film is pre- or post-1975), she manages to uncover continuities at the beginning and end of the 1970s. But by focussing on 'an original terrain that was in-between previous "art" and "popular" alternatives' she also traces the 'middlebrow' through Spanish cinema from the 1970s onwards, arguing for the presence of a greater consistency and continuity in the Spanish cinematic output than is usually taken to be the case.

    The close textual analysis in combination with a nuanced reading of production, reception and changes in taste in Spain gives new insights into a range of films, including those that have already had acres written about them. From a personal perspective, the section on Los lunes al sol, which I'm intending to write about in relation to Javier Bardem's performance style, has given me much food for thought not least because it offers a more positive interpretation of its fusing of social realism and melodrama (much decried by the likes of Ángel Quintana and others) and has pointed me in the direction of other useful sources on the film as well. I'm also planning to track down some of the films that I haven't seen. A really interesting read.

As usual, I'm listing the table of contents below - I've listed the films English title first because that's how it's done in the book (I usually put the Spanish title first).

Introduction: Cinema and Society 1910-2010

1. Questions of Class and Questions of Art in Early Cinema

• Blood and Sand (Sangre y arena -André and Ibáñez, 1916)
• Don Juan Tenorio (de Baños, 1922)
• The Grandfather (El abuelo -Buchs, 1925)
• The Mystery of the Puerta del Sol (El misterio de la Puerta del Sol - Elías, 1929)
• The Cursed Village (La aldea maldita -Rey, 1930)
• The Fair of the Dove (La verbena de la paloma -Perojo, 1935)

2. Social Mobility and Cinema of the 1940s and 1950s: Consolation and Condemnation

• The Nail (El clavo -Gil, 1944)
• She, He and His Millions (Ella, él y sus millones -Orduña, 1944)
• From Woman to Woman (De mujer a mujer -Lucia, 1950)
• Furrows (Surcos -Nieves Conde, 1951)
• That Happy Couple (Esa pareja feliz -Bardem and Berlanga, 1951)
• Main Street (Calle mayor -Bardem, 1956)

3. Charting Upward Social Mobility: 1960s Films about the Middle Classes and the Middlebrow

• Plácido (Berlanga, 1961)
• Life Goes On (El mundo sigue -Fernán Gómez, 1963)
• Summer Night (Noche de verano -Grau, 1962)
• The Happy Sixties (Los felices sesenta -Camino, 1963)
• City Life is not for Me (La cuidad no es para mí -Lazaga, 1966)
• Marisol's Four Weddings (Las cuatro bodas de Marisol -Lucia, 1967)

4. The 'Third Way' and the Spanish Middlebrow Film in the 1970s

• Tristana (Buñuel, 1970)
• Tormento (Olea, 1974)
• Spaniards in Paris (Españolas en París -Bodegas, 1971)
• My Dearest Señorita (Mi Querida Señorita -Armiñán, 1972)
• Unfinished Business (Asignatura pendiente -Garci, 1977)
• Daddy's War (La guerra de papá -Mercero, 1977)

5. Miró Films and Middlebrow Cinema in the 1980s

• First Work (Ópera prima -Trueba, 1980)
• Blood Wedding (Bodas de sangre -Saura, 1981)
• The Beehive (La colmena -Camus, 1982)
• Diamond Square (La plaza del diamante -Betriu, 1982)
• Mambrú Went to War (Mambrú se fue a la guerra -Fernán Gómez, 1986)
• Half of Heaven (La mitad del cielo -Gutiérrez Aragón, 1986)

6. Middlebrow Cinema of the 1990s: From Miró to Cine social

• The Dumbfounded King (El rey pasmado -Uribe, 1991)
• The Flower of My Secret (La flor de mi secreto -Almodóvar, 1995)
• The Dog in the Manger (El perro del hortelano -Miró, 1996)
• The Grandfather (El abuelo -Garci, 1998)
• A Time for Defiance (La hora de los valientes -Mercero, 1998)
• Alone (Solas -Zambrano, 1999)

7. From Cine social to Heritage Cinema in Films of the 2000s

• Mondays in the Sun (Los lunes al sol -León de Aranoa, 2002)
• Take My Eyes (Te doy mis ojos -Bollaín, 2003)
• Carol's Journey (El viaje de Carol -Uribe, 2002)
• Soldiers of Salamina (Los soldados de Salamina -Trueba, 2003)
• Alatriste (Díaz Yanes, 2006)
• Lope (Waddington, 2010)

I will add the book to part 1 of the book list.

