Catalan Cinema (In)Visible Traditions offers a theoretical reading of the most relevant cinematic productions to have emerged from Catalonia in the last twenty years. The essays in this collection examine cinema in relation to the Escola de Barcelona (The Barcelona School), a group of cinema directors that drew inspiration from British pop-art, Free Cinema, and the Nouvelle Vague to create works that defied and challenged the Franco dictatorship.
Highlighting the aesthetic, social, and political elements of Catalan cinematography, contributors to this volume explore what young directors have in common with works created by more notable directors such as Joaquim Jordà, Jacinto Esteva, Jordi Grau, and Pere Portabella. Catalan Cinema focuses on the importance of modern production and its connection with the avant-garde and underground cinema from the Barcelona School. Establishing a cinematic genealogy, the volume ultimately questions if Catalan cinema’s own push for self-expression may be interpreted as a connection to Catalonia’s current drive for independence.
Introduction
Anton Pujol and Jaume Martí-Olivella
Part One: The Mavericks and the Barcelona School
1. Future Seeds: Some Considerations on the Cinema around Barcelona 92
Angel Quintana
Part Two: The Jordà Legacy
2. The Hunter and the Monkeys: Jacinto Esteva, Joaquim Jordà, and the Legacy of the Barcelona School
Esteve Riambau
3. Jordà’s Last Trilogy: Situationist Turn and Subject Transformation
Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas
4. The Militant Cinema of Joaquim Jordà
Steven Marsh
Part Three: The Portabella Nexus
5. Economies of Sound: Labouring Europe in Pere Portabella and Carles Santos
Sara Nadal-Melsió
6. Pere Portabella’s Radical Theatricality: A Political Gaze Over Two Transitions
Jaume Martí-Olivella
7. Traversing the Real with the Reel: Pere Portabella’s Vampir.Cuadecuc and Albert Serra’s Història de la meva mort Infrapolitical Spectrality
Teresa M. Vilarós
Part Four: The New (Post) Avant-Garde
8. Beyond Melancholy: The Post-Avant-Garde Cinema of José Luis Guerín
Josep Maria Català
9. On the Threshold of the Diegetic World: Optical and Haptic Visuality in Elisa K
Eva Bru
10. Watching Novels and Reading Films: Deleuzian Affects in Catalan Cinema
Anton Pujol
Part Five: Minimalism and Beyond
11. Formal Disruption, Minutiae, and Absence in the Films of Jaime Rosales
Agustín Rico-Albero
12. Identitykit: Where Do We Meet Isaki Lacuesta
Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labayen
Més informació: University of Toronto Press – Catalan Cinema (utorontopress.com)
