Negotiating Identities in Catalan and Andalusian Festival Films Since the Ley Del Cine (2007)

Home , Andalusian nationalism, Benito Zambrano, Black Bread, Blas Infante, Borders of Spain, Cinema of Spain

NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES IN CATALAN AND ANDALUSIAN FESTIVAL FILMS SINCE THE LEY DEL CINE (2007)

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Faculty of Humanities

2019

NICOLA D. TOMLINSON

SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Table of Contents

List of Figures ...... 5

Abstract ...... 6

Declaration ...... 7

Acknowledgements ...... 8

Introduction ...... 10

Chapter 1. Filming then, filming now: shifts in cultural policy and their bearings on representations of Andalusia ...... 31

1.1. Previous legislation and its impact on representations of Andalusia ...... 32

Early efforts to shape cinema through legislation in Spain and Andalusia ...... 34

Trojan Houses: Cinema in Andalusia, state control and stereotypes ...... 38

Production in Andalusia in the 1950s: Continuing, or contesting, the canon... 40

Lucrative landscapes: Film sets and film schools under the Dictablanda ...... 42

Por un cine andaluz? Forming a film industry in post-Franco Andalusia ...... 46

‘Una irregular política de mecenazgo’: Democracy and new legislation surrounding cinema in Andalusia ...... 50

1.2. The Ley del Cine and its implications for Andalusia ...... 59

1.3. Who decides? The role of industry bodies in Andalusia ...... 64

1.4. Film festivals in Andalusia ...... 70

Alcances Festival de Cine Documental, Cádiz ...... 74

The Seville European Film Festival (SEFF) ...... 81

Chapter 2. Identity on screen: which Catalonias are visible? ...... 89

2.1. ‘Entre un cinema català amb visibilitat i un altre que no la té’: Previous legislation and its impact on representations of Catalonia ...... 95

Early efforts to shape cinema through legislation in Spain and Catalonia ...... 95

1930s and 1940s: Catalan cinema under the Francoist dictatorship ...... 97

Negotiating labels: The Dictablanda and the Escola de Barcelona ...... 98

1980s to the millennium: Democracy and new legislation surrounding cinema: the Servei de Cinematografia and the Ley Miró ...... 100

2.2. The Ley del Cine and its implications for Catalonia ...... 107

The Catalan Llei del Cinema (2010) ...... 109

2.3. Who decides? The role of industry bodies in Catalonia ...... 116

SGAE Catalunya: supporting new talent ...... 119

Catalan film schools and collaborative projects ...... 122

2.4. Film festivals in Catalonia ...... 126

‘La finestra més internacional’: Filmets, Badalona ...... 131

D’A Film Festival, Barcelona ...... 136

Chapter 3. Constructing identity in Andalusian films post-2007 ...... 148

3.1. The other ‘Other’: Engaging with Africa in África 815 (Pilar Monsell, 2014), La fabulosa Casablanca (Manuel Horrillo, 2016) and Gurumbé. Canciones de tu memoria negra (Miguel Ángel Rosales, 2016) ...... 149

The history of Africa in the Andalusian imaginary ...... 150

Renegotiating the Andalusian past: The view of Africa from Andalusia ...... 155

Othered bodies: Racialised identities in Andalusia ...... 161

Bodies out of place: Embodying Andalusian identity...... 167

Personal and collective archives ...... 173

3.2. Songs of memory: Music as archive in Alalá (Remedios Malvárez, 2016) and Gurumbé. Canciones de tu memoria negra (Miguel Ángel Rosales, 2016) ...... 183

Embodied heritage: Music as an expression of individual and collective identity ...... 187

Payos, gitanos, y ‘otros’: integration and segregation ...... 191

Soundscapes of belonging: Music, place and identity ...... 192

Chapter 4. Constructing identity in Catalan films post-2007 ...... 199

Convivència and Catalan identity ...... 203

Place and Catalan identity ...... 206

4.1. Looking out: Catalan festival films with the international in mind ...... 209

A model that produces results: Timecode (Juanjo Giménez, 2016) and the question of catalanitat ...... 210

Corporeality and Catalan identity ...... 212

Corporeality and Timecode ...... 213

Language and linguistic tensions in Timecode ...... 215

4.2. ‘Almas errantes’: New Catalan perspectives on urban landscapes ...... 218

‘Un cos sense ànima no és res, no?’: Deconstructing place and identity in La substància (Lluís Galter, 2016) ...... 218

Borderlands in Barcelona in Bictor Ugo (Josep María Bendicho and Carlos Clausell, 2015) ...... 225

4.3. Place is political: Interrogating the relationship between Spain and Africa in Tarajal: desmontando la impunidad de la frontera sur (Xavier Artigas, Xapo Ortega and Marc Serra, 2015) and L’oeil impératif/El ojo imperativo (María Ruido, 2015) . 231

Conclusion...... 249

Bibliography ...... 256

Filmography ...... 281

Words: 72,522

List of Figures

Figure 1: Artwork for SEFF 2016 by Mariajosé Gallardo ...... 82 Figure 2: SEFF director José Luis Cienfuegos unveils the 2012 programme artwork in front of the Giralda. Image: ABC Sevilla...... 83 Figure 3: SEFF branding on the steps leading up to the Nervión Plaza multiplex ... 85 Figure 4: La vida en rosa: Manuel’s title for his memoirs of his time in North Africa reveals the extent of his nostalgia ...... 159 Figure 5: Distant threat? The coast of Africa in a border guard’s binoculars, from the closing scene of Gurumbé ...... 167 Figure 6: Out of place? Pedro Casablanc walks through the streets of Málaga in La fabulosa Casablanca ...... 171 Figure 7: Reconfiguring family, reformulating the nation: Manuel’s fantasy family portrait in África 815 ...... 176 Figure 8: A long shot frames Aurelia Martín Casares among the archives in Gurumbé ...... 178 Figure 9: Haptic history: A researcher handles a preserved skull in Gurumbé ...... 180 Figure 10: Both Gurumbé (above left) and Alalá (above right) focus on flamenco dancers’ feet, creating a visual connection between the sounds and the bodies that make them ...... 188 Figure 11: The guitar fills the screen in an early scene from Alalá ...... 193 Figure 12: ‘El barrio es tu escuela’: The decorated walls of the Tres Mil Viviendas underscore its role in creating citizenship and cultural identity ...... 195 Figure 13: Polyglossic spaces: The car park in Timecode ...... 216 Figure 14: Hidden spaces of Barcelona: Bictor Ugo’s apartment ...... 229 Figure 15: In Tarajal, the camera lingers on a sign which designates the Spanish border within the symbol of the European Union ...... 244

Abstract

This thesis examines how contemporary film festivals and festival films within Andalusia and Catalonia negotiate their collective identities in light of the devolution of industrial powers promoted by the legislation known as the ‘Ley del Cine’ in 2007. In light of scholarship within Spanish cultural studies that has expounded ‘the value of harnessing legal and cultural analysis’ (Labanyi 2008: 120), this thesis deploys a combined approach of historical context, legislative manoeuvres and industry responses to analyse the manifestation of these ongoing negotiations through close readings of a corpus of films selected from film festivals held in Andalusia and Catalonia.

In both Andalusia and Catalonia, film festivals constitute an area underexplored in scholarship; while studies have been conducted on festivals in other areas of Spain (Triana Toribio 2011), research on film festivals in the two autonomous communities published to date is limited to case studies of single events (Benavente 2004). As such, by drawing upon fieldwork conducted at the Alcances Festival de Cine Documental in Cádiz, the Seville European Film Festival, the Filmets short film festival in Badalona, and the Festival de Cinema D’Autor (D’A) in Barcelona, this thesis aims to contribute a new perspective to this area of study, observing how long-established and newer festivals from the capital and more peripheral urban locations negotiate their position within the local and broader regional geographical and cultural landscape. The thesis presents these events as case studies through which to examine their articulations of the cultural identities of the two autonomous communities. Deploying seminal works in the growing field of film festival research that examine such phenomena as ‘city-branding’ (Elsaesser 2005: 85) and the reciprocal transmission of ‘social value’ between events and their venues (Harbord 2002: 39), the thesis finds that these events play important roles as sociocultural nuclei in these communities, serving as focal points through which to debate, decentre and assert understandings of cultural identities, within the context of Spain and the autonomous communities themselves.

Within the context of these film festivals, the thesis sets out to observe the configurations of narratives of cultural identity that emerge through the films exhibited and awarded prizes at these events, and thus the contributions that they make to the work of negotiating identities already begun by the events at which they appear. The textual analysis draws upon a wealth of scholarship from the fields of Spanish, Andalusian and Catalan cultural studies, as well as cultural theory, to observe how these films engage with, or depart from, long-standing representations of the two communities and their cultural traditions. In doing so, this thesis is the first investigation to make use of a combined approach of film festival studies and close readings to analyse the complex projections of cultural identities in contemporary Andalusia and Catalonia.

Declaration I declare that no portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.

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Acknowledgements

One of the most potent truths that I have discovered while writing this thesis is the importance of a sense of community. The community that I have been immensely fortunate to have enjoyed during this project has revealed itself through the support, encouragement and generosity of a number of exceptional friends and colleagues.

My heartfelt gratitude goes to my supervisors, Professor Chris Perriam and Dr Abigail Loxham, for their insightful and encouraging comments on my work. Their unfailing patience as I developed my ideas enabled me to grow as a researcher. Thanks also to my internal advisor, Dr Darren Waldron, whose incisive input pushed me to challenge my thinking and strive to strengthen my work.

Thanks must also go to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, without whose financial support this research would not have been possible.

My warmest thanks to the many inspiring, dedicated professionals whom I had the pleasure of meeting during my fieldwork in Cádiz, Madrid, Seville, Córdoba, Barcelona, Badalona, and Huelva. In particular, I thank Fernando García Osuna for granting me the opportunity to work as a volunteer at the Alcances Film Festival, an experience that provided untold insight into the workings of this wondrous event. Moltes gràcies/muchas gracias to the many filmmakers who very kindly shared their films with me for my analysis.

As well as the opportunity to conduct my research, my doctoral studies have richly rewarded me with collaborations and friendships. An enormous thank you to all those in the SALC Graduate School who have formed part of my community over the course of this project. Huge thanks go to Paula, Sarah, Kate, Jenny, and Garret, for your camaraderie, commiserations and celebrations, and to Julie, Eva, and Ria, for your uplifting encouragement, humour and kind words during the toughest moments. I am extremely thankful to Dr Maria Montt Strabucchi, for always being there with a ¡vamos, que se puede!

Thank you also to friends in Manchester and beyond, who have reminded me of the important things when I needed it most. To Charlotte and Hafsa, and to all the gang from Bristol, your friendship remains invaluable.

Finally, I would like to thank my extended family, my parents, and my sister, Katie, for the countless pep talks and encouragement that they have provided unfalteringly throughout this project and over the years. Most of all, all my love and thanks to Dr Mark Quinn, whose emotional, financial, and practical generosity enabled me to finish this thesis.

Introduction

In 2014, director Emilio Martínez-Lázaro set a box-office record for Spain. His comedy feature film, Ocho apellidos vascos [A Spanish Affair],1 garnered more revenue for ticket sales in Spain than any other Spanish film to date had managed to attract. A tale of supposedly star-crossed love and a role-reversal of the iconic story of Carmen, in

Martínez-Lázaro’s retelling, Rafa, the young male protagonist from Seville (played by comedian and malagueño Dani Rovira) falls for a Basque woman named Amaia (brought to life by Clara Lago, herself a madrileña). To produce its humour, the film repeatedly winks at the audience by drawing upon popular stereotypes of the autonomous communities in Spain referenced in the film, in particular Andalusia and the Basque

Country. A striking example of these references to the diverse traditions of the regions of Spain is found in the opening sequence, which sees Amaia (reluctantly) wearing a traditional flamenco dress while attending a hen party in Seville. Her donning of a costume is later mirrored in her love interest's masquerading as a Basque separatist to disguise his true origins from her father, Koldo, and attempt to convince him of their shared values. As if Rovira’s comic treatment of the Basque separatist movement was not provocative enough, Martínez-Lázaro directed a sequel the following year, poking fun at an even more current national tension. Ocho apellidos catalanes [A Spanish Affair

2] (2015) sees Rafa and his would-be father-in-law travel to Catalonia in a desperate attempt to stop the wedding of Amaia and Pau, a Catalan ‘hipster’ from Barcelona. The pair must navigate a façade farcically maintained by the villagers in which Pau’s fiercely separatist grandmother is led to believe that Catalonia has gained independence from

1 The English translation of the title obscures its literal meaning, ‘eight Basque surnames’, which refers to a marker of the Basque lineage that Rafa must feign in the film. 10

Spain—a plot device that foreshadowed the referendum that would take place in

Catalonia two years after the film’s release.

