A New History of Spanish Cinema

Professor Sally Faulkner leads the AHRC funded project 'A New History of Spanish Cinema' which aims to change the direction of studies of Spanish film history. It questions the over-use of labels such as 'art' or 'popular' cinema and proposes the 'middlebrow' as a new way of approaching Spanish film. First, it argues for the existence of Spanish 'middlebrow cinema', and suggests that middlebrow films have been central to the development of Spanish film history. This new focus illuminates the connections between a number of tendencies in Spanish cinema from the 1960s to the present. Thus, the so-called 'Third Way' cinema of the 1970s, state-subsidized literary adaptations known collectively as 'Miró' films in the 1980s, 'heritage' cinema of the 1990s, or 'popular auteurs', like Pedro Almodóvar, of the 1990s and 2000s, will all be reconsidered as examples of Spanish middlebrow cinema. Dr Faulkner will write a book on this subject to be published by Continiuum, New York.