Democrazy in Spain: Cinema and New Forms of Social Life (1968-2008): (Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures)

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library as part of the Opening the Future project with COPIM. The 2008 financial crisis prompted the most significant social protests since 1968 in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. These protests generated not only social reform but also collaborative and affective affiliations, often seen through artistic and cultural materials. Taking Spain as a focal point, this book examines film production at both points in time, showing how it emerges from simultaneously divergent and comparable economic and political milieux. The book aims to recognize and celebrate the political responsibility exercised and expressed by a new generation of Spaniards deeply immersed in those protests. Through the convergences of two markedly significant periods in two separate centuries, filmmakers expose the deficiencies of Spain’s democracy in 2008—the D€MOCRAZY in the title, a slogan seen on a banner carried by the protesters—while creating a new sensibility and forms of social life that bring back the notions of community and the common good that had been forgotten in the midst of such a brittle environment.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Acknowledgments Chapter 1. The “d-generation” of María Cañas: Spanish Cinema in the Era of Technological Reproducibility Chapter 2. Cinematic Dialogues with the 1960s and 1970s: Ledo and Portabella, Cañas and Bollaín, and López Carrasco and Zulueta Chapter 3. Unearthing Amateur Footage from the 1960s and 1970s: José Luis Tirado, Ramiro Ledo, Isaki Lacuesta and Chema Mascareña Chapter 4. The Cinema of Helena Lumbreras (1935–95) and the Political Practice of Responsibility Chapter 5. Euphoria and Madness or Affect as a New Form of Social Life: María Ruido and Basilio Martín Patino Chapter 6. From 2008 to the Dreadful 2020: Dystopia and Necropolitics in María Cañas’s Expo Lío 92 (2017) and Luis López Carrasco’s El año del descubrimiento (2020) Conclusion Works Cited

About the Author :
Isabel M. Estrada is Professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures at the City College of New York (City University of New York). Dr. Estrada is the author of El documental cinematográfico y televisivo contemporáneo: memoria, representación y formación de la identidad democrática española (Tamesis 2013), as well as several articles published in refereed journals such as Modern Language Notes, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, Hispanic Review, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, España Contemporánea, Catalan Review, and Revista Hispánica Moderna. She has also contributed to the volumes World War II and the Holocaust: History and Representation, edited by Gina Herrmann and Sara Brenneis, (Re)viewing Creative, Critical and Commercial Practices in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (2014), and Approaches to Teaching the Works of Carmen Martín Gaite (2013), among others.

Review :
"D€MOCRAZY in Spain: Cinema and New Forms of Social Life (1968-2008) recovers an understudied filmic archive, offering incisive analyses of experimental cinema produced in Spain from the 1960s to the present." Dr Bryan Cameron, University of Cambridge "This is a well-argued, significant, and original scholarly work. The author displays deep knowledge of Spanish politics and culture, especially documentary film, and the focus on female independent and underground filmmakers is especially worthwhile." Professor Elizabeth Scarlett, University at Buffalo, SUNY