The ‘thematisation of national difference’ (Martínez-Expósito 2018: 219) in Ocho apellidos vascos and Ocho apellidos catalanes exemplifies the wider debates surrounding identities in Spain that provided the context and motivation for this thesis. The centrality of this national difference to their narratives indicates its relevance as a rich seam to be explored within contemporary cinema. The director’s treatment of the regional identities that coexist in Spain displays the country as very diverse, yet it transpires that, according to the films, these differences are interchangeable and can be performed (Buse and Triana Toribio 2015: 238). While it has been suggested that Ocho apellidos vascos enables Spanish audiences to laugh at the ‘minor differences’ between the (stereotypical) cultural identities within Spain—at least, between those of the autonomous regions of the Basque Country and Andalusia (Buse and Triana Toribio

2015)—the films ultimately reveal the absence of the self-representation of those groups.

Indeed, other films of the same era confirm that the characterisation of Rafa in the Ocho apellidos films conflicts with local representations of Andalusian cultural identity. In the same year in which Ocho apellidos vascos was released, a film made by sevillano Alberto

Rodríguez portrayed a vastly different image of Andalusia. La isla mínima [Marshland]

(2014), a crime thriller set in the marshes of the Doñana national park near Seville, depicted rural Andalusia in the Transición era as a murky, lawless landscape. In

Rodríguez’ film, Andalusian cities prospering from tourism (in this case, Málaga) represent a deadly draw for young women, instead of recreational hotspots like the

Seville visited by Amaia and friends. Rodríguez avoids or subverts any costumbrista

11 representations of Andalusian identity, obscuring the background sights and sounds of the local feria [town fair] to focus on a crime scene where two girls are found murdered in the marshes.

If Ocho apellidos vascos found unprecedented popularity among audiences, La isla mínima enjoyed enormous critical recognition, receiving ten awards at the 2015 Goyas

(Cuéllar 2015). Institutions within Andalusia also lauded the film; Rodríguez was awarded the Hijo Predilecto [‘Favourite Son’] prize by the Junta de Andalucía shortly after the Goyas. During the ceremony, Rodríguez expressed his frustration at the representation of his native region, noting that Andalusia ‘ha sido y sigue siendo representada de una manera tópica y falsaria’ [‘has been and continues to be represented in a stereotypical and falsified way’] (Molina 2015). These conflicting approaches to representing cultural identities within cinemas in Spain provided the inspiration for this thesis, and its central objectives. The first of these is to understand the legislative and historical contexts that have impacted the film industries of

Andalusia and Catalonia and subsequent representations of their cultural identities.

Secondly, the thesis foregrounds existing structures in the two film industries, considering their impact on which films are funded and awarded prizes. Thirdly, the thesis investigates the role that film festivals assume in the cinematic landscape within these territories and the visions of Andalusian and Catalan cultural identities that their programming, locations and awards articulate, including close readings of a corpus of films screened at selected festivals to understand the articulations of identity made available at these events.

The scholarly response to these films is representative of the wider panorama of studies of identity in Spanish film. For example, researchers have centred their analysis of Ocho

12 apellidos vascos on the comic address of stereotypes of Basqueness (Bermúdez de

Castro 2015), but coverage of the representations of Catalan cultural identity in the sequel has thus far been restricted to specialist film journalism (Quintana 2015). In a trend that is similarly redolent of contemporary Anglophone scholarship, the representation of Andalusian cultural identity in the films has been largely overlooked.

The dearth of literature on representations of Andalusianness is telling in itself; as occurs in the film, being Andalusian is marked as the ‘norm’: Rafa must adapt to the specificities of a stereotyped, Othered Basque identity. This discursive assumption traces a long tradition of representations of Andalusia in which Andalusianness has stood for Spanishness, effacing the cultural specificities of the community.

While this persistent gap in Anglophone scholarship is an omission that this thesis sets out to address, a number of studies published in Spanish have highlighted this tendency to overlook Andalusian cultural identity, and have conducted important work to recognise the history of filmmaking in Andalusia. In particular, Rafael Utrera’s Las rutas del cine en Andalucía (2005) asserts the extensive and multivalent relationship between the community and the cinema, charting its history along ‘routes’ of exhibition, production, and the means by which its autochthonous filmmakers have depicted their native pueblo. Building on this and previous studies before the millennium, María Jesús

Ruiz-Muñoz (2008) focuses on filmmaking in Andalusia from the transition to democracy to the year 2006, arguing that the ‘estereotipo peyorativo’ [‘pejorative stereotype’] (ibid., p. 123) of the community created in early Spanish cinema continues to loom large over Andalusian productions in the twenty-first century. What many studies tend to address, however, is filmmaking in a commercial context, highlighting, for example, the box-office triumph Solas [Alone] (Benito Zambrano, 1999) as a

13 watershed moment in Andalusian filmmaking for its mission to ‘des-folklorizar’ [‘de- folkloricise’] the representation of Andalusian identity (del Pino 2003: 10). Like La isla mínima, such films are heralded as breakthroughs in Andalusian film that sidestep the costumbrismo of old, opening up transnational spaces for a type of filmmaking in

Andalusia that is not required to self-consciously reference its most internationally iconic traditions. However, what this focus overlooks is that other cinemas exist outside of the commercial model, and have done for decades. With a few notable exceptions

(Utrera and Olid 1993), there has been a distinct lack of critical work published on the films that filmmakers from these communities have submitted to film festivals, an invaluable platform for their early creative pursuits.

As the second chapter of this thesis makes evident, with some notable exceptions, the history of filmmaking in Catalonia has also been catalogued more extensively in Catalan than in English. More recently, scholarship on Catalan film has deployed terms such as

‘canvis’ [‘changes’] (Riambau 2006), ‘incertesa’ [‘uncertainty’] (Quintana 2014), and

‘conflicte’ [‘conflict’] (Rodríguez Granell 2016), indicating a widespread observation of the unstable climate within which ongoing negotiations of what can be understood as

Catalan cinema occur, if such an entity can be claimed to exist at all. In this historical moment in which the Catalan pro-independence movement is interrogating the very definition and composition of Spain, it is particularly pressing to analyse not only how

Catalan identity is represented by others, but by Catalans themselves.

This thesis deploys a combined approach that examines historical context, legislative manoeuvres and industry responses to analyse the manifestation of these ongoing negotiations through festival films. As in Andalusia, film festivals in Catalonia constitute an area underexplored in scholarship on cinema in the territory; studies published to

14 date are limited to case studies of single events (Benavente 2004). This omission gravely impoverishes the field of peninsular film studies, as festivals represent vital platforms for films that are often first works or that do not have the budget to access commercial theatres, as has specifically been noted of Spain’s ‘other’ cinema produced in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent cuts to funding (Kourelou and others 2014: 143). By combining these approaches, this thesis contributes a new perspective to this area of study.

In order to conduct this investigation, the thesis consists of a two-part approach that brings together legislation within the autonomous communities and at national level

(and the responses of filmmakers and programmers to it) and close readings of a corpus of films selected from film festivals held in Andalusia and Catalonia. This methodology aims to combine two schools of thought present in studies of Spanish cinema and film production—that which examines industrial conditions and that of textual analysis— and responds to ‘the value of harnessing legal and cultural analysis’ that scholars have expounded (Labanyi 2008: 120). Within the context of Catalan television, Enric Castelló has observed that ‘territory, language and cultural proximity are the essential issues transmitted by the political framework. They are not only political and cultural, but also economic. This is why nation building in cultural production studies must not only focus on textual descriptions if they are to understand whole processes but also take into account the economic and production frame’ (2007: 64). Similarly, Nuria Triana Toribio concludes from Janet Harbord’s work, Film Cultures, that ‘there is something intangible at work behind the special status attached to certain films, film-makers and movements, something just as powerful, if not more powerful, than anything a close analysis of a film could reveal by itself. That something is inextricably connected with practices of

15 exhibition and distribution, and with the cultural agents that implement them’ (2016:

5). The methodology of this thesis aims to elucidate these intangible aspects as they are produced by film policy and film festivals in Catalonia and Andalusia by combining them with close analyses of films exhibited within these configurations of film cultures. As such, the thesis approaches the topic by first outlining the successive policies that have influenced autonomous film production in Catalonia and Andalusia, before addressing examples of recent productions exhibited within this framework.

As previously noted, historiographies of the Andalusian and Catalan film industries in particular have tended to focus on landmark films produced in the two autonomous communities in the cinematic era in Spain, but have not made explicit attempts to trace the connections between legislation surrounding cinema and its impact upon their filmmaking trajectories. As such, when this thesis provides a review of the history of filmmaking in the two autonomous communities, it does so while drawing upon key pieces of legislation, observing their impact upon film production. In doing so, the thesis constructs two portraits in parallel of the development of the Andalusian and Catalan film industries, observing their uneven evolutions as a precursor to their distinct responses to the Ley del Cine of 2007.

This thesis argues that the Ley del Cine demonstrates an overt acknowledgement on the behalf of the Spanish government of the importance of film for representations of diverse cultural identities within Spain, hence its foregrounding as the context within which subsequent debates occur in the film industry. The piece of legislation is understood as a recognition of the changing perspectives on the national landscape in

Spain and, as such, is a pertinent object of study with regard to the legislative response to cultural complexities within nation-states. Adopting this legislation as a point of

16 departure intends to inspire research in other national and subnational contexts into the relationship between film policy and the industries that it impacts. Within this context, film festivals are examined as potential stages on which these interactions between policy and industrial efforts to define an industry play out. Through the development of this exploratory methodology, the thesis aims to make a significant contribution to the fields of both film festival research and Spanish cultural studies by analysing the mechanisms of these events as they unfold within communities in Spain and relating them to the specific cultural contexts in which they are situated.

Pertaining to the creation of entities identifiable as film industries in the two autonomous communities studied here, industrial bodies are understood as playing a crucial role in structuring these industrial mechanisms. Both state-run institutions and collectives independently formed of film professionals play a critical part in both the

‘academicism’ of film cultures in these communities (Triana Toribio 2016: 4) and in overseeing cultural production as curated by these events (English 2005, cited in Triana

Toribio 2016: 3). Selected industrial bodies that ensured their visibility at the festival case studies under analysis, such as the Asociación de Escritoras y Escritores

Cinematográficos de Andalucía (ASECAN), and the Catalan delegation of the Sociedad

General de Autores y Editores, or SGAE, are discussed in terms of their contributions to cementing the ‘academicism’ of the Andalusian and Catalan film industries, respectively.

Film festivals have been recognised as privileged spaces in which audiences can access what has been described as ‘internationally-renowned and artistically superior cinema’, which, at least in Catalonia, has been decried as difficult due to the nature of film distribution channels (Petit and others 2010: 25). The same can be said of Andalusia, where cinemas are dominated by US imports and Spanish commercial offerings. As

Janet Harbord (2002: 61) has observed, film festivals offer a unique space in which audiences may consume such films, acting as ‘marketplaces’, as much for the cities in which they are staged as for the films they exhibit. In Stanley Waterman’s words,

‘festivals transform landscape and place from being everyday settings into temporary environments – albeit with permanent identities – created by and for specific groups of people’ (1998: 55). The unreal spaces that film festivals create has led to these events being described as ‘els llocs del cinema de la postmodernitat’ [‘places of the cinema of postmodernity’] (Losilla 2016: 38). As an alternative space to commercial Spanish film culture, film festivals can also shed light on the intricacies of hegemonic and emerging perspectives on the Spanish film industry. Further analysis of these events can reveal how (or whether) they make available spaces to challenge the dominant narratives determining how Catalan and Andalusian cinemas should be read.

The methods of analysis adopted to conduct this study are rooted in Spanish cultural studies and film studies, but the thesis’ approach sets out to marry the in-depth examination of cultural phenomena in Spain with critical observations that have emerged from the field of film festival studies. As will be explored in the course of this introduction, key concepts previously theorised by scholars in Spanish cultural studies, such as those of identity and memory, underpin the readings of the film policies, festivals and film texts that make up the body of the thesis. Within this critical landscape, and building upon initial case studies of film festivals in Spain conducted by scholars from Spanish cultural studies, the thesis decisively positions film festivals as significant live events that merit further attention within the field, and argues for their study as an integral part of the Spanish cultural panorama. In specifically selecting two of Spain’s autonomous communities which have prominent and divergent local, national

18 and international iconographies and imaginaries, this thesis is, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the first of its kind to contribute a substantial parallel study of the cinema industries of these two communities.

