Newsreels, documentary, experimental film, shorts and animation

One of the obsessions of Spanish critics writing about Spanish cinema has been the issue of “realism.” This dates back to the initial attempts at constructing a national cinema in the late 1920s, which set up an opposition between the españolada (stereotypical representation of Spain) and a cinema that would depict Spain as it “really” was; that is, an opposition between the artificial and the genuinely Spanish. This was reactivated after the Civil War by Francoism, which equated realism with its own discourse (initially Falangist, later National-Catholic) on the essence of Spain. The topos took on new life with the impact on Spain of Italian neo-realism and the European New Waves. And it h…

Memoria y documental de la Guerra Civil española y el Franquismo: de la memoria patética a la memoria sentimental