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- Volume 8, Issue 1, 2016
Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2016
Volume 8, Issue 1, 2016
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Local memories: Conflict and lived experience in the Spanish Civil War
More LessAbstractThe winners of any conflict often try to impose their views on the defeated. Through official and unofficial mechanisms, most of which operate under the aegis of the state and other agents that work on its behalf, the voices of the defeated are silenced. One important counter-mechanism that is available, the one that may serve to resist the imposition of the victors’ History, is frequently found in the collection, analysis and publication of oral testimonies, which give expression to, and magnify, silenced and oppressed memories. Orality therefore provides us with a window into past events or, rather, with multiple windows that allow us to see and take account of the myriad histories of which the past is actually composed, according not to the state-imposed version, but to the ways in which people remember it. Through an ethnographic study of local memories in one southern Spanish village, this article examines some of the ways in which the Spanish Civil War is remembered, focusing particularly on the lived experience of repression and hunger, and the memories of ideological clashes, class struggles and conflicts over land ownership.
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Postmemory of the Spanish Civil War: Cinematographic constructions of the conflict in the twenty-first century
More LessAbstractThe Spanish Civil War has been the most frequently portrayed conflict on the large screen in Spanish cinema. It has been narrated from the points of view of both winners and losers and of those who experienced the war directly and indirectly. Most audio-visual works about this topic have been feature-length films that narrate the memory of those who lived through the conflict. However, in the twenty-first century, young film-makers have chosen to narrate their vision of the war through a different cinematographic format and language: the short film. This article analyses how a generation of film-makers born in democracy narrates the Civil War through the genre of the short film, a format that, oriented towards a young audience, shares its new codes, style and audio-visual language. This article will analyse short films, set between 1936 and 1939, that were produced in Spain in the last decade.
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The foreign countdown: Historical memory and the Spanish Civil War in contemporary Argentinian literature
More LessAbstractEight decades after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, this article examines the ways in which the conflict continues to find its way into literature written on the other side of the Atlantic, seeking to revive the voices of the past in order to build a historical memory of the events. In this approach, investigations into the power of memory are conducted at the meeting point of two forms of ‘distance’ from the original event: temporal and spatial. The body of texts considered for this study comprises three novels: Tío Borís. Un héroe olvidado de la Guerra Civil Española (Graciela Mochkofsky, 2006), Mika (Elsa Osorio, 2012) and La abuela civil española (Andrea Stefanoni, 2014) and the play Quince moños rojos (Silvia Ramos, 2013). The analysis, which deals with the ways in which various narratives attempt to shape a memory of the defeated, is contextualized in relation to the re-emergence in Argentina of a desire for greater insight into the Spanish conflict – a trend that is observed across various disciplines, such as law and history. At a time when the possibility of intergenerational transmission is becoming progressively remote, the focus on geographically defined mechanisms for the study of the past reveals the importance of developing universal approaches to the analysis of traumatic memories.
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Those wars are also my war: An approach to practices of postmemory in the contemporary Spanish comic
Authors: Elena Galán Fajardo and José Carlos Rueda LaffondAbstractA notable feature of recent Spanish comics is their use of a viewpoint characterized by the transmission and (re)presentation of original testimonies, remade by authors who belong to later generations that had no direct experience of the Civil War. This article focuses on seven graphic works: Un largo silencio (1997), Nuestra Guerra Civil (2006), El arte de volar (2009), Los surcos del azar (2013), Las guerras silenciosas (2014), Un médico novato (2013) and Atrapado en Belchite (2015). The stories in these works recall the recent past from a common perspective, one that emphasizes the individual protagonist’s role in traumatic events. However, these narratives also employ characteristics that are specific to each story. This article reflects on the symbiosis between the shared elements of these works, and the more individual or original elements, in order to shed light on the important role of graphic narratives in the creation of spaces where memory and ‘postmemory’ can be expressed.
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Feminine resistances: The figure of the Republican woman in Carolina Astudillo’s documentary cinema
More LessAbstractSince the early years of democracy in Spain, the figure of the Republican woman has been recovered, rehabilitated and reclaimed (albeit somewhat tepidly and as a minor part of the narrative) in documentaries as well as in fictional films. In terms of documentary, however, the filmography of Carolina Astudillo stands out. Astudillo is the author of several short films and a feature-length film in which she defends the importance of the role that women played in the Civil War, the rear-guard and the anti-Francoist resistance. This article seeks to analyse, from the perspective of gender, her film El gran vuelo/The Great Flight (2014) with the aim of showing the ways in which the documentarian – using the story of Clara Pueyo Jornet, a communist militant who disappeared in 1943 – gives shape to the memory of all women who disappeared without trace. We seek to show how Astudillo develops a case against the gender discrimination that continues to dominate the imaginary of the Civil War, and at the same time reflect on the imbrication of biography and history, past and present, memory and forgetting.