Film festival research as a line of enquiry is a relatively new phenomenon, with the majority of studies emerging after the millennium (Iordanova 2013: 2). In his 2003 thesis, Julian Stringer observes that the vast majority of the publications on film festivals at the time focused on ‘consumer guidebooks on how to gain knowledge about, or “survive,” the festival circuit, and gossip-laden histories of the most famous and glamorous events, such as Cannes and Sundance’ (2013: 59). Stringer opines that these publications, although of interest, lack the academic rigour that would be required when investigating a cultural phenomenon as complex and rich as the film festival (ibid.). He attributes this importance to the enormous growth in the number of film festivals worldwide in recent decades, declaring that ‘they now constitute a key site through which the medium of cinema is consumed by millions of people all over the world’

(2013: 60). Subsequent publications have begun to fill this gap in scholarship, with particularly noteworthy contributions from the Film Festival Research Network at the

University of St. Andrews. This research project owes much to the groundbreaking Film

Festival Yearbook series, and responds in particular to the lacuna in film festival studies regarding festival programming and identity politics outlined by Marijke de Valck and

Skadi Loist (2009: 214). Crucially, however, studies of film festivals in Spain are conspicuously absent from these anthologies. Combining film festival studies with

Spanish cultural studies therefore offers the opportunity to enrich both fields, and this thesis charts a groundbreaking research process that opens up unique new channels of

19 communication between the concerns of these two areas by deploying a number of different but complementary critical perspectives.

Within this interest in the projection of identity politics at film festivals, it is their global reach and local impact that results in examples of these events in Andalusia and

Catalonia being deemed of importance to this investigation. In order to analyse the communities that these festivals interpellate and construct, Stringer’s concept of the

‘rhetoric of film festivals’ (2013: 63)—or the way in which these events and their organisational bodies communicate their interests and priorities to the outside world— will be a useful tool. Like Stringer’s investigation, this study will draw upon such material resources as festival programmes, as well as marketing material such as posters and forms of communication with prospective publics, to determine who is being invited to participate and how this interpellation of specific audiences may influence how films are read and, in turn, which identity positions are encouraged.

With the aforementioned research aims in mind, the film festivals in this study were selected in terms of their ostensible claim to represent conceptual categories such as

‘Andalusian film’ and ‘Catalan film’, whether through their inclusion of sections entitled

‘Panorama Andaluz’ or through programming that identified a number of recent productions as Catalan. The selection process also endeavoured to include a festival in the administrative centre of each autonomous community—in this case, Seville or

Barcelona—and an event in a more peripheral location. Once these criteria had been applied, more practical limitations had to be borne in mind; owing to the time restrictions of both the length of the project and clashing dates of the numerous events in Catalonia and Andalusia, the author decided that the fieldwork would comprise a total of four festivals. Despite the impossibility of attending every screening at these

20 events—one of the inherent challenges of the ‘liveness’ of film festivals discussed later in the thesis—as several took place simultaneously, this decision also contributed to the drawing of appropriate bounds of the research, in light of the wealth of data collected from each of the events.

While conducting the fieldwork visits, the author adopted what can be described as a

‘participant-observer’ role, understood in her dual capacity as audience member and researcher. This position afforded the exciting advantage of gaining an insight into the inner workings of the festival and the priorities for the event, as well as how these intentions unfolded in practice, such as an intimate understanding of the significance of liveness for community formation through surprise musical performances and the invitation of esteemed guests from the local filmmaking community. This was particularly the case at the Alcances Film Festival, where arrangements were made for the author to volunteer as a member of the festival team. Nonetheless, this position differed somewhat from the ritualistic positionality of the ‘festival insider’, as journalists and other participant-observers of film festivals with considerable involvement in the unfolding of these events have been labelled (Stringer 2013: 60), in that the author had no institutional affiliation or involvement in the decision-making processes of the festival committees. As the purpose of the fieldwork was to document the staging of the events as they unfolded in order to extrapolate how these decisions contributed to the representation of the communities in which they took place, this perspective was more appropriate than conducting structured interviews, which may have overlooked the intricacies of each event. As such, Stringer’s term of a ‘festival outsider’, in its sense of an ‘interested yet detached observer’ (2013: 61), may be more appropriately applied here.

Adopting the perspective of the ‘outsider’ participant-observer inevitably entailed some challenges to conducting the research. As other scholars have noted, film festivals often do not have a dedicated accreditation category through which to grant access to academic researchers (Iordanova 2013: 4). In order to gain privileged access beyond that of an audience member, the author was, in most cases, ascribed the rather misleading label of ‘professional’, as opposed to the alternative category of ‘press’, both of which undoubtedly influence, to some degree, how film professionals in attendance respond in conversation. It should also be noted that the ‘observer’ role does not bestow omnipresence; it was inevitable that the author could not attend all screenings that took place. As such, the films which formed the initial corpus were prioritised in the first instance according to the live events which accompanied them, such as panels with filmmakers, as well as in terms of their relevance to the aims of the study; for example, the ‘Panorama Andaluz’ constituted a priority section.

The analysis of the festival case studies in this thesis takes into consideration the prizes awarded at these events and their subsequent discursive significance. This methodological decision was made on the basis that, while constituting spaces with the potential to contest hegemonic filmmaking, film festivals themselves use academic techniques, such as prize-giving, to establish their own ideals of cinemas from certain nations, regions, and communities. As well as rewarding those films which fit this ideal with a seal of approval, awards act as ‘a claim to authority and an assertion of that authority’ on the part of the festival itself (English 2005: 51). Triana Toribio uses the phrase ‘award capital’ to describe the prestige that these awards confer on films—and their professionals—and notes that they ‘may enable them to travel transnationally’

(2016: 37). As such, these prizes are viewed as revealing the discursive representations

22 of Catalan and Andalusian festival films that are considered most desirable by the awarding juries.

The two-part structure of the thesis necessitated divergent yet interrelated critical approaches in each part. The empirical focus of the first two chapters lays the groundwork, showing the functions of the film festival case studies as sociocultural nuclei and centres of debate. These spaces are shown in their vivid specificity to be stages where narratives of identity are in constant states of negotiation, both within the regional and national frameworks in which they take place and even among the films themselves that occupy these geographical and temporal spaces.

These industrial contexts then serve to frame the close textual analysis conducted in the latter part of the thesis. Drawing upon broader cultural theory and critical perspectives on Spain and, more specifically, Andalusian and Catalan culture, the textual analysis teases out markers of cultural identity, with particular attention to the construction of community via language, place, and music. Significantly, these themes are themselves shown to be vividly and tellingly reflected in the paratextual structures of the events at which they are screened.

Combining these approaches to film policy, film festivals and textual analysis constitutes an original and multi-faceted contribution to the wider field of contemporary Spanish cultural studies. Indeed, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this thesis is the first investigation to deploy a combined approach of film festival studies and close readings to analyse the complex, wide-ranging but also specifically fine-grained projections of cultural identities in contemporary Andalusia and Catalonia.

At this point, it is worth clarifying how some of the key concepts and terms are used in this thesis. Catalonia has been recognised, along with the Basque Country and, to a lesser extent, Galicia, as a ‘historic nationality’ within Spain (Jordan and Morgan-

Tamosunas 1998: 157). While Andalusia does not hold such status (perhaps due in part to not having a co-official language separate from Castilian), it has its own history of a nationalist movement, known as andalucismo, which has experienced different results and incarnations.2 This study therefore recognises the complex, different histories of the two autonomous communities, and acknowledges the issues inherent in applying the term ‘autonomous community’ to both cultures, as the term belies these imbalanced pasts and present circumstances (as, indeed, it does when it is used to compartmentalise Spain on equal terms). At the same time, alternative terms that have been applied to Catalonia, such as a ‘non-state nation’, carry their own connotations of nationalism with which some citizens do not identify. As such, when the term

‘autonomous community’ is used in this thesis, it is understood that the reader will intuit its reflexivity in alluding to the complex relations between the Spanish state and communities that are often legally treated as homogenous, but that in practice experience (and desire) uneven balances of power within the nation-state.

A further intrinsic dilemma when analysing mechanisms of self-representation is that,

'[j]ust like the nation-state, the region is a context in which disputed identities and unequal power relations are commonly found' (Machin-Autenrieth 2015: 23). The devolution of some administrative powers to the autonomous communities in Spain has typically resulted in the decision-making abilities being concentrated in their capital cities; in Andalusia and Catalonia, these urban centres are Seville and Barcelona,

2 For a useful review of the origins and historiography of andalucismo, see Agustín Ruiz Robledo (1990). 24 respectively. The priorities set by these central administrations affront groups that do not feel represented by their decisions, or which contend that their policies do not respect the needs of communities outside the capital. For example, the means in which many Seville-based cultural institutions promote flamenco as a symbol of a unified

Andalusian cultural identity is protested by civil groups such as the Plataforma de

Andalucía Oriental, ‘a sub-regionalist movement that contends the very notion of a unified Andalusia’ (ibid., p. 5). In Catalonia, divisions between the metropolitan area of

Barcelona and other provinces have been further intensified by the ‘procès’, or pro- independence movement. The pitfalls of attempting to homogenise a community were thrown into especially sharp relief at the end of 2017, when the satirical campaign

Plataforma por Tabarnia, then known as Barcelona is not Catalonia, claimed front-page space in Spanish newspapers for arguing that the fictitious region of Tabarnia, combining the urban areas of Barcelona and Tarragona, should have the right to independence from the rest of Catalonia due to its higher GDP and relatively low support for Catalan secession. Both movements illustrate the conflict arising from attempts to define citizens of a territory under a homogenous identity. In light of this evidence, it must be acknowledged that the film festivals in this thesis are presented as individual examples that cannot account for cultural processes occurring in other locations across Andalusia and Catalonia, where other events regularly take place.

These events were selected owing to their explicit presentation of sections that profess to represent ‘Andalusia’ or ‘Catalonia’, in order to explore how they imagine Andalusian or Catalan identity.

In a similar way, scholars have warned as to the dangers of seeking to identify a unifying cultural identity from films, and from assuming that the director is representative of a

25 monolithic cultural subject (Rodríguez Granell 2016: 18). Rodríguez Granell does, however, acknowledge that identity politics can emerge as a form of protectionism against dominant cultural forces, or can be manipulated to contradict attempts to impose a unifying cultural identity (as was done under Franco):

D’altres vegades, la identitat emergeix com a estratègia de protecció —

l’anomenada política d’excepció cultural—vers l’imperialisme

cinematogràfic de Hollywood o fins i tot entesa des de tot aquell conjunt de

pràctiques crítiques amb la pròpia idea d’identitat única com poden ser les

filmografies centrades a expressar el caràcter diaspòric i la hibridació

cultural dels seus autors vers cinematografies confrontades, establint tant

una relació basada en la diferenciació com també una sèrie de discursos

que posen en crisi qualsevol intent de cimentar una identitat unitària i

estable.

[At other times, identity emerges as a protection strategy—the so-called

politics of cultural exception—in the face of the cinematic imperialism of

Hollywood or even understood from the perspective of that collective of

critical practices with the very idea of unified identity, as with

filmographies aimed at expressing diasporic character and the cultural

hybridisation of its authors in the face of confrontational cinematographies,

establishing both a relationship based on differentiation and a series of

discourses that throw into crisis any attempt to cement a unifying, stable

identity] (2016: 19, my translation).

Rodríguez Granell asks whether it is relevant to scope out a national identity in Catalan cinema if it has been subject to so many different concerns and priorities, which have

26 largely not been linked to a project of constructing a national identity (ibid., p. 16). This thesis argues for its relevance, as even cinema under these conditions evidences the given priorities of the national context at that time, which are specific to that national administration, and considers this criterion of particular relevance in that the current

Catalan administration does exhibit these directives of promoting a certain Catalan identity at present, even if previous administrations did not overtly prioritise this project.

More broadly, the question of nationality still holds power in the Spanish film industry.

