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- Volume 5, Issue 1, 2009
Studies in Hispanic Cinemas (new title: Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas) - Volume 5, Issue 1-2, 2009
Volume 5, Issue 1-2, 2009
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Early cinematic tangos: audiovisual culture and transnational film aesthetics
More LessThis article looks at the audiovisual practices associated with the genre of the cinematic tango during the crucial first decade of sound motion pictures. I argue that two iconic figures closely associated with the tango's popularity, Carlos Gardel and Libertad Lamarque, also contributed to promoting through this musical film genre a form of cultural identification by local and transnational Spanish-speaking audiences. Gardel's tango films, shot in Paris and New York for Paramount Pictures, and their rival expressions produced in Argentina during the 1930s, mobilized similar intertextual strategies that exploited the spectacularization of sound and thereby contributed to the formation of a virtual Hispanic transnational community based on a shared auditory culture.
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Connecting Spain and the Americas in the cold war: the transnational careers of Jorge Negrete and Carmen Sevilla
More LessAt the end of World War II, the Francoist government found itself forced to reconsider its cultural politics towards Latin America. It promoted a new version of Hispanidad (Hispanicity), already a contentious colonialist concept that dated back to Spain's loss of its empire in the previous century. It now focused on some topics of shared popular culture based on the use of the Spanish language and its multiple musical expressions. This article analyzes the transnational cinema produced in this period through a focus on the international careers of two Spanish-speaking stars; the Mexican Jorge Negrete and the Spaniard Carmen Sevilla. This emphasis on musical elements avoided many of the clichs of earlier, conservative cultural representations and facilitated a new range of transnational Hispanic meanings to musical cinema.
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Unheard confessions and transatlantic connections: Y tu mam tambin and Nadie hablar de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto
More LessThis article examines the creation of a transatlantic cinematic space and its relationship to cultural memory in Mexico and Spain through an analysis of two films: Nadie hablar de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto/Nobody Will Speak of Us After We Have Died (Agustn Daz Yanes, 1996), and Y tu mam tambi/And Your Mother Too (Alfonso Cuarn, 2001). These films are unified through a dialogue that goes beyond international casting or even international financing; they also share a reflection on a particular sort of transatlantic traffic, namely transatlantic sexual infidelities. Moreover, in both cases the moments of sexual betrayal are also accompanied with an unheard confession carried out by the female protagonists. The confessions connect sexual transgressions with cultural specificity and the gendering of cultural memory. The ultimate goal of this study, therefore, is to explore the re-constellation of colonial and postcolonial imaginaries within the broader spectrum of a Hispanic Atlantic.
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Border-crossings and textual gaps: a globalized mode of production in Profundo carmes and Terra estrangeira
More LessThis article proposes a comparative analysis of two Latin-American films of the mid-1990s, Terra estrangeira/Foreign Land (Salles and Thomas, 1995) and Profundo carmes/Deep Crimson (Ripstein, 1996) as a way to interrogate some of the conceptual and aesthetic underpinnings of the region's emerging globalized mode of film production. As transatlantic co-productions, these two films also emphasize border-crossing plots, thereby reflecting in their narratives the contexts of their production and providing a productive heuristic device through which to illuminate the evolution of Latin-American national cinemas.
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Media migration and cultural proximity: television fiction in Spain, spring 2009
More LessThis article treats the unusually rich 2009 spring season of television fiction in Spain, placing it in the broader context of migration between the two media of film and TV and the continuing importance of cultural proximity in an era of transnational production. Beginning with a survey of the current TV ecology, it goes on to treat four innovative and popular titles: miniseries 23 F: El da ms difcil del Rey/The King's Most Difficult Day, and series guila Roja/Red Eagle, Pelotas/Balls (all from Televisin Espaola), and Doctor Mateo (Antena 3). It argues that these fictions share three themes: The continuing exploration of Spanish national history, both distant and recent; the fractured family, particularly caused by missing mothers; nostalgia for close community, whether its location is urban or rural.
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Reviews
Authors: Leora Lev, Dean Allbritton and Ivette Romero-CesareoPedro Almodvar (Critical Guides to Spanish and Latin American Texts and Films), Ann Davies (2007) London: Grant & Cutler, 127 pp., ISBN 978 0 7293 0452 8, Paperback, 10.95Julio Medem, Jo Evans (2007) London: Grant & Cutler, 126 pp., ISBN 978 0 7293 0451 1, Paperback, 10.95Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, S. Fouz-Hernndez and A. Martnez-Expsito (2007) New York: I.B. Tauris, 240 pp., ISBN: 1-84511-450-7, Paperback, $29.95Imagi/nacin: La feminizacin de la nacin en el cine espaol y latinoamericano, Maria Donapetry, Madrid: Ediciones Fundamentos (2006) 144 pp., ISBN: 8424510968, Harback, $12.22
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