Contemporary Spanish cinema and genre

This book analyses the significant changes in the aesthetics, production and reception of Spanish cinema and genre from 1990 to the present while providing multiple perspectives on the concepts of national cinemas and genre theory.

This volume is the first English-language collection exclusively dedicated to the study of genre in relation to Spanish cinema. Providing a variety of critical perspectives, the collection gives the reader a thorough account of the relationship between Spanish cinema and genre, drawing on case studies of several of the most remarkable Spanish films in recent years.The book analyses the significant changes in the aesthetics, production and reception of Spanish film from 1990 onwards. It brings together European and North American scholars to establish a critical dialogue on the topics under discussion, while providing multiple perspectives on the concepts of national cinemas and genre theory.In recent years film scholarship has attempted to negotiate the tension between the nationally specific and the internationally ubiquitous, discussing how globalisation has influenced film making and surrounding cultural practice. These broader social concerns have prompted scholars to emphasise a redefinition of national cinemas beyond strict national boundaries and to pay attention to the transnational character of any national site of film production and reception. This collection provides a thorough investigation of contemporary Spanish cinema within a transnational framework, by positing cinematic genres as the meeting spaces between a variety of diverse forces that necessarily operate within but also across territorial spaces. Paying close attention to the specifics of the Spanish cinematic and social panorama, the essays investigate the transnational economic, cultural and aesthetic forces at play in shaping Spanish film genres today.

AcknowledgmentsContributorsForeword - Robert SklarIntroduction - Jay Beck and Vicente Rodríguez OrtegaSection I - Industry, marketing and film culture1. The fantastic factory: the horror genre and contemporary Spanish cinema - Andrew Willis2. Trailing the Spanish auteur: Amenábar, Almodóvar & de la Iglesia’s generic routes in the US market - Vicente Rodríguez Ortega3. ‘Now playing everywhere’: Spanish horror film in the marketplace - Antonio Lázaro-RebollSection II - Generic hybridity: negotiating the regional, the national and the transnational4. From Sevilla to the world: the transnational and transgeneric initiative of La Zanfoña Producciones - Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labanyen5. *Justino, un asesino de la tercera edad*: Spanishness, dark comedy and horror - Juan F. Egea6. Tracing the past, dealing with the present: notes on the political thriller in contemporary Spanish cinema - Vicente J. Benet7. Selling out Spain: screening capital and culture in *Airbag* and *Smoking Room* - William NicholsSection III - Genre & authorship8. The transvestite figure and film noir: Pedro Almodóvar’s transnational imaginary - Carla Marcantonio9. Caressing the text: episodic erotics and generic structures in Ventura Pons’s ‘Minimalist Trilogy’ - David Scott Diffrient10. Horror of allegory: *The Others* and its contexts - Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz11. Love, loneliness and laundromats: affect and artifice in the cinema of Isabel Coixet - Belén VidalSection IV - Multilingual imaginaries, borderless Spain12. Dancing with ‘Spanishness’: Hollywood codes and the site of memory in the contemporary film musical - Pietsie Feenstra13. Immigration films: communicating conventions of (in)visibility in contemporary Spain - Maria Van Liew14. Spanish-Cuban co-productions: tourism, transnational romance and anxieties of authenticity - Mariana JohnsonIndex