Triana Toribio paraphrases Granado (2006: 25), stating that ‘[a]ny film-making professional of Spanish nationality may belong to the Academia after having worked on at least three films that have been premiered in Spain’ (2016: 7). While new terms suggest that this criterion of belonging to the ‘Spanish’ film industry is broadening, as

‘[f]oreign nationals can apply for membership if they have clear links to the Spanish film industry’ (ibid.), many filmmakers in Spain have expressed their belief that, ‘[p]ara lo bueno y para lo malo, el director es el responsable de la película’ [‘for better or worse, the director is responsible for the film’] (Belinchón 2007).3 In a transnational context,

Cindy Wong reminds us that film festivals continue ‘to engage the complicated imagination of nation-building’ by including sections promoting national cinema (2011:

159). Given that these categories are still being deployed by the Spanish film industry

(and other film industries worldwide) in order to delineate film production and provide

3 Such was the view of the group of professionals who signed the ‘Cineastas contra la enmienda’ manifesto in 2007, in response to an amendment to the Ley del Cine which conceded Spanish nationality to any film on which 75% of the creative team—composed of the director, scriptwriter, editor and director of photography—were Spanish nationals. The complainants’ concern was that this rule could result in Spanish production houses becoming service centres for films made by foreign directors, with the implication being that the domestic industry would suffer in favour of serving teams that had large budgets and incentives to travel to Spain (Belinchón 2007). 27 funding, this thesis investigates the means in which these categories are used (or rejected) in film festivals, which often have the ability to make their own decisions on how films are categorised. In that films are often still pigeonholed within these categories as a means of strengthening a representation of a certain idea of national/regional/cultural identity, this thesis observes film festivals and the discursive treatments evident in their films as arenas in which representations of these identities are negotiated.

Chapter One of the thesis contextualises the film festivals taken as case studies by presenting an overview of shifts in Spanish cultural policy and the impact that this legislation can be viewed as having had on filmmaking in, and about, Andalusia. In doing so, the chapter aims to situate the Ley del Cine and its implications for Andalusian cinema—that is, to place greater emphasis on regional filmmaking and on strengthening the diverse branches of the film industry. The chapter then presents a number of industrial bodies in the Andalusian film industry and their roles, drawing conclusions as to how they contribute to shaping a vision of what Andalusian cinema should be aiming to achieve. These factors are then drawn upon to establish the role of film festivals in representing the identity of the Andalusian film industry.

The second chapter adopts a similar structure to that of its predecessor, allowing the reader to contrast the contexts in which the film industries in Andalusia and Catalonia have emerged. Charting the history of filmmaking in Catalonia presents the reader with a fluctuating trajectory of divergent schools of thought that have controlled hegemonic

Catalan-made cinema, intertwined with varying engagement with questions of Catalan nationalism. The establishment of film institutions at the end of the dictatorship, such as the Institut del Cinema Català in 1975, reflect the desire (and ability) to formalise the

28 structure of the Catalan film industry under democracy, and indicate the increased input of Catalan institutions in the formation of a film industry that represents the idealised nation in alignment with their agendas.

Continuing from the contextual work done by the initial half of the thesis, Chapter Three focuses on close thematic readings of a corpus of films made in Andalusia and screened at the 2016-17 editions of the festivals discussed in the previous two chapters. Taking films made by Andalusian teams touching upon issues that concern Andalusian identity, the chapter identifies themes within these texts such as the idea of Africa in the

Andalusian imaginary, musical heritage and its role in a concept of Andalusian identity, and narratives of collective memory and archive that emerge in contemporary festival films made by and about Andalusian citizens. The chapter unearths constructions of

Andalusian identity that interrogate the community’s shared history of emigration and immigration—an issue highly relevant to contemporary transnational political debates—and that amplify the lens through which these issues are considered. The selected films draw upon perspectives of those who served in North Africa under

Franco, families who settled in Morocco under Spanish rule and subsequently migrated to Andalusia, and those who study how Andalusia has been constructed in relation to musical heritage, aiming to diversify the understanding of the origins of flamenco. As a corpus, these films point to a cinema that holds up a mirror to previous constructions of

Andalusian identity, beginning the work of expanding and destabilising the notion of

Andalusian-ness towards more inclusive definitions. At the same time, the weight of the past is felt in these films, through capturing and renewing traditions such as flamenco which are consequently affirmed as a marker of what it means to be from Andalusia.

The fact that the production houses of these films have their bases in Andalusian cities

29 beyond Seville, such as Malaga and Cordoba, speaks to the expanding industrial infrastructure beyond the Andalusian capital, and thus to the potential for increasingly diverse representations of the autonomous community, in line with the intentions of the

Ley del Cine.

The fourth chapter mirrors the work of Chapter Three, consisting of close analysis of a select corpus of Catalan films screened at the festivals outlined above during 2016-17.

Key referents of dominant Catalan national identity—in particular, treatments of convivència, place, corporeality, Others, and language—are identified and dissected in relation to these films. At a stage in Catalonia’s history in which the nation attempts to negotiate its place within a turbulent Europe, the identities revealed in these films reflect a continuing crisis surrounding what it means, and will mean in the future, to consider oneself Catalan (or part of the Catalan community). Taking into consideration the legislation outlined in Chapter Two, including the Catalan Llei del Cinema’s linguistic priorities delineated in 2010, the chapter proposes the conflicting notions of Catalan identity that emerge through these festival films, some of which assert a proposal of dissimilating Catalan-ness, drawing upon corporeality to diminish discussions of language and identity; others foreground the connection of place to identity formation and its implications for the heritage of a small non-state nation in an increasingly globalised world; still others condemn the Spanish authorities’ actions in the name of border reinforcement in a way that asserts distance between the Spanish government’s ideology and that of the film’s directors. Read in conjunction, the texts reflect nuanced and challenging cinemas that at once assert, reject and question the notion of a broadly defined Catalan national identity.

Chapter 1. Filming then, filming now: shifts in cultural policy and their bearings on representations of Andalusia

As stated in the introduction to the thesis, this chapter begins by exploring the historical context regarding legislation of cinema in Spain more broadly, and its consequences for cinema in Andalusia on a more specific level. It argues that this legislation can be seen to have impacted the nature and extent of filmmaking in, and about, Andalusia, encouraging the perpetuation of reductive cultural stereotypes of the community in

Spanish cinema and, latterly, within filmmaking taking place in Andalusia itself. The seismic changes across many areas of Spanish society in the Transition era are seen to have brought revised interpretations of Andalusian cultural identity in film, but the state legislation incentivising the more highbrow cinema of the Ley Miró, and the funding attached to it, are both seen to leave an enduring mark on the face of representations of Andalusia. In the late 1990s, with the Junta de Andalucía introducing measures to support the autonomous industry, the construction of a discernible

Andalusian film industry begins in earnest.

Following this historical context, section 1.2 introduces the Spanish Ley del Cine of 2007 and considers the subsequent development of the Andalusian film industry in light of this legislation, including, most notably, the devising of an Andalusian Ley del Cine in

2016. Section 1.3 collates a number of key industrial bodies in the Andalusian film industry, indicating their roles in establishing the ‘academicism’ of the industry discussed in the introduction to the thesis. The section offers an overview of the roles of these organisations, and analyses their actions in terms of their priorities for the

Andalusian film industry. Combined with the analysis of the context in which they occur, these actions shed light on the mechanisms of representation of Andalusian identity in

31 film, and whether these mechanisms are changing over time. The significance of these shifting representations and their potency in galvanising a certain sense of community have been made plain in recent political events in Spain and wider Europe. The election of the Partido Popular, along with political representatives of the right-wing party Vox, to the Parlamento de Andalucía in late 2018 after years of PSOE government, indicates the compelling interpellation of notions of belonging and their ability to influence the socio-political landscape.

In the final part of the chapter, section 1.4 extends this understanding of representative practices as influential cultivators of modes of belonging to film festivals, as previously discussed. The two case studies of film festivals in Andalusia—the Alcances Festival de

Cine Documental, in Cádiz, and the Festival de Cine Europeo de Sevilla, or SEFF, in

Seville—are introduced and contextualised by way of an analytical report of fieldwork visits between 2016 and 2017. Building on the contextual work of the chapter more broadly, the section lays the groundwork to elucidate the intangible aspects of film and film cultures produced by these events, by considering their interpretation of places in

Andalusia, their programming decisions, and the films selected and denominated

‘Andalusian’ productions. The chapter thus informs the close readings in Chapter Three, which focus on selected films made in Andalusia screened at these events.

1.1. Previous legislation and its impact on representations of Andalusia

It has previously been stated that Andalusia cannot be described as having possessed its own film industry until the arrival of democracy, largely due to its lack of infrastructure.

In the early 1990s, Juan Fabián Delgado declared:

[D]urante décadas, y a pesar de la constante presencia de Andalucía en el cine

español a lo largo prácticamente de toda su historia, nunca se intentó ni se

promovió desde tierras andaluzas la necesidad de tomar la iniciativa en el

terreno fílmico y dotar a su tierra de medios, equipos técnicos e

infraestructura necesarias para que a semejanza de Madrid o Barcelona,

alguna ciudad andaluza pudiese contar con estudios o con productora

cinematográfica (1993: 4, cited in Guarinos 1999: 133).

[For decades, and despite the constant presence of Andalusia in Spanish

cinema for practically its entire history, there was never any attempt or

promotion on the part of Andalusia of the need to take the initiative in the

realm of film and equip the region with the means, technical teams and

infrastructure necessary for any Andalusian city to possess studios or

cinematic producers like those in Madrid or Barcelona].

Nonetheless, since the turn of the millennium, research by scholars such as Rafael

Utrera (2005) and Francisco Javier Gómez Pérez (2013) has contended that filmmakers from Andalusia began working from as early as the 1920s. With early legislation concerning cinema primarily acting to censor productions and ensure their suitability for the viewing public, rather than aiming to support the fledgling medium, filmmakers had to be resourceful in establishing working practices. As a result, early productions were for the most part subject to the desires of private investors, or focused on finding success with audiences or the administration in order to recoup expenses incurred during filming. These factors often determined the narrative and representations in the productions, in many cases replicating tropes from films made elsewhere in Spain and

Europe to ensure their popularity with cinemagoers. As a result, early cinema made in

Andalusia, as well as films made in other areas of Spain, often reproduced reductive stereotypes that led to a narrow representation of communities in Andalusia. As the motivating factors for perpetuating stereotypes during this period have been shown to be the ideological pressures exerted by successive regimes and aristocratic investors, as well as the financial cost of filmmaking in the early era, it can be posited that a lack of legislative framework to support and fund a structured film industry in Andalusia has contributed to these narrow and omissive representations of Andalusian society.

Early efforts to shape cinema through legislation in Spain and Andalusia

From the arrival of cinema in Spain, it was as much the areas in which legislation was lacking as the legislation itself surrounding filmmaking that held implications for representations of Andalusian culture. With its potential for consolidating a national identity not yet acknowledged, ‘cinema was considered too ephemeral in its early years to be given consideration by most intellectuals and policy makers’ (Triana Toribio 2003:

16). This perspective was accompanied by a lack of state support, leading filmmakers to favour topics that would cost little to film and that had proven to be commercially viable

(Pérez Perucha 2010: 88–89). Cinema of the early twentieth century has been described as a ‘cinema of attractions’ (Gunning 1986: 63-77, cited in Triana Toribio 2016: 3), and

Andalusian customs were deemed fittingly attractive subject matter for Spanish cinema’s early audiences, accustomed to artistic traditions such as zarzuela and sainete musical theatre. Cultural traditions associated with Andalusia, such as bullfighting and flamenco, were frequently pictured in these productions (Triana Toribio 2003: 19).

These films would consolidate a representative practice that had begun with some of the very first films made in Spain, such as the French filmmaker Alexandre Promio’s

Sevillanas (Bentley 2008: 2), which saw Andalusia depicted in terms of the entertainment value of its traditional dance rather than its more complex social history.

Without its own film production centre, Andalusia had limited control over its own representation. Early film production was centred in Catalonia and other northern provinces, even before it moved to Madrid in the late 1920s (Triana Toribio 2003: 16), evidencing the geographical distance between many filmmakers and their preferred subject matter. Despite the lack of infrastructure, however, scholars have found evidence of a ‘producción atomizada’ [‘atomised production’] of film in Andalusia in the

1920s (Utrera 2005: 61). With no financial support from the state, filmmakers either had to self-fund their productions or resort to the caimanías model: persuading a wealthy aristocratic benefactor to finance their work. This method was undoubtedly not always successful, but it does indicate an important factor in the filmmaking process, suggesting that the films made during this period were, in many cases, likely to have been those espoused by the most charismatic and persuasive of filmmakers—and perhaps those with the most moneyed and willing contacts (or indeed gullible, as Utrera suggests). The perhaps murky process of funding films in the era prior to recorded sound in Andalusia adds weight to the value of this line of enquiry, in that even at this early stage, economic factors already loomed large over which films were made and how, as well as the content they included or excluded.

As films were regularly financed via the caimanías approach, the resulting productions were often subject to the influence and perspectives of the social class that funded them.

