Tracing The Borders Of Spanish Horror Cinema And Television

This critical anthology sets out to explore the boom that horror cinema and TV productions have experienced in Spain in the past two decades. It uses a range of critical and theoretical perspectives to examine a broad variety of films and filmmakers, such as works by Alejandro Amenábar, Álex de la Iglesia, Pedro Almodóvar, Guillermo del Toro, Juan Antonio Bayona, and Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The volume revolves around a set of fundamental questions: What are the causes for this new Spanish horror-mania? What cultural anxieties and desires, ideological motives and practical interests may be behind such boom? Is there anything specifically "Spanish" about the Spanish horror film and TV productions, any distinctive traits different from Hollywood and other European models that may be associated to the particular political, social, economic or cultural circumstances of contemporary Spain?

This critical anthology sets out to explore the boom that horror cinema and TV productions have experienced in Spain in the past two decades. It uses a range of critical and theoretical perspectives to examine a broad variety of films and filmmakers, such as works by Alejandro Amenábar, Álex de la Iglesia, Pedro Almodóvar, Guillermo del Toro, Juan Antonio Bayona, and Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The volume revolves around a set of fundamental questions: What are the causes for this new Spanish horror-mania? What cultural anxieties and desires, ideological motives and practical interests may be behind such boom? Is there anything specifically "Spanish" about the Spanish horror film and TV productions, any distinctive traits different from Hollywood and other European models that may be associated to the particular political, social, economic or cultural circumstances of contemporary Spain?

This book provides an up-to-date, in-depth survey of 21st-century Spanish horror film and media, exploring both aesthetics and industrial dynamics. It offers detailed analysis of contemporary films and TV series as well as novel approaches to key works within the history of Spanish cinema. While addressing the specificities of the Spanish landscape, this volume also situates the national cinematic output within the international arena, understanding film production and reception as continuously changing processes in which a variety of economic, social and cultural factors intervene. The book first analyzes the main horror trends emerging in the early 2000s, then approaches genre hybridization and the rise of new filmmakers since the 2010s with a special focus on gender issues and the reconfiguration of the past, before addressing the impact of streaming services within the Spanish film panorama, from a production and distribution standpoint. This book will be of keen interest to scholars and students in the areas of film studies, media studies, TV studies, horror, Spanish cultural studies and production studies.

This book rethinks the study of European Cinema in a way that centres on students and their needs, in a comprehensive volume introducing undergraduates to the main discourses, directions and genres of twenty-first-century European film. Importantly, this collection is the first of its kind to apply a transversal approach to European Cinema, bringing together the East and the West, while providing a broad picture of key trends, aesthetics, genres, national identities, and transnational concerns. Lewis and Canning’s collection effectively addresses some of the most pressing questions in contemporary European film, such as ecology, migration, industry, identity, disability, memory, auteurship, genre, small cinemas, and the national and international frameworks which underpin them. Combining accessible original research with a thorough grounding in recent histories and contexts, each chapter includes key definitions, reflective group questions, and a summative case study. Overall, this book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of recent European Cinema, making it an invaluable resource for lecturers and students across a variety of film-centred modules.

The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address the scholarly neglect of this legendary cult director and to broaden the conversation around the director's work in ways that will be of interest to fans and academics alike.

Over the course of the past two decades, horror cinema around the globe has become increasingly preoccupied with the concept of loss. Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss examines the theme of grief as it is represented in both indie and mainstream films, including works such as Jennifer Kent's watershed film The Babadook, Juan Antonio Bayona's award-sweeping El orfanato, Ari Aster's genre-straddling Midsommar, and Lars von Trier's visually stunning Melancholia. Analyzing depictions of grief ranging from the intimate grief of a small family to the collective grief of an entire nation, the essays illustrate how these works serve to provide unity, catharsis, and—sometimes—healing.

Supranational Horrors: Italian and Spanish Horror Cinema since 1968 moves beyond national cinema discourse in considering the horror production of two Southern European countries, Italy and Spain. Rui M. Trindade Oliveira examines cultural elements that films from these nations share, arguing that a fuller understanding of European horror is possible when we acknowledge the output of Italy and Spain as being interconnected, as possessing a supranational, common identity: “Italian-Spanishness.”

An original new study of Spanish horror film.

The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema offers an overview of the field of cult cinema – films at the margin of popular culture and art that have received exceptional cultural visibility and status mostly because they break rules, offend, and challenge understandings of achievement (some are so bad they’re good, others so good they remain inaccessible). Cult cinema is no longer only comprised of the midnight movie or the extreme genre film. Its range has widened and the issues it broaches have become battlegrounds in cultural debates that typify the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Sections are introduced with the major theoretical frameworks, philosophical inspirations, and methodologies for studying cult films, with individual chapters excavating the most salient criticism of how the field impacts cultural discourse at large. Case studies include the worst films ever; exploitation films; genre cinema; multiple media formats cult cinema is expressed through; issues of cultural, national, and gender representations; elements of the production culture of cult cinema; and, throughout, aspects of the aesthetics of cult cinema – its genre, style, look, impact, and ability to yank viewers out of their comfort zones. The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema goes beyond the traditional scope of Anglophone and North American cinema by including case studies of East and South Asia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, making it an innovative and important resource for researchers and students alike.

Contemporary European Science Fiction Cinemas charts the evolution of European science fiction cinema in the 21st century, a period in which Europe itself has faced myriad crises. Key to this study is an exploration of how European science fiction responds to prevalent issues such as the financial crisis, political extremism and violence, large-scale migration and indeed the potential breakup of the European Union itself. What futures does science fiction cinema envision for Europe? Is it capable of moving beyond dystopian visions of a continent beset by seemingly omnipresent turbulence? Emphasising science fiction’s unique ability to estrange, exploit and reflect upon popular concerns, this book directly engages with such questions, accounting for ongoing mutations in the very nature of the European project as it does so.