I've been building up quite a stockpile of books on Spanish cinema recently, partly because there have been an unusually high number published this year, but also because I'm trying to expand my knowledge (concentrated on 1992 onwards) backwards to encompass the 1980s and 1970s. The more-recently published books on my 'to be read' pile include:

Delgado, M.M. and R. Fiddian (ed.s) (2013) - Spanish Cinema 1973-2010: Auteurism, politics, landscape and memory, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Maurer Queipo, I. (ed) (2013) - Directory of World Cinema: Latin America, Bristol: Intellect Press.

Palacio, M. (ed) (2011) - El cine y la transición política en España 1975-1982, Madrid: Editorial Biblioteca Nueva, S.L.

Huerta Floriano, M.Á. and E. Pérez Morán (ed.s) (2012) - El "cine de barrio" tardofranquista: Reflejo de una sociedad, Madrid: Editorial Biblioteca Nueva, S.L.

Aguilar, J. (2012) - Las estrellas del destape y la transición: El cine español se desnuda, Madrid: T&B Editores.

Benet, V.J. (2012) - El cine español: Una historia cultural, Barcelona: Paidós.

Expect some of those to feature on here at some point in the future.

The Carlos Saura Challenge: a recap

Image taken from here

Due to the combination of a stressful situation at work and family circumstances, I’ve been away from the blog for longer than I would have liked. 
    Rather than continuing the Carlos Saura Challenge within the set time limit of a year (which may have been unrealistic from the start, given the number of films), I’m going to continue without a set end date but with the aim of covering 1-2 films each month. Aside from filling in a gap in my own knowledge, the Challenge was meant to lead up to the release of Saura’s next film, Guernica, 33 días – however, that film has continued to have funding problems (it had already had its production delayed a year) and with the death of producer Elías Querejeta a few months ago, the film’s future does not look any less precarious. So in that sense (given that the film is still in pre-production – Saura has been directing theatre in the meantime) the time scale does not matter so much.
   Since I started the Challenge in February, a few more of Saura’s films have become available on VOD and/or I’ve tracked down a couple more on DVD, so I thought I’d amend the list from the first post: if a title in the list below has ‘VOD’ next to it that means that VOD is currently the only way to view it;  ‘+VOD’ signifies that means that it is also in circulation on DVD; nothing next to the title means DVD only (I’ve indicated if a film is completely unavailable). The majority of the DVDs seem to be currently OOP, but I have found most of mine on either ebay or amazon.es.
   All relevant posts are / will be tagged ‘Carlos Saura Challenge’ so they can be found together – film no. 10, Cría cuervos, is due to be covered next (although you can find Fiona Noble’s take on here already), but you’ll see that one of Saura’s earlier films, La madriguera, is now available on VOD, so I may go backwards first – but one or other of those films will be covered in September.
As usual any English titles in square brackets are my own translation (otherwise the title shown is the official English language title). The dates given refer to the Spanish theatrical release.

38. Guernica, 33 días / Guernica, 33 Days (in pre-production)
37. Flamenco, Flamenco (2010) +VOD
36. Io, Don Giovanni / I, Don Giovanni (2010)
35. Fados (2007)
34. Iberia (2005) VOD
33. El séptimo día / The Seventh Day (2004)
32. Salomé (2002)
31. Buñuel y la mesa del rey Salomón / Buñuel and King Solomon's Table (2001)
30. Goya en Burdeos / Goya in Bordeaux (1999) +VOD
29. Tango (1998)
28. Pajarico / [Little Bird] (1997)
27. Taxi (1996)
26. Flamenco (1995)
25. ¡Dispara! / Outrage (1993)
24. Sevillanas (1992) [currently unable to get a copy]
23. ¡Ay, Carmela! (1990)
22. La noche oscura / [The Dark Night] (1989)
21. El Dorado (1988) VOD
20. El amor brujo (1986)
19. Los zancos / [The Stilts] (1984)
18. Carmen (1983)
17. Antonieta (1982) [only available on R1]
16. Dulces horas / [Sweet Hours] (1982) VOD
15. Bodas de sangre / Blood Wedding (1981)
14. Deprisa, deprisa / Faster, Faster (1981) +VOD
13. Mamá cumple 100 años / [Mama Turns 100] (1979) +VOD
12. Los ojos vendados / Blindfolded Eyes (1978) VOD
11. Elisa, vida mía / Elisa, My Life (1977) +VOD
10. Cría cuervos / Raise Ravens (1976) +VOD
09. La prima Ángelica / Cousin Angelica (1974) +VOD
08. Ana y los lobos / Ana and the Wolves (1973) +VOD
07. El jardin de las delicias / The Garden of Delights (1970)
06. La madriguera / Honeycomb (1969) VOD
05. Stress-es-tres-tres / Stress is Three (1968) [unavailable]
04. Peppermint frappé (1967) +VOD
03. La caza / The Hunt (1966) +VOD
02. Llanto por un bandido / Lament for a Bandit (1964) 
01. Los golfos / The Delinquents (1962) [unavailable]