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Revolutionizing the ‘national means of expression’: The influence of Soviet film culture in pre-Civil War Spain
More LessAbstractThis article examines the influence of the USSR on the film culture of 1930s Spain. It focuses on the years before the Civil War, researching the role that Cominternaligned initiatives had on Spanish non theatrical educational and political filmmaking, as well as institutional developments associated with these movements. It analyses the complex dynamics of representation fostered by film as a tool for cultural and social progress, in a country that was desperately seeking new models of political organization and modernization. In particular, I explore how cultural exchanges with the USSR were mediated through film journals, film-clubs, festivals and congresses, fostering nationalist and internationalist imaginaries in which the interests of very different social actors paradoxically converged. Ultimately, the article explores how the introduction of Soviet aesthetics in Spain by a group of intellectuals since the late 1920s paved the way for the radicalization of the Spanish cultural landscape during the Civil War.
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The Spanish Earth (1937): The circumstances of its production, the film and its reception in the United States and United Kingdom
More LessAbstractI examine the political significance of the classic documentary The Spanish Earth in the context of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, challenging Russell Campbell’s argument that it should be considered in the light of ‘an overriding need for unity in the face of the enemy’. I argue instead that the film reflected the international Communist agenda. This emphasized defence of the Republic rather than engaging with its political complexities or with the demands of urban workers. I underline the film’s rural and Castilian focus, and describe its reception in the United States and United Kingdom, before offering an explanation for its continued currency in those countries, and an overview of the consequences.
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The bombing of Guernica in documentary film: Art and anniversary as discursive elements
More LessAbstractThis article examines the way in which the April 1937 bombing of Guernica has been represented, either as an isolated episode or as part of the broader development of the Spanish Civil War, in documentaries created in regional, national and international production contexts. It draws attention to the techniques used in these films, mostly made for television, to reach viewers that – since they belong to multiple interpretative communities – are bound to understand the war in different ways. The study considers some of the ways in which the relationship between this historical event and Pablo Picasso’s Guernica both memorializes and universalizes the episode as a discursive element. I argue that this process contributes to framing events of the past both independently and as part of a cycle of commemorative junctures that comprise a regular schedule of anniversaries.
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Simulating history in contemporary board games: The case of the Spanish Civil War
More LessAbstractThis article examines the structure of simulation of two recently published analogic war games on the Spanish Civil War in order to analyse the ways in which they represent the history of the Spanish conflict. The study places the board games as an object of analysis within the field of Game Studies and then undertakes a search of which elements used in the study of video games can be used to approach the analysis of historical board games. The analysis of the ludic structure of these games shows a Civil War initially focused on the chaos on the Republican side, followed by the progression towards the professionalization and militarization of the conflict as the only path to victory. The study shows that the elements of the ludic macrostructure become the means used by the game to delimit the simulation of history, before going on to reflect on the theoretical and cultural implications of this condition.
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Wind on the fog: A reflection on the policy of historical memory at Televisió de Catalunya through the documentary Perseguits i salvats
Authors: Enric Castelló and María José RomanoAbstractIdentity and collective memory are two sides of the same coin: both are constructed from a narrative of community that may either define the present (identity) or explain the past (memory). These constructs also feed into one another, since memory is built through a consciousness of identity, while identity is the product of our capacity to create and retain a narrative that explains who we are today. This article offers a reflection on the policy of historical memory adopted by the Catalan public broadcasting network Televisió de Catalunya (TVC) and a detailed study of the documentary Perseguits i salvats. Camins de nit i boira/Persecuted and Saved. Paths through the Night and Fog (Solé, 2014). The authors identify the elements that place the documentary within this policy framework, examining its discourse and finding in it three primary goals: to situate the memory of the Catalan people in the context of European memory; to convey the repression of the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship to an international audience; and to bear witness to the responsibility of the Franco regime in the events of the Holocaust and the Nazi atrocities.
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The Spanish Civil War and the construction of Neorealist Greek cinema: An introductory study of Nikos Koundouros’ To Potami
More LessAbstractThe film director Nikos Koundouros is one of the most important representatives of the Neorealist Cinema that bloomed after the end of the Greek Civil War (1946–1949). This film movement was highly influenced by another conflict that took place in the previous decade: the Spanish Civil War. This brief research overview will examine, through pictorial and semiotic analyses, the film To Potami/The River by Nikos Koundouros in order to discover the extent to which this film-maker was influenced by the Spanish conflict. Therefore, this project will shed light on the study of the common historical grounds of Greece and Spain and, at the same time, on the emergent field of Southern Europe cultural studies.
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The dark sides of sharenting
Authors: Andra Siibak and Keily Traks
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