For example, the owner of the production house Film Nazarí, the native Chilean Carlos

Emilio Sanz Quesado (later known as Carlos Nazarí), partnered the next year with the aristocratic Sánchez-Dalp family for financial support (Utrera 2005: 64), suggesting that

35 it was not unusual for partnerships to form for economic reasons. Once on side, the

Sánchez-Dalp family were eager to contribute their ideas; the Sánchez-Dalp children were ‘activos cinéfilos que, más allá de ser cualificados espectadores o pioneros del cineclubismo sevillano, les gustaba filmar y colocarse delante o detrás de la cámara’

[‘active cinephiles who were not only experienced spectators and pioneers of the cineclub scene in Seville, but who also enjoyed filming and being both behind and in front of the camera’] (Utrera 2005: 66). As other scholars have suggested (Gómez Pérez

2013: 39), such a statement hints at the pervasive influence of elevated social class on

Andalusian film of the 1920s, implying that the filmmakers were perhaps less acquainted with the working-class experience of Andalusia.

These partnerships between filmmakers and members of the upper classes inflected not only the representations of Andalusian people, but also of their surroundings. These pioneers in Andalusia clearly saw the potential for the economic boost that films favourably depicting the region could offer. Dalp-Nazarí’s films deliberately selected

‘nobles edificios o pintorescos locales’ [‘fine buildings or picturesque locations’] (Utrera

2005: 61), partially precipitated by lack of space at the large studios due to them being occupied by productions with more generous budgets or prestige, but what was consequently on display was Andalusia itself. According to Utrera, Sánchez-Dalp had become the promoter of Betis Films, ‘cuyo objetivo será producir películas documentales que ofrezcan las bellezas urbanas y rústicas de las tierras andaluzas’

[‘whose objective will be to produce documentaries that showcase the refined and rustic beauty of the land of Andalusia’] (2005: 66). Indeed, Dalp-Nazarí’s first release, the documentary La sierra de Aracena [The Mountains of Aracena] (1928), which recorded a romería celebration in Aracena, represented ‘el primer mediometraje

36 correspondiente a una futura serie <> cuya intención era poner de manifiesto las bellezas de <>’ [‘the first medium-length film in a future series of

“tourist films”, the intention of which was to showcase the beauty of “our land”’] (ibid., p. 65). In this instance, ‘our land’, the sierra of Aracena, could be taken rather literally:

Francisco Javier Sánchez-Dalp, who funded the film, was descended from the marquises of Aracena (Gómez Pérez 2013: 38). Utrera’s description implies that, at this stage, filmmakers already demonstrated an awareness of the tourist gaze and a desire to show

Andalusia in a light that they deemed favourable. These topics were also favoured by the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, which focused on extolling autochthonous values

(Gómez Pérez 2013: 39).

Despite the pervasive influence of the aristocracy in the early era of film in Andalusia, some Andalusian filmmakers did not subscribe to the caimanías funding model.

Examining the trajectories of such filmmakers can shed light on the conditions they may have faced working in Andalusia, and which factors may have driven them to work elsewhere. An example of this is Francisco Elías, director of the farcical comedy El misterio de la Puerta del Sol [Mystery of the Puerta del Sol] (1929), whose film fell foul of the technical incompatibilities between theatres in Spain and was only screened once in Burgos (Gubern 2010: 125). Elías rarely made films in Andalusia, working in Paris instead, before founding the first studio able to record direct sound in Spain: the Orphea

Studios, in Barcelona (ibid., p. 127). His decision to work in France appears to have been due to more readily available opportunities to finance his films; he was able to apply for

French funding, and worked alongside French filmmakers in a more established industry. His subsequent films were ultimately only made in French, owing to a lack of local funds to support the recording of a Spanish version (Gubern 2010: 128). These

37 decisions imply that a lack of funding or having to compromise on creative choices in order to secure private investment have had direct consequences for the work of

Andalusian filmmakers and, more broadly, for the establishment of a recognisable film industry in Andalusia.

Trojan Houses: Cinema in Andalusia, state control and stereotypes

At the end of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in 1930 and the declaration of the

Second Republic the following year, interventions were introduced that concerned cinema across the Spanish state, demonstrating that political forces were increasingly recognising the potential of the medium to inform and influence the population. In

1931, cinema censorship was decentralised by the civil governors of Madrid and

Barcelona (Riambau 2010a: 516). Tighter controls around film were introduced, including the establishment of the Consejo de Cinematografía in 1934 by the Ministerio de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio, and the following year a decree authorised the

Ministerio de la Gobernación to ban films perceived as attempting to ‘alter historical facts’ or defame Spanish institutions or eminent figures (ibid., p. 517). Profitability also played a significant role in the prioritisation of particular genres of film, especially films of the folklórica genre, which performed well at the domestic box office (Labanyi 2003:

2).

In Andalusia, film production of the 1930s documented in the archives is scant; one film that was recorded, La casa de la Troya [The House of Troy] (Adolfo Aznar and Juan Vilá

Vilamala, 1936-1939), has been attributed to different production houses, but it has been concluded that it was produced by the Málaga-based company Andalucía

Cinematográfica, or A. C. S. A. (Gómez Pérez 2013: 43–44). Gómez Pérez notes that the

38 film departs from the popular españoladas of the era, locating the narrative in Santiago de Compostela rather than in Andalusia (ibid., p. 44), perhaps indicating a desire to move away from the prevalent stereotypical representations of the region. Despite this difference, however, Gómez Pérez finds that the film does exhibit the ‘tono costumbrista y popular’ [‘costumbrista and popular tone’] concomitant with Spanish films of the

1930s (ibid.).

With the end of the Civil War and the turn of the decade, production houses began to appear in Andalusia. However, far from presenting an opportunity to address the stereotypical representations of Andalusian character and place, many of these were at the service of the new regime, and sought to reappropriate popular genres like the folklórica to the homogenising nation-building project of Franco and the Nationalists

(Labanyi 2003: 4). Rafa Films, established in Seville in 1941, produced Canelita en rama

[Cinnamon Flower] (Eduardo García Maroto, 1942) as its first production. The film has been criticised for perpetuating tropes of the andaluzada genre: depicting idealised relationships between gitanos and payos (non-gypsies), and portraying gitanos as lying and manipulative (Utrera 2005: 141). García Maroto later confessed that he agreed to make the film out of financial necessity (1988: 145, cited in Gómez Pérez 2013: 47), thus indicating a potential reason why these stereotypes went unchallenged, even in films made in Andalusia by directors from the region.

Another of these new production houses in Andalusia, Sur Films, set out but ultimately failed to subvert these stereotypes. Stating its mission to make visible the unseen side of

Andalusia (Primer Plano, no. 155, October 1943, cited in Gómez Pérez 2013: 52), the company’s only production, Misterio en la marisma [Mystery in the Marshes] (Claudio de la Torre, 1943), was ultimately said to depict an airbrushed version of Andalusia, full

39 of ‘tópico y lisonja’ [‘stereotypes and flattery’] of the bourgeoisie (ibid.). One of the company owners, José María Llosent y Marañón, would go on to serve in the Francoist government for twenty-five years (Gómez Pérez 2013: 53), indicating the connections between the organisation and the regime.

Like Sur Films, Andalucía Films claimed to represent everyday life in Andalusia (Jurado

2003: 43, cited in Gómez Pérez 2013: 53). However, the company’s primary purpose— to produce the state-controlled Noticiarios y Documentales (No-Do) documentary films—indicates that its representation of Andalusian life would once again have likely been inflected by the ideology of the regime. Directors like Antonio Roldán, who worked with the company on his film Lola Montes (1945), founded his own production company, Alhambra Films, in an attempt to maintain some creative control over his projects, only to relinquish the rights to Andalucía Films shortly after its premiere in

Madrid in return for the company assuming the debts of his own firm (Coira 2004: 91, cited in Gómez Pérez 2013: 54). Cases like that of Roldán demonstrate the adverse circumstances faced by independent filmmakers in an incipient industry dominated by the regime, and showcase the far-reaching impact of ideological interests on economic policy.

Production in Andalusia in the 1950s: Continuing, or contesting, the canon

Following the growing success of the folklóricas during the first decade of the regime, and the expansion of their production into Andalusian companies, the regime continued to draw upon stereotypes of Andalusianness to produce commercial films that promised to be popular with national audiences. These stereotypes were highly useful for the regime’s objectives of creating a homogenous idea of Spain and of suppressing any

40 previous recognition of the heterogeneity of the cultures of the Iberian peninsula—of

‘managing contradiction’, as Jo Labanyi puts it (2003: 1). There were indeed

Andalusians in positions of political power who contributed to the perpetuation of these stereotypes of Andalusianness in the cinema of the 1940s and 1950s; José María Pemán wrote several scripts for productions which recycled stereotypical representations of

Andalusians, such as Brindis a Manolete [A Toast to Manolete] (1948), a biopic of a bullfighter, and Lola la piconera [Lola the Coalgirl] (1952) (Labanyi 2003: 12). These films can be read as a form of what Graham Huggan has dubbed ‘strategic exoticism’

(2001: xi), in that they deploy cultural symbols of Andalusia and entailed the deliberate performance of a stereotype of Andalusian cultural identity for profit.4

Despite their commercial dominance, the folklóricas emerging from state-sponsored production companies did experience some resistance to their ideological vision.

Juanita Reina herself set up Producciones Reina in order to produce Gloria Mairena

(1952), in which she starred—a move which scholars are convinced was made to gain some control over her films (Gómez Pérez 2013: 56). Despite the success of the film, the company faltered soon after its release, reinforcing the inhospitable environment that production companies in Spain faced under the regime.

A notable Andalusian filmmaker determined to evade working under the hegemonic industrial structures of the dictatorship was José Val del Omar. Recognised for his pioneering work in the artistic manipulation of film form, Val del Omar was influenced

4 The deployment of strategic exoticism in Andalusia has extended to ethnic identity, observed prior to the arrival of cinema in Spain. Drawing upon the work of Lou Charnon-Deutsch, Jo Labanyi concludes that members of the gitano community have capitalised upon the appeal of the primitivism of the gitano stereotype to wealthy travellers. As this stereotype has come to represent Andalusianness, the outcome of this process is ‘la equiparación de lo andaluz con lo marginal y primitivo’ [‘the equation of Andalusianness with the marginal and primitive’]. Subsequently, Andalusian stereotypes were strategically promoted as metonyms for Spanish culture in the foreign imaginary (2003: 10–11). 41 by the Parisian avant-garde, like Buñuel and Benito Perojo, other filmmakers of his generation (Gubern 1995, 'La neopercepción de Val del Omar', cited in Gómez Pérez

2013: 57). The 1950s was perhaps his most critically acclaimed period; during the decade he won numerous awards at film festivals around Europe for his short

'elementales' that would later become the Tríptico elemental de España [Elemental

Triptych of Spain] (1953-55) (Gómez Pérez 2013: 58). His work constituted a concerted effort to depart from the canonical Spanish cinema of the era (Utrera 2005: 194), and implies a strong opposition to the No-Do productions (ibid., p. 192).

Lucrative landscapes: Film sets and film schools under the Dictablanda

The 1960s bore witness to a dearth of filmmaking in Andalusia by Andalusian filmmakers; some critics have even referred to the few Andalusian films made during these years as ‘huérfanos’ [‘orphans’] in the creative history of Andalusian cinema

(Gómez Pérez 2013: 61). The time period was mostly given over to promoting

Andalusia as a filming location for European and North American companies, with the political apertura [opening up] and impotent economy creating favourable conditions for international crews to film in Spain (Utrera 2005: 96). In the many productions filmed in Almería during these years, Andalusia stood in for Egypt, Morocco, and the

American West, its chameleonlike function extended not merely to representing Spain but regions of the African and North American continents (ibid.). This time, however, it was not the Andalusian people and their customs that were distilled to form an emblem of national identity, but the landscape that was adopted as an interchangeable canvas for imagining an alien, mythologised land of cowboys and pharaohs. Observing the lucrative industry that this canvas promised, the state supported this initiative, classifying the area as a ‘zona de preferente localización industrial’ [‘area of priority

42 industrial location’] in official legislation in 1969 (Utrera 2005: 95).5 Spanish directors also participated in the model, continuing to use Andalusia as a backdrop onto which they projected their ideas.