Resources Revisited: Where to buy / watch / read Spanish cinema

Way back when this blog began in February 2011, I wrote a resources post detailing where to find films, DVDs, books, journals related to Spanish cinema. I've updated that post multiple times since then but thought that the time had come to write a separate, updated version because (a) the original post has so many revisions that it's starting to look like a patchwork quilt, and (b) so much has changed online in the past two years, it seems simpler to start over. So, some of the information in this post is the same as the original (where things haven't changed), but I've tried to make sure that all of it is up to date.

Films and DVDs –

      The UK distribution of Spanish films on DVD has improved in the last few years, and there are a number of options in terms of buying them within the UK. Moviemail has good offers / sales on foreign language cinema and I like supporting an independent retailer when I can - they also have free postage within the UK. Prices on Amazon UK vary and they've changed how you can go about finding Spanish language films as they no longer bother to have a World Cinema genre category. To find them - Music, Games, Films & TV > Film & TV > Look at the sidebar on the left of the screen > Under 'Languages', you will see 'Spanish'. From there you can change the order of the search results by popularity, price, or release date, and you can also see more recent releases by looking at the 'New arrivals' category in the sidebar on the left (you can choose between 'Last 30 days', 'Last 90 days', and 'Next 90 days'). 

       However a lot of Spanish films that don’t get released over here are released in Spain with optional English subtitles (this is more true of contemporary films than older classics, but there is nonetheless a wide range available with subtitle options). If you’re unsure about ordering from Spain, there are quite a lot of Spanish sellers selling Spanish DVDs on ebay UK. It used to be quite straightforward to find Spanish films on ebay (DVDs > Foreign Language > Spanish), but they've dropped 'Foreign Language' from the main genre menu - you can still find them as a category if you click 'More refinements' in the left-hand sidebar (when you've selected the general DVD category) but you have to go through several more menus and it becomes quite convoluted (with only a comparatively small number of DVDs listed under what become sub-genres within sub-genres). What I usually do is search for the title / director / actor in the main search engine, tick the box that says 'include description', and set the 'Item Location' as European Union - you will then start to see Spanish sellers / ebay shops –the prices sometimes seem a little high, but consider that they quite often offer free postage and have factored that into their asking price (standard postage for one DVD being sent from Spain to the UK seems to be around 12€). I have ordered DVDs through ebay in this way and have never had any problem.

       If you’re feeling more adventurous and / or speak Spanish, there are a number of online Spanish DVD stores. Amazon Spain opened in September 2011, and it is as reliable as the UK version but they do seem to have quite low levels of stock -you sometimes have to wait a few weeks for something to come back into stock. The postage is a standard 7€, which is far more reasonable than most of the other sites I have used. Fnac would seem the other obvious place to start, but you need to have a bank card issued in Spain in order to use it. I’m not sure if that is also the case for El Corte Inglés but the last time I attempted to order from them they wanted my passport number, which seemed a bit excessive for the sake of the 1st series of 7 vidas (don’t ask). The site that I used most often before Amazon Spain opened is DVDgo -if you’re not confident in Spanish, click on the Union Jack in the top right-hand corner and the menus switch to English (although you still need to search for titles in Spanish). They have really good reductions when they have a sale, although be warned that the postage costs can be quite expensive. The other DVD site that I’ve used is Stars Cafe (and I've continued to use them in combination with Amazon because they have good sales and their postage rates are more reasonable than DVDgo) and likewise there is another Union Jack on the right-hand side to switch the menus into English. Both stores do deliveries by courier, so once they are despatched they arrive very quickly.

