Survey of Spanish Film (Level 5)

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenors: Professor Mari Paz Balibrea Enriquez
• Assessment: a 10-minute individual presentation (30%), 1500-word critical review (30%) and 2500-word essay (40%)

Through a focus on key authors and works, this module introduces you to central aspects in twentieth-century Spanish film placed in its historical and cultural contexts. It will also give a grounding in the technical analysis of cinema.

The module offers a survey of main trends in the history of twentieth-century Spanish cinema, and will familiarise you with basic technical and theoretical issues in film study. This includes editing, sound, framing, camerawork, lighting, mise-en-scène, costume, genre, self-referentiality and intertextuality, the construction of a national (or regional) cinema, censorship and spectatorship.

Indicative syllabus

• The avant-gardes
• The Civil War
• Francoism
• Democracy

Films

• Luis Buñuel/Salvador Dalí: Un chien andalou
• Víctor Erice: El Sur
• André Malraux: Sierra de Teruel
• Carlos Saura: La caza