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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The cinema of 'Eloy de la Iglesia : marginaliy and transgression

subject

description

Spanish director Eloy de la Iglesia (1944-2006) is the author of twenty-two feature films made between 1966 and 2003. His vast filmography covers a crucial period in the history of contemporary Spain, with which it is in constant dialogue. Acclaimed by audiences, Eloy de la Iglesia incurred the wrath of the Film Censorship Board (which kept a close watch on his work) and the hostility of many critics, including the most progressive ones, who inevitably rebuked him for opportunism, demagogy, excessive penchant for provocation and blatant bad taste. Our study focuses on his entire filmography and highlights its extreme internal coherence around two main axes: marginality and transgression. Always on the margins of major cinematic movements and aesthetic tendencies, Eloy de la Iglesia managed to develop a personal and prolific work at the crossroads of art-house and popular cinema; an original project to analyse Spanish society from its fringes and through transgression of dominant norms and values. His anti-elitist cinema, deeply rooted in mass culture, pretends to accept the rules and language of commercial cinema to better subvert them from within, by introducing taboo and controversial topics and developing a radical critical discourse on contemporary Spanish reality.