      In terms of films being streamed online, I can vouch for Filmin and Filmotech. Filmin is entirely in Spanish and there are no English subtitle options on the films, so it’s one for people who speak Spanish or who want to improve their Spanish. It mainly streams contemporary Spanish films with an emphasis on the indie / arthouse end of the market. You can watch films on Filmin in the UK, but you will need to find an amenable Spaniard to pay on your behalf (or to buy you a gift subscription). The prices currently break down into two streams: Premium and Premium+. In the Premium strand you can pay 8€/month or 70€/year and that allows you to watch an unlimited number of films from the main catalogue (more than 3700 films and rising). There are certain films (usually ones that are either unreleased in Spanish cinemas or that are shortly about to get a DVD release) that cost more, and that's where Premium+ comes in. In the Premium+ strand you pay 15€/month, 30€ for three months, 55€ for six months, or 110€ for a year - and each of those will also cover three of those more exclusive films per month (but you can't accumulate the tokens - you have three per month, they don't carry over to the next month). You can also buy bundles of these tokens (14€ for 5, 50€ for 20). Filmotech generally has older films than Filmin (although in the past year they have increased their number of contemporary releases), and they’re also restricted depending on where in the world you are (for example, only certain Berlanga films are accessible from the UK). The plus side is that some of them do have English subtitle options and you pay a monthly subscription of 6,95€, with some premium titles available for an extra payment (all payable through paypal).

Books and articles–

      In terms of book recommendations, see my posts - Books on Spanish Cinema, Part One and Part Two - those posts are periodically updated as and when I get my hands on new books (which also receive standalone posts - click on 'Books' in the labels at the bottom of the blog and you will get to all of those posts). 2013 is shaping up to be a bumper year for new books on Spanish cinema - so standby for more! 

      The two online bookshops that I have used in the past are Casa del Libro and Ocho y Medio. Casa del Libro can be switched into English by clicking on the drop down menu next to the Spanish flag at the top of the page and likewise Ocho y Medio also has an English option by clicking on the Union Jack –but if you’re after Spanish-language books, you can probably cope with the websites being in Spanish (note: Ocho y Medio sells French-language books as well). Casa del Libro is similar to Waterstones and Ocho y Medio is a specialist (Cinema) bookshop. The postage is pretty expensive but I’ve never had any problems with my orders, and again delivery is by courier. I have also ordered specific books direct from the publishers as well –some of those are in the links list on the right-hand side. It’s also worth noting that since Amazon Spain started, Amazon UK have more Spanish-language film books listed on their site (and that are included within their Amazon Prime postage package), and more Spanish bookstores seem to be listing Spanish books on the Amazon Marketplace on the UK site. AbeBooks is kind of Marketplace for independent bookstores and offers price comparison and facilitates the orders and payments –there are a lot of Spanish bookstores on there and I've got some good deals from there in the past (including back issues of Spanish magazines).

      In terms of online content, the academic journals listed on the right-hand side usually have at least one (old) back issue that is available for download for free (that is at least true for the Intellect titles), and if you’re at university you may be able to get access to more recent issues through the university library (if they subscribe electronically). In the past year, Archivos de la Filmoteca, a Spanish-language journal, has made all of its back issues viewable online in PDF form, for free - all you have to do is register with their site. The other major resource that is out there is the website Film Studies for Free, which among other wonders has regularly-updated lists of online film and media studies journals, open access film e-books, and links to film and moving image studies PhD theses that are online.

I will continue to add links to the lists on the right-hand side, and if I come across something really interesting I’ll highlight it in a post.

Guest post: Fiona Noble on Cría cuervos / Raise Ravens (Carlos Saura, 1976)

As indicated previously, I've paused my Carlos Saura Challenge for a few weeks while I deal with a situation at work. Fiona Noble kindly offered to write something for Nobody Knows Anybody about Cría cuervos as it is a film that features in her doctoral research. I hope to be back up and running in July, but in the meantime I leave you with Fiona's take on one of Saura's key films.

