Monday., March 16 from 6 PM to 7 PM in ATLAS 102.
"Valeria Camporesi, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
'A country as a cinematographic set. Exoticism, landscapes and architecture in the history of cinema in Spain'
(paper proposal for a seminar on Spanish cinema to be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder on March 19-20, 2009).
'Since the mid-1990s, the very idea of the “Spanishness” of films realized in Spain has been the object of scientific debate (a sketchy summary of it can be found in Triana-Toribio; and Zunzunegui; for an influential general appraisal in Spanish on national cinemas, see Sorlin). As a way to deal with this issue from an innovative perspective, my talk shall explore a small group of films which explicitly use recognizable natural settings (landscapes, monuments, historic buildings) as a metaphore of some kind of a collective identity, either rejected or assumed. The sketchy reconstruction will go back to the early 1920s, when French directors shooting in Spain in natural settings inaugurated a new way to look at oustanding sceneries and “real” architecture.' -Valeria Camporesi
Born in Bologna, Italy, Valeria Camporesi is a Lecturer of Film and Audiovisual Media History in the Art History and Theory Department of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She is also coordinator of the PhD Program in Film History of the same University. Author of a book on British reactions to Americanization in broadcasting history in the inter-war years (Mass Culture and National Traditions. The BBC and American Broadcasting, 1922-1954, European Press Academic Publishing, 2001), since 1989 she lives and works in Madrid. Her current research interests range from extensive and intensive analyses of representations of Spanish cultural identity in film history (an overall approach can be found in her book Para Grandes y Chicos. Un Cine para Los Españoles, 1940-1990, Turfán, 1994); transnational aspects of Spanish cinema; historical approaches to intertextuality in European film history; analysis of changing patterns of verisimilitude in production and reception of audiovisual media; contemporary cinema and film theory; film, video and television in European cinema since the 1960s.
BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY
AA.VV., La nueva memoria. Historia(s) del cine español, A Coruña, Vía Láctea Editorial, 2005.
V. Camporesi, Para grandes y chicos. Un cine para los españoles, 1939-1990, Madrid, Turfán, 1994.
P. Sorlin, “¿Existen los cines nacionales?”, Secuencias, 7 (1997), pp. 33-40.
N. Triana-Toribio, Spanish National Cinema, London, Routledge, 2003.
S. Zunzunegui, Historias de España. De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de cine español, Valencia, Filmoteca, 2002.
BASIC FILMOGRAPHY
El Dorado (L’Herbier, 1921)
La galería de los monstruos (J. Catelain, 1924)
La aldea maldita (F. Rey, 1929)*
Domingo de carnaval (E. Neville, 1948)*
Surcos (J.A. Nieves Conde, 1951)*
Los golfos (C. Saura, 1959)*
El extraño viaje (F. Fernán Gómez, 1964)*
El espíritu de la colmena (V. Erice, 1973)*
Vacas (J. Medem, 1991)*
Todo sobre mi madre (P. Almodóvar, 1999)*"
MANON ON THE ASPHALT, directors Elizabeth Marre and Olivier Pont, 15 min
