Directors covered include those who spanned the fall of Franco - Bunuel, Saura and Erice, established names from the 80s and 90s - Medem, Almodovar and Amenabar, and those who have made important films in the Noughties, including Woody Allen, Bllain and Martel

List of illustrationsNotes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction – Maria M. Delgado 1. El espíritu de la colmena/ The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973): To Kill a Mocking Bird as neglected inter-text – Robin Fiddian 2. Cet obscur objet du désir/That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977): Buñuel’s technique – Mark Millington 3. Ocaña. Retrat intermittent/Ocaña. An Intermittent Portrait (Ventura Pons, 1977): The Mediterranean movida and the passing away of Francoist Barcelona – Alberto Mira 4. El dorado (Carlos Saura, 1987): The keys to El Dorado – Agustín Sánchez Vidal 5. El sol del membrillo/The Quince Tree Sun (Víctor Erice, 1992): Moving pictures — painting, drawing and filmmaking – María José Martínez Jurico and Stephen G.H. Roberts 6. Vacas/Cows (Julio Medem, 1992): From Goya’s dining room via Apocalypse Now – Jo Evans 7. Tesis/Thesis (Alejandro Amenábar, 1996): Delights and follies in filmic discourse – María Donapetry 8. Un instante en la vida ajena/An Instant of Distant Life (José Luis López- Linares, 2003): Domesticating the documentary archive – Kathleen M. Vernon 9. Ninette (José Luis Garci, 2005): Paris revisited – Sue Harris 10. El laberinto del fauno/Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006): Spanish horror – Paul Julian Smith 11. La noche de los girasoles/The Night of the Sunflowers (Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo, 2006): Palimpsests of genre, palimpsests of violence – Tom Whittaker 12. En la ciudad de Sylvia/In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerín, 2007) and the durée of a derive – Rob Stone 13. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008): Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem acting strangely – Chris Perriam 14. La mujer sin cabeza/The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008): Silence, historical memory and metaphor – Maria M. Delgado 15. Los abrazos rotos/ Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodóvar, 2009): Talking cures – Marvin D’Lugo 16. V.O.S. (Cesc Gay, 2009): From Shakespearean comedy to national identity – Celestino Deleyto 17. Y también la lluvia/Even the Rain (Icíar Bollaín, 2010): Social realism, transnationalism and (neo)colonialism – Duncan WheelerIndex

This collection of essays offers a new lens through which to examine Spain’s cinema production following the decades of isolation imposed by the Franco regime. The seventeen key films analysed in the volume span a period of 35 years that have been crucial in the development of Spain, Spanish democracy and Spanish cinema. They encompass different genres (horror, thriller, melodrama, social realism, documentary), both popular (Los abrazos rotos/Broken Embraces, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and more select art house fare (En la ciudad de Sylvia/In the City of Sylvia, El espíritu de la colmena/Spirit of the Beehive) and are made in different languages: English (as both first and second language), Basque, Castilian, Catalan and French. Offering an expanded understanding of ‘national’ cinemas that negotiates the global co-production networks that fund the production of contemporary films in Spain, the volume offers treatments of key works by Guillermo del Toro and Lucrecia Martel alongside an examination of the ways in which established auteurs (Almodóvar, José Garci, Carlos Saura) and younger generations of filmmakers (Cesc Gay, Alejandro Amenábar, Iciar Bollaín) have harnessed cinematic language towards a commentary on the nation-state, wider issues of landscape, and the politics of historical and cultural memory. The result is a bold new study of the ways in which film has created new prisms (indeed one could argue stereotypes) that have determined how Spain is positioned in the global marketplace.

This exciting collection of essays from leading film scholars pays attention to the specificities of the Spanish cultural, social, political and aesthetic panorama (its ‘landscapes’), while also acknowledging the importance of shifting transnational contexts for studies of Spanish cinema. Theories of the auteur (developed and extended here) act as a guiding framework for the study of key films, many of which are being afforded scholarly treatments for the first time. This volume offers important observations on current trends, theories and revisionist approaches to Spanish cinema. Sarah Wright, Royal Holloway, University of London