   Like La prima Angélica (already discussed on this blog), Cría cuervos revolves around the intersection of memory and childhood.  These themes are channelled primarily through the film’s central character, Ana, played by Ana Torrent.  Torrent has been read by Marsha Kinder as emblematic of the generation raised during the dictatorship, the self-proclaimed ‘children of Franco’ (1983: 57).  For Kinder, the figure of the child in films produced by this generation of directors (including, as well as Saura, José Luis Borau, Jaime de Armiñan, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón) symbolises their infantilisation by the Francoist regime.
   Regarding Torrent’s earlier appearance in Víctor Erice’s El espíritu de la colmena (1973), Kinder underscores the fundamental ambivalence of the child: while her ‘luminous dark eyes confront us with a bold knowing gaze, conveying a precocious intelligence, passion and intensity that seem almost ominous’, at the same time ‘her pale oval face and slender birdlike frame create a fragility that also marks her as a victim – a delicate instrument for the registering of pain’ (1983: 59-60).  This ambivalence underscores the dualism of this generation, at once victims, who have suffered at the hands of the regime, as well as potential future aggressors, who have learned from, and are at risk of perpetuating, their traumatic experiences through the repetition of violent acts.
   These concerns surface too in Cría, insofar as protagonist Ana actively seeks to kill her father, and then her aunt by poisoning them.  While the poison is revealed to be a harmless substance (bicarbonate of soda), and thus ‘meaningful action is still only imaginable, not performed’ (Kinder 1983: 66), Ana’s desire to provoke the death of these individuals is anything but imagined.  The figure of the child thus functions as a metaphor for those who have grown up under the Franco regime, replicating their sentiments of frustration and helplessness, but also encapsulating their impulse towards violence.
   That the child is representative of a now adult generation impacts upon Cría’s temporality and chronology.  Produced in 1975, shortly before Franco’s death, the film prophetically and symbolically addresses this event through the death of the father in the opening scenes. Furthermore, the narrative moves between past and present, or rather between present and future.  The action takes place on two distinct temporal planes – the first during protagonist Ana’s childhood in 1975, and the second, twenty years later, in 1995, when an adult Ana attempts to explain her actions in the past.  The child in addition demonstrates the ability to conjure up the image of her dead mother, evidencing a fluid approach to chronology and to history.  This is further underscored by the film’s casting, given that Chaplin plays both the adult Ana and her mother María.  On the one hand, this fluid chronology, that evidences the influence of the past on the present, is tied specifically to the film’s politico-historical context.  Specifically, it highlights the extent to which the country’s forgotten traumatic past was bound to return in the aftermath of the dictator’s death.  On the other, and in more general terms, this evidences the child’s status as, in the words of Judith Halberstam, ‘always already anarchic and rebellious, out of order and out of time’ (2011: 27).
   In spite of this fluid approach to chronology, the film’s spatiality is characterised conversely by claustrophobia and restriction.  The majority of Cría’s narrative unfolds during the girls’ school holidays, creating a stifling atmosphere in which the children have little access to the world outside the walls of their home.  In support of this, the action takes place almost exclusively within the family home.  The only exception to this is the episode in which Aunt Paulina takes the children to their father’s friend’s farm.
   Furthermore, the family home is marked as a site of trauma, given that the film begins with the death of the girls’ father in his own bed.  Having previously lost their mother, Ana and her sisters are now orphans, under the tutelage of their Aunt Paulina, their mother’s sister.  Their mute grandmother, and maid Rosa, also live in the house with the three girls.  The fractured family unit, in conjunction with the claustrophobic family home, symbolise the political and cultural climate in Spain during and after the dictatorship.  Cría’s spatial restraint thus contrasts dramatically with its temporal freedom, underscoring both the limitations and possibilities of the child’s imagination.
   The film ends with the girls’ re-emergence into the outside world, the camera positioned in a high angle shot, tracking the children as they make their way along the bustling streets of Madrid to attend their first day back at school after the holidays.  The camera lingers at the city skyline, leaving the spectator wondering about the fates of these young girls, and the generation that they represent.  The unfinishedness of this conclusion echoes the liminality of the climate – in the months preceding Franco’s death – in which the film was produced.

References:
Halberstam, J. (2011) – The Queer Art of Failure, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Kinder, M. (1983) – ‘The Children of Franco in the New Spanish Cinema,’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 8.2, pp.57-76.


Bio:
Fiona Noble is currently working towards the completion of her PhD in Hispanic Studies and Film & Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen, where she also completed her MLitt (in Visual Culture with Distinction) and MA (with Joint Honours in French and Hispanic Studies).  Her research centres on notions of transitory subjectivities in contemporary Spain, an issue she explores through three key figures of post-Franco Spanish cinema: the child, the performer, and the immigrant. She writes the blog spanishcinephilia.