While state legislation prioritised promoting Andalusia as a scenic location for primarily foreign filmmakers, a handful of Andalusian professionals were still attempting to direct, but found limited opportunities domestically. The dominant movements in the

Spanish film industry of the 1960s—the Nuevo Cine Español and the Escuela de

Barcelona—created a divisive climate that polarised film production into the realist proclivities of the pejoratively termed ‘cine oficial’ and the experimentation of the filmmakers who railed against it (Torreiro 2010: 321). The examples available in the literature suggest that Andalusian directors saw their efforts frustrated if their work did not meet the approval of either of the two schools. The experience of Francisco Elías, a pioneering filmmaker from Huelva who had made the first film with recorded sound in

Spain (Utrera 2005: 189), is testament to the politics of the film industry of the time.

Upon returning to Spain from self-imposed exile in Mexico in 1960, he found himself rejected by members of the industry for the pro-Falange views he had expounded when living abroad. Scholars have attributed his cessation of filmmaking to his ostracism from the sector (Sánchez Oliveira 2017).6 Rather than operate within one of the two camps,

José Val del Omar opted to shoot work in Spain but continued to promote his work internationally to find an industry more receptive to his films. Filmed in the Museo

5 The Almería film sets provided valuable employment opportunities for local people; over 8,000 Andalusians are reported to have found work as extras in the productions (Utrera 2005: 96). 6 Regardless of his political views, Elías’ contribution to cinema has been recognised both in later life and posthumously across Spain. He received a Mérito Civil from King Juan Carlos I and homage from the Catalan film industry in 1976, shortly before his death the following year. The Ayuntamiento of his home city of Huelva dedicated a street, Calle Cineasta Francisco Elías, to him in 1994 (Sa nchez Oliveira 2003: 16). 43

Nacional de Esculturas in Valladolid, his avant-garde production, Fuego en Castilla, was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961 (before the screening of Luis Buñuel’s

Viridiana), where it was awarded the Mention spéciale de la Commission Supérieure

Technique [Special Mention of the Technical High Commission] (Utrera 2005: 195).

Significant changes to the Francoist government in 1962 ushered in a new direction in the national film industry, which produced a sizeable shift in the hegemonic cinema of

Spain. García Escudero was appointed Director General de Cinematografía, and considered it necessary to overhaul the style of filmmaking that had previously been supported by state incentives. In the mind of García Escudero, the economic expansion concomitant with the influx of international tourists to the country necessitated closer political alignment with international neighbours (Torreiro 2010: 296–97). He introduced legislative measures to achieve his two-fold aim of an increasingly

Europeanised national cinema that was still subject to ideological censorship, such as the Normas de Censura Cinematográfica in 1963 (ibid., p. 302), alongside the Fondo de

Protección, which guaranteed 15% of the total gross profit of any Spanish production in its first five years of its commercial run, with additional funding to incentivise distribution at international festivals (ibid., pp. 305-306). In a move that highlights the recognition of the central role of subsidisation in determining the audience of films,

García Escudero also presided over a significant reduction in créditos sindicales, as he aimed to ensure that as many films as possible were depending upon complying with the criteria of the Fondo de Protección (ibid., p. 306).

The García Escudero years bore witness to the beginnings of the ‘academicism’ of cinema in Spain (Triana Toribio 2016: 6), which in turn provoked a rejection of the stereotypes of Andalusian customs previously favoured by the national cinema. The

44 opening of the Escuela Oficial de Cine in Madrid in November of 1962, and the generation of directors which constituted this Nuevo Cine Español, spurned the more commercial narratives of the folklóricas and genre films in favour of films which bore the influence of French New Wave directors through formal experimentation and realist modes of representation (Torreiro 2010: 309). Rather than attempting to subvert previous representations of life in Andalusia, the new films focused on breaking with the old Spanish cinematic tradition entirely.

Perhaps a further reason for the dearth of representation of Andalusia during the García

Escudero years is that the majority of the graduates of the EOC were from other areas of

Spain. However, one director, who has even been credited with catalysing the filmmaking tradition of the NCE (Torreiro 2010: 311), is Julio Diamante, who himself was born in Cádiz, before moving to Madrid during childhood. Diamante is not included here merely by birthright; over the course of his career, he has been repeatedly credited for his connections with film in Andalusia, having directed the Semana de Cine de Autor de Benalmádena from 1972 to 1989 (Gutiérrez Carbajo 2009: 76). He also received the

Premio José Val del Omar from the Junta de Andalucía in 2003 (Galán 2015),7 confirming his acceptance into the pantheon of pioneering Andalusian filmmakers. An

ASECAN award was named in his honour in 2013, to be given at the Alcances film festival in his home city (ASECAN Andalucía 2013), and at the 2017 edition of the event, he received the Premio ASECAN de Honor in recognition of his contributions to cinema.

7 The Premio José Val del Omar was created by the Junta de Andalucía in 1998, along with a range of other prizes named after eminent Andalusians in the arts. The Boletín Oficial del Estado declares that ‘se valorará especialmente la vinculación de los candidatos y de las obras y actuaciones a considerar con Andalucía o su Cultura’ [‘the connection of the candidates and the work and deeds under consideration with Andalusia or its culture will be especially valued’], therefore affirming that Diamante is considered to have made a significant contribution to Andalusian culture. See Consejería de Cultura de Andalucía (1998) for more information on these prizes. 45

Despite his connections with Andalusia, Diamante’s early films did not focus on the region, corroborating the argument that, whether for ideological or financial motivations, Andalusian contributions to cinema at this time were most marked by their alignment with more national aims.

Por un cine andaluz? Forming a film industry in post-Franco Andalusia

Following the demise of the dictator in 1975, film professionals in Andalusia began to stake their claim to shaping the regional film industry. As with other non-state nationalist groups, there emerged more vocal expressions of andalucismo in Andalusia that had for the most part lain dormant under the regime, including the public protest known as the Manifiesto andaluz on the 4th of December 1977, when more than a million citizens marched in Andalusian cities to demand autonomy (Junta de Andalucía [n.d.]). A recurring argument among the demands and actions of film professionals in Andalusia during this epoch concerned the need to achieve ‘authenticity’ through linking cinema with Andalusian identity—particularly, it can be inferred, in the sense that authentic

Andalusian cinema can only be made by Andalusians in Andalusia. One of the most notable statements of intent in this regard coalesced in the manifesto drawn up by a group of filmmakers at the third edition of the Festival de Cine Iberoamericano de

Huelva in 1977. Entitled ‘Por un cine andaluz’ [‘For an Andalusian cinema’], the declaration advocated the creation of ‘un auténtico cine andaluz’ [‘an authentic

Andalusian cinema’] (Gómez Pérez 2013: 66–67). This sense of the need to correct for past injustices continued to grow in urgency; at the Congreso de Cultura Andaluza in

1980—an event that would likely not have occurred with Franco in power— participants asserted the need for ‘un cine andaluz’ to oppose the vision of Andalusia created under Franco (Utrera 1996: 27, cited in Gómez Pérez 2013: 68). As a

46 consequence of these discussions, Andalusian nationalist sentiment became increasingly evident in cinema.

In order to fulfil the call for a truly Andalusian cinema, the Transition years witnessed a boom in the number of production companies based in the proto-comunidad autónoma—although these were chiefly based in the regional capital, Seville (Gómez

Pérez 2013: 69) and consequently dealt with topics focused in western Andalusia in the majority (Trenzado Romero 2000: 197). Scholars view this development as marking the start of a new ‘cine andaluz’ which declared the ‘autenticidad de su producción’

[‘authenticity of its production’], distancing itself from the stereotypes previously established in Spanish cultural production (ibid., p. 70). However, these emerging production companies struggled to compensate for the lack of film infrastructure, or trained film crews, based in Andalusia following the centralist legislation of the dictatorship, despite the intensive production of genre films in Almería (Delgado and

Utrera 1980: 55, cited in Gómez Pérez 2013: 69).

As such, the output of the fledgling democratic film industry was shaped by this combination of nascent production companies and a lack of trained domestic actors. In some notable cases, these conditions seemed to suit filmmakers’ objectives very well;

Gonzalo García Pelayo, one of the filmmakers whose work in Andalusia in this period is most reported, often intentionally worked with inexperienced actors and encouraged improvisation in his films in order to represent ‘la realidad andaluza’ [‘Andalusian reality’] (Trenzado Romero 2000: 201). The strong Andalusian accent of his protagonists was also groundbreaking for Spanish cinema at the time (Torres 1999:

338, cited in Gómez Pérez 2013: 80).

Despite being upheld as a figurehead for Andalusian filmmaking under democracy,

Gonzalo García Pelayo’s case also sheds light upon the divergent aims for this new

Andalusian cinema. Firstly, García Pelayo himself was born in Madrid, but raised in

Seville, yet is still classified by many as an Andalusian filmmaker—largely, it would appear, as a result of his films being set in Andalusia and intending to represent the reality of the region—thus raising questions as to the foundations of an Andalusian film industry as defined by critics and its members alike.8 Secondly, the context of the release of his first film, Manuela, is indicative of the divergent attitudes towards ‘cine andaluz’ of the era. In the contemporaneous climate, when non-state nationalisms and other regions of Spain were seeking to vindicate their distinct cultural identities,

Manuela was already anticipated as the inception of ‘cine andaluz’ before its release

(Delgado 1991: 54, cited in Gómez Pérez 2013: 72). This pre-emptive label led to the film being appraised by Andalusian critics according to preconceived notions of what this ‘cine andaluz’ should achieve, and split commentators according to their allegiance to the cause of forming an Andalusian cinema: the Andalusian press felt compelled to defend the film as ‘un producto patrio’ [‘an autochthonous product’], while the national press either overlooked it or was sharply critical (ibid.). When interviewed on the subject, García Pelayo has confirmed that he intended for the film to satisfy ‘la gente de la calle’ [‘the people on the street’], not what he viewed as ‘la estrechez ideológica del momento, que exigía que el himno de Andalucía fuera omnipresente’ [‘the ideological strictness of the time, which demanded that the hymn of Andalusia should be everywhere’] (Olid 2000). As such, he saw the film’s subsequent exaltation as a

8García Pelayo returned to his birthplace to study Dirección in the Escuela Oficial de Cine (Gómez Pérez 2013: 71), further illustrating the ongoing draw of the urban centres of Madrid and Barcelona for professional formation in film. 48 landmark of Andalusian film as a blessing and a curse, since it did not meet the expectations that many people had for this new autochthonous cinema (ibid.).

García Pelayo’s subsequent films of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Vivir en

Sevilla [Living in Seville] (1978) and Frente al mar [By the Sea] (1979), were recognised as moving away from stereotypes associated with Andalusia, instead showing the everyday reality of Andalusians (Gómez Pérez 2013: 78); in the words of Juan-Fabián

Delgado, these films exhibited ‘una visión claramente parcial pero válida en sus límites de una Sevilla que nada tiene de glorias hispalenses, giraldas y macarenas, y sí mucho de barriadas, droga, pasotas e indiferencia’ [‘a clearly partial but highly valid view of a

Seville that has no Hispanic glory, giraldas and macarenas, and which has much of run- down neighbourhoods, drugs, political apathy and indifference’] (1991: 56, cited in ibid.). Despite its evocative title, and perhaps more as a result of its themes, Vivir en

Sevilla had little commercial success, attracting only 10,814 viewers, leading scholars to ascribe it to a creative movement that was more underground than mainstream (Gómez

Pérez 2013: 78).

While García Pelayo’s filmmaking benefited from the increased political liberalisation and relaxed legislation to explore improvised depictions of Andalusia, other Andalusian films did connect more overtly with issues debated within the nationalist cause. Films such as Réquiem andaluz [Andalusian Requiem] (1977), Casas Viejas (1983) and Tierra de rastrojos [Fields of Stubble] (1979) represented Andalusia as a beleaguered, marginalised region that had been oppressed and exploited under the dictatorship, adding fuel to the fire of taking control of its cultural identity. As had been outlined in the manifesto in Huelva, the desire to denounce the exploitation of Andalusian culture, and to reclaim it through cinema, remained for some a central concern.

‘Una irregular política de mecenazgo’: Democracy and new legislation surrounding cinema in Andalusia

The arrival of democracy did have some positive influence on the incipient autonomous film industries, with the introduction of initiatives such as the I Congreso Democrático del Cine Español [First Democratic Congress of Spanish Cinema] aiming to recognise national and regional cinemas (ibid.), which took place in December of 1978 (Caparrós

Lera 1992: 30). Despite this apparent interest in establishing and supporting regional film industry models, however, funding was still scarce for local projects. Utrera cites the example of the majority of the films produced by Mino Films, one of the most recognised production companies in Andalusia in the Transición years. Set up at the inaugural Festival de Cine Iberoamericano de Huelva [Festival of Iberoamerican Film in

Huelva] in early December 1975, the company produced a number of feature-length films with ‘una temática donde los personajes, las ciudades y los problemas, en buena medida, estaban referidos a esta tierra’ [‘narratives in which the characters, cities and issues in large part referred to Andalusia’] (Utrera 2005: 75). Mino Films’ founding in the fledgling years of democracy appears to have been its downfall, with its focus on themes perhaps too progressive for the moment; Utrera notes that ‘la temática con reivindicación social no era la más adecuada para obtener la protección de la

Administración de la época, todavía con resabios franquistas en la incipiente democracia’ [‘the theme of social vindication was not the most ideal to win the protection of the administration of the era, which still harboured the aftertaste of

Francoism in the early democratic period’] (ibid.). Enrique Colmena corroborates this idea, noting that the work of Mino Films tended to centre on Andalusian protagonists

‘de izquierda’ [‘left-wing’] that the regime had battled to suppress (2000: 19). When financial backing was available, evidence of its contribution to the success of the

50 filmmakers of Andalusia mounted; in 1984, two years after Mino Films was forced to cease trading, a jury of members of cultural and film organisations formed to open a competition for scripts, with prizes awarded by the Dirección General de

Cinematografía de Andalucía [General Management of Andalusian Cinematography].

The result was thus:

Con ello, se daba la salida a una serie de realizadores y directores – algunos

con mucho prestigio en este campo – que gracias a la subvención oficial

pueden dar el primer paso en la consecución de un proyecto; guionistas de

ocho provincias comenzaron a beneficiarse de una política administrativa

cuyo objetivo era proteger los intentos de cinematografía autóctona

existentes. (Utrera 2005: 76)

With this move, the way was opened for a number of filmmakers and

directors – some of whom are now well-known in this field – who, thanks to

the official subsidisation, could take their first steps towards the completion

of a project; script-writers from eight provinces began to benefit from an

administrative policy that aimed to protect existing attempts at

autochthonous filmmaking.

As Utrera observes, this funding was ostensibly intended to grant the same opportunities to aspiring filmmakers from across Andalusia, not only to those in the largest cities of the region. Nonetheless, this format of offering support again raises questions as to which films were funded by this competition, and why they were selected to receive the scarce support offered by the Dirección General de

Cinematografía.

In a sense, this model often found filmmakers resorting to the same measures that, as this chapter has explained, had always existed in the history of the Andalusian film industry: finding a wealthy benefactor to fund their projects (Utrera 2005: 80). As a result of the scarcity of investment on the part of the autonomous government, short films continued to be made as a way of filmmakers exhibiting their ideas at a lower cost.

This relative abundance of Andalusian-made short films in the Transition era also led to the medium earning increased prestige, due to their relative success compared to feature-length films of the epoch (ibid., pp. 72, 76).

Another noticeable advance in the Andalusian film industry in the early democratic period is represented by the appearance of increasing numbers of local production houses. Some of these began to centre their business on producing short films, including

Mino Films, seeing the difficulty in gaining either recognition or financial support for longer productions. This trend occurred to such a degree that Utrera recognises the proliferation of short films as effectively compensating for the lack of feature-length films produced in Andalusia before 1990 (2005: 76). Nevertheless, a number of

Andalusian production companies did indeed opt to pursue the challenging task of producing feature-length films. In order to do this, filmmakers had to seize opportunities wherever they came from. The script-writer, producer and director,

Pancho Bautista, cited by Utrera as being a major pioneer in opening the doors to funding for Andalusian film, saw the importance of first and foremost establishing an industry before artists would be able to create the work they envisioned (Utrera 2005:

80). Bautista’s production companies, Triana Films and Proanci, produced his own film,

Se acabó el petróleo [Out of Gas] (1980), amongst others by other directors. Bautista also wrote the scripts for the early films of Gonzalo García Pelayo, whom Utrera credits

52 as being the founder of the concept of a ‘cine andaluz’ (ibid., p. 82). The films Manuela

(Gonzalo García Pelayo, 1975), La espuela [The Spur] (Roberto Fandiño, 1976) and

María, la santa [María, the Saint] (Roberto Fandiño, 1978), were all taken from ‘una literatura andaluza ya consagrada’ [‘already renowned literature’] (ibid., p. 81) written by Manuel Halcón, Manuel Barrios, and Fernando Macías, respectively, and were produced by Pelayo’s production companies, Galgo Films and Films Bandera. Despite

Bautista’s support for these projects, however, the production bodies failed to attract funding, leading to their description as ‘meteoritos fugaces que quisieron hacer posible la quimera de montar una industria cinematográfica andaluza’ [shooting stars that wanted to realise the impossible dream of establishing an Andalusian film industry]

(ibid., p. 82). Producciones Cinematográficas 29 might also be added to this list of

‘shooting stars’. The group is noted by Enrique Colmena (2000: 20–21) for their television work for CanalSur, which often paid homage to ‘toda una pléyade de personajes políticos, literarios, musicales, taurómacos, flamencos…, de primera línea de la Andalucía del siglo XX, con frecuencia ausentes hasta entonces del celuloide o las 625 líneas…’ [‘a distinguished group of figures from the worlds of politics, literature, music, bullfighting and flamenco…, pioneers of twentieth-century Andalusia, often absent from film or television reels…’]. The irony is that, while Colmena acknowledges the contribution these production houses made to the visibility of Andalusian culture, many of them have now disappeared from sight themselves.

As this section has evidenced, filmmaking in Transition-era Andalusia was precarious.

Perhaps as a result of the need to attract funding from the national Ministry of Culture, there was a noticeable trend across Spain for filming feature-length literary adaptations during the years leading up to 1990, which were favoured by the Ley Miró of 1983

(Gubern and others 1995: 421, cited in Jordan 2000: 183). Artimagen Producciones, founded in the early 1980s by Carlos J. Fraga and Pilar Távora, is an example of an

Andalusian production company which found success through a focus on the adaptation genre. Artimagen produced Távora’s 1983 adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s play

Bodas de sangre [Blood Wedding], entitled Nanas de espinas [Thorny Lullabies]. The cinematic version was itself an interpretation of a performance by the theatre group ‘La cuadra’, directed by Távora’s father, Salvador (Utrera 2005: 83). Artimagen went on to produce a number of feature-length films in the 1980s and 1990s, including another of

Távora’s works, Yerma (1998). Considered by the director to be her first personal work, the film was made entirely in Andalusia with a total budget of €251 million. The funds came from Spanish television channel TVE (€75 million for broadcasting rights) and an up-front payment for two broadcasts from CSTV, as well as some support from the

Consejería de Cultura of the Junta de Andalucía by way of the Centro Andaluz de Danza and the Consejería de Turismo, but the majority of the budget was provided by

Artimagen itself, some by way of a loan from the Banco Exterior de España paid off by the Ministry of Culture (Gómez and Navarrete 1999: 239). The film was linked with the centenary of the birth of Federico García Lorca in the same year as its release, which played a favourable role in its distribution (ibid.).

The years between the death of Franco and the last decade of the twentieth century saw significant changes in the field of cinematography that contributed to the portrayal of

Andalusia during this time. This period saw the proliferation of Super 8 film, a substrate that would make filmmaking much more flexible and accessible, due to the low cost and increased ease of processing and transporting it in comparison to 16-millimetre stock.9

9 A document explaining the applications of the Super 8 medium in the 1970s reads: ‘8-mm equipment is portable, unobtrusive and inexpensive. As a result, 8 mm puts fewer technical and 54

This accessibility was perhaps the catalyst for the formation of groups such as the Taller del Arte 7 and the Unión sevillana independiente de cineastas amateurs (USICA)

[Independent Union of Amateur Filmmakers of Seville] in Andalusia (Utrera 2005: 74).

These groups found a means to publicise their work in the form of the first Festival

Nacional de Cine Amateur in Seville in 1980. The distinctive aesthetic of film shot on

Super 8 therefore played a part in the depiction of Andalusia, contributing to the ways in which the region is now remembered and reflected upon through footage from this era. Indeed, the filmic medium impacting or even limiting the representation of

Andalusia can be observed in Utrera’s remark concerning the film Madre in Japan

(Francisco Perales, 1984): ‘la imposibilidad de un rodaje con <> privó de una más natural habla andaluza a tipos y personajes cotidianos’ [‘the impossibility of filming with ‘direct sound’ denied everyday characters the opportunity to have more natural Andalusian accents’] (2005: 84).

In the latter half of the 1980s and into the 1990s, the creation of regional television broadcasters led to the small screen becoming an important conduit for film from the newly ordained autonomous communities. Andalusia’s Canal Sur was launched on the

28th of February 1989—the Día de Andalucía—and Andalusian filmmakers increasingly targeted it as a platform for their productions, recognising the superior support that television received from local and national government (Gómez Pérez 2013: 135). As well as eventually being obliged to show films from their respective Autonomous

Communities, television broadcasters provided additional support to film through prizegiving. Adopting the academic model established by the creation of the Academia

financial obstacles between film-maker and reality than do 16-mm or 35-mm film. Compared to these formats, 8 mm produces relatively low-definition, unglamorous images, which are suited more to documenting than to dressing up reality. In essence, 8 mm is a reality-based medium’ (Gunter 1976: 17). 55 de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas in 1987, Radio y Televisión de Andalucía

(RTVA) launched its ‘Premios de comunicación audiovisual’ [‘Prizes for Audiovisual

Media’] in 1995, both aiding the consolidation of the image of an Andalusian audiovisual industry as reputable in its own right and cementing its own prestige as an awarding body.

Shifting policies at regional, national and global levels came to bear on the Andalusian film industry in the 1990s. Market forces collided in 1993, when the worldwide General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ended, triggering protectionist measures for European national cinemas in the face of a perceived increased threat of the overwhelming competition of US productions (Gómez Pérez 2013: 136). At the same time, the onset of an economic crisis precipitated cutbacks to funding for autonomous film. Measures to combat these obstacles were launched Europe-wide in 1995, in the form of the MEDIA and Eurimages programmes to encourage European co-productions and distribution across the continent (ibid., pp. 136–37). The Spanish government saw a means of using co-productions to bolster its national film industry, forming the IBERMEDIA alliance with South American industries to encourage collaboration (ibid., p. 137). Television broadcasters became recognised by Spanish producers as increasingly important for financing films in this decade, and in the wake of the GATT negotiations, they lobbied the Minister for Culture to protect the film industry. The resultant decree—that films would be funded with profits from television channels—was implemented in 1999

(Triana Toribio 2016: 127).

In the wake of these changes, the Junta de Andalucía launched its own initiatives to support its film industry, which had been encouraged by the declaration of autonomy in the previous decade. Support included legislation comprising ‘medidas de apoyo’

[‘support measures’] for Andalusian film and audiovisual production (Consejería de

Cultura de Andalucía 2016), and the creation of the Andalucía Film Commission in 1998.

Co-financed by Diputaciones and Provincias across the length and breadth of Andalusia, the initiative intended to encourage international production companies to film on location in Andalusia, taking advantage of its varied landscapes and historical architecture. Besides strengthening the region’s connections with cinema and subsequently increasing attractiveness to tourists, the scheme benefited the local film industry by occasionally leading to collaboration with Andalusian producers (Gómez

Pérez 2013: 117).

As the above legislative measures indicate, the decentralisation of political power in

Spain led to the growth of peripheral film industries outside the consolidated production centres of Madrid and Barcelona. The increased professional networks and funding sources to support regional development in turn meant that Andalusian film professionals found themselves with more opportunities to stay and work in the autonomous community (Gómez Pérez 2013: 117). Reaping the rewards of efforts to professionalise the Andalusian film industry, 1994 saw the graduation of the first cohort of students from the Facultad de Ciencias de la Información de Sevilla, sending a generation of technically proficient and enthusiastic filmmakers into the Andalusian workforce (Gómez Pérez 2013: 137) who would latterly be recognised as the

Generación CinExin (de la Torre Espinosa 2016). Among these graduates were Santiago

Amodeo and Alberto Rodríguez, whose work would make increasing strides in the spheres of local, national and international cinema over the next two decades.

Production companies that emerged in Andalusia during the 1990s also enjoyed much greater longevity than those which were established during the early Transition years,

57 which seems in large part due to the wealth of opportunities for co-productions. For example, Antonio P. Pérez’ Seville-based Maestranza Films, one of the longest-running

Andalusian production companies, found its feet via co-productions with French companies, including DMVB Films (Contra el viento [Against the Wind], Francisco

Periñán, 1990) and Canal Plus France (Belmonte, Juan Sebastián Bollaín, 1995) (Gómez

Pérez 2013: 118). The films that Maestranza Films produced and co-produced at the end of the decade would represent its greatest critical and commercial successes to date, which included Sevillian director Benito Zambrano’s debut feature film, Solas

(1999) and the co-production of Mateo Gil’s Nadie conoce a nadie [Nobody Knows

Anyone] alongside DMVB Films in the same year.

The films that benefited from the legislation introduced in the 1990s diversified the repertoire of Andalusian productions and their representations of Andalusia in the new millennium. In part because of the support for international collaborations fostered by national and European policies, along with the increased talent pool and funding streams within Andalusia, productions like those of Maestranza Films took a more commercial, aesthetically polished direction. Andalusian films branched out into genres such as drama (Solas), thrillers (Nadie), documentary (Polígono Sur (El arte de las Tres

Mil) [Seville, Southside], directed by French filmmaker Dominique Abel, 2001), and comedy (Atún y chocolate [Tuna and Chocolate], Pablo Carbonell, 2004), all of which contributed to reframing Andalusia in increasingly nuanced ways for a modern, mass audience. Importantly, these films represented Andalusia as a much more diverse, multifaceted territory than their predecessors had done, approaching social issues such as rural to urban migration, placing marginalised communities at the centre of their narratives, and troubling the conventional modes of representation of Andalusian

58 traditions through stereotypes. A particular indication of this trajectory of Andalusian self-representation came in 2007, when Maestranza Films and Green Moon, the production company launched by Málaga-born actor Antonio Banderas, agreed to co- produce one film in Andalusia every year (Gómez Pérez 2013: 120). In this context, when the Andalusian film industry appeared at last to be finding its feet, discussions began regarding the ratification of a law to defend Spanish cinema and the national audiovisual industry as a whole: a ‘Ley del Cine’.

1.2. The Ley del Cine and its implications for Andalusia

On the 30th of December, 2007, the first version of the Ley del Cine became law in Spain.

The prologue by King Juan Carlos I recognised the law’s objectives as being to ensure that adequate financial support was provided to the Spanish film industry as an integral aspect of the ‘patrimonio cultural’ [‘cultural heritage’] of Spain (BOE 2007). Crucially, the law’s understanding of Spain’s cultural heritage recognised Spain as a cluster of comunidades autónomas [autonomous communities], and thus advocated the support of

‘defensa y promoción de la identidad y la diversidad culturales’ [‘defense and promotion of cultural identity and diversity’] (ibid., Capítulo I, Artículo 1). More specifically, the law declared that this support would take the form of financial aid distributed by the renamed Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA), which would henceforth be endowed with the powers of a government agency, and obliged television operators to invest 5% of their annual budget in fiction films (Gómez Pérez

2013: 116). An important aspect of the allocation of funding would be the conscious consideration of the economic circumstances, and indeed imbalances, between both the

59 diverse autonomous communities in the country and the different sectors of the cinema industry, including production, distribution and exhibition.

Perhaps because of its implication of so many sectors, the proposed new legislation had met with strong reactions from the Spanish film industry during its development. Pedro

Pérez, the then president of the Federación de Asociaciones de Productores

Audiovisuales de España [Federation of Associations of Audiovisual Producers in Spain]

(FAPAE), viewed it as a significant step by the Ministerio de Cultura towards creating

‘un cine fuerte e independiente’ [‘a strong and independent cinema’] (García 2006), but numerous others who would be involved in this strengthened national industry took issue with the policy. Producers lamented the omission of tax breaks for productions—a demand that they had upheld for some time (ibid.)—and actors and exhibitors staged protests against measures which they felt neglected the potential impact on their professions (Gutiérrez 2007). Directors launched critiques of a more political nature;

Jaime Rosales, who would go on to defy predictions at the Goyas in 2008, was among over 60 signatories of the ‘Cineastas contra la enmienda’ [‘Filmmakers against the amendment’] manifesto, which disputed the line in the draft Ley changing the terms of recognition of a production as Spanish from the director being a Spanish national to 75 per cent of the creative team being Spaniards (Belinchón 2007). In Rosales’ view, the amendment was an insidious threat to cultural exception, with the potential outcome that ‘todo largometraje rodado en España será español’ [‘every feature film shot in

Spain will be Spanish’] (ibid.). The Ley also caused friction between the Catalan parliament and the national PSOE government. The CiU, ERC and IU-Iniciativa per

Catalunya had submitted a series of amendments to the Ley in 2007, arguing that it overrode the powers of the Statute of Catalonia; the dispute was eventually resolved by

60 the creation of ringfenced funding for films made in Spain’s co-official languages, to be fulfilled in equal measure by state funds and the autonomous community in question, and managed by the autonomous government (García 2007).

Since its approval in 2007, the Ley del Cine has continued to receive criticism for its failure to address some of the concerns of professionals within and outside the Spanish film industry, namely its insufficient attention to issues of gender imbalance in the associated professions. In particular, critics have highlighted that, although it was only the second Spanish law to include the word ‘género’ [gender] without the law focusing solely on women, the legislation could not be considered ‘una norma con perspectiva de género’ [‘a law with a gender perspective’] (Pardo Rubio 2010: 24). Pilar Pardo Rubio lamented the imprecision of the law, suggesting that these initiatives to support gender equality may only be applied to feature-length films, as they are the focus of the legislation. As we shall see in the case of Andalusia, the desire to promote gender equality in filmmaking has grown in prominence since the introduction of the Ley del

Cine. The issue has become increasingly public, and turbulent, in the wider cultural context; in December 2018, the far-right political party Vox won seats in the Andalusian parliament, notably following a campaign that declared their opposition to so-called

‘ideología de género’ [‘gender ideology’] (Martín-Arroyo 2019). The elected members withheld their support for the historic instatement of the Partido Popular and

Ciudadanos in the Parlamento de Andalucía, demanding that the pact should not contain any support for causes working to eradicate violence against women. Their declaration sparked mass protests on the 15th of January 2019 across Andalusia, with solidarity marches taking place in other autonomous communities and cities across Europe (El

País 2019).

It is crucial to note that since Juan Fabián Delgado’s statement in the 1990s, the recognition of such an entity as an Andalusian film industry existing in its own right has been gaining traction. An increasing number of (albeit short-lived) industry-focused publications such as CineAndCine and dedicated academic research (Gómez Pérez 2013; de la Torre Espinosa 2016) have emerged to document this trajectory. This evolving body of literature reflects the optimism around the rising recognition of an Andalusian film industry; a case in point is an article written by Javier Paisano, director of ASECAN, entitled ‘Cine andaluz: el futuro es nuestro’ [‘Andalusian cinema: the future is ours’]

(2017). Adding evidence to the argument that the Andalusian film industry is becoming increasingly ‘academised’ as a means of formalising its existence, these publications point to a desire to declare and crystallise an identity for the Andalusian film industry that sets it apart from, or distinguishes it within, the national cinematic landscape. This process to some degree echoes the manoeuvres of the film industries in the Basque

Country and Galicia, where the film industries, particularly with regard to independent film, have endeavoured to establish themselves as understood separately from the national panorama (Colmeiro and Gabilondo 2013: 84–85).

The proliferation of professional bodies established during this time has also served to consolidate the industry, and in 2016, in a pivotal symbolic assertion of the existence of an Andalusian film industry, these groups collaborated with the Junta de Andalucía to create a Ley del Cine specifically catering to the region. Approved by the Junta on the

29th of January 2016, the legislation echoed many of the aims of the national Ley del

Cine project: to support cinema and the wider audiovisual industry as a strategic cultural and economic sector, able to contribute to the development of the area in which related activities take place, as well as to strengthen cultural identity, intercultural

62 relations, and the connection between citizens and culture (Consejería de Cultura de

Andalucía 2016). Beyond these common goals, the Andalusian Ley del Cine stated its desire to leverage the potential of cinema to boost the tourism sector, an economic area of particular importance in the region, reflected in the work of the Andalucía Film

Commission. As will be shown in the next chapter, the primarily economic and cultural focus of the Ley del Cine de Andalucía appears quite different from those of the Catalan

Llei del Cinema, declared in 2010, which prioritised promoting films made and screened in the Catalan language as an alternative marker of cultural identity.

Beyond legislative action, the galvanisation of professionals to forge a sense of identity for the Andalusian film industry is also evidenced by the arrival of a number of initiatives, which also indicate the key agents in driving the dominant identity of

Andalusian cinema. A case in point was the Laboratorio Andaluz de Cine, held in Seville on the 6th of October 2016. The day comprised talks by Carlos Rosado, the president of the Spain Film Commission and the Andalucía Film Commission; Gervasio Iglesias, the producer of such films by La Zanfoña Producciones as Grupo 7 and 7 Virgenes; Marta

Velasco, of Áralan Films, who presented a talk on Patricia Ferreira’s award-winning film

Els nens salvatges; and Juan Antonio Bermúdez, vicepresident of ASECAN. The programme of talks suggests a focus on high-grossing films and the secrets of winning prestigious prizes; as previously noted, La Zanfoña Producciones is the home of now well-recognised Sevillian director Alberto Rodríguez, whose 2014 feature film La isla mínima scooped a record number of 10 Goyas in its year of release, and who received the Junta de Andalucía’s award of ‘Hijo Predilecto’ the following year. The initiative also appears heavily supported and largely coordinated by influential individuals from within the Andalusian film industry. As an example, alongside his role as vicepresident

63 of ASECAN, Juan Antonio Bermúdez is currently responsible for programming the

‘Panorama Andaluz’ section of the Festival de Cine Europeo de Sevilla, one of the festivals to be analysed in this thesis. As someone involved in both the writing and programming of films in one of the most internationally visible festivals in Andalusia,

Bermúdez therefore would appear to hold considerable sway over the messages conveyed in Andalusian film.

Notably, the panel of speakers for the event exemplified the complaints of inequality of many in the film industry, with Marta Velasco being the only female industry representative present. Such a schedule does not seem to reflect the issues facing

Andalusian cinema in 2016; given that the round-table in which Velasco took part alongside three male peers was entitled ‘Hacer cine en Andalucía’, it raises the question as to how many different experiences of the filmmaking process in the region were truly being explored and made visible.

1.3. Who decides? The role of industry bodies in Andalusia

As the panel at the Laboratorio Andaluz de Cine demonstrated, one of the difficulties of writing about the Andalusian film industry is the fact that the term implicates a large number of different partners. As such, this section will indicate the structure of the industry by discussing several of its key players, selected for their active and visible presence at film festivals in Andalusia. The discussion will centre on their roles in shaping and promoting the activities of film professionals in Andalusia, with the understanding that their efforts contribute to shaping representations of Andalusia.

Similarly, the section will highlight core actions and initiatives that indicate the

64 priorities of these agents in representing the autonomous community both back to itself and on a larger scale.

In the democratic era of the twentieth century, as in several other autonomous communities, public television has played an integral role in supporting the Andalusian audiovisual industry. The regional television broadcaster, RTVA, plays a significant part in determining which films made in Andalusia or elsewhere make it into homes across the autonomous community, and has long been a crucial source of funding for

Andalusian cinema. Several directors of RTVA have acknowledged the network’s role in representing Andalusia to its audiences. At the time when the national Ley del Cine was being finalised, director Rafael Camacho Ordóñez evoked the Statute of Autonomy in pledging RTVA’s commitment to ‘el fomento del desarrollo audiovisual y hacerlo, interpretamos, logrando un equilibrio aceptable entre el empleo de nuestros recursos en la producción propia interna y los aprovisionamientos externos’ [‘the promotion of audiovisual development, and to do so, as we understand it, by achieving an acceptable balance between using our resources for internal production and external provisions’]

(2007: 11). His successor, Pablo Carrasco García, affirmed the influential position of

RTVA in reinforcing notions of Andalusian identity (2010: 9). A notable means in which the network does this is by awarding the annual Premio RTVA a la Creación Audiovisual at the Seville International Film Festival. The award has been referred to as a ‘sello de calidad’ [‘stamp of quality’] (RTVA 2007: 141), in a nod to the academicism of the sector referenced previously.

Motivated by the strategic importance of the audiovisual sector for the Andalusian community, in economic and social terms, in 1995 RTVA established the Fundación

AVA, a not-for-profit organisation. The strong connections between the two

65 organisations is evident in the fact that Carrasco García assumed the presidency of the foundation while serving as director of RTVA (Carrasco García 2010: 9). The Fundación

AVA aims to continue to strengthen networks across the Andalusian audiovisual industry, which it does by publishing a database of contact details of film professionals working across Andalusia.

Beyond public bodies supported by the Junta de Andalucía such as those mentioned above, a series of consortia established by film professionals have consolidated in the

Andalusian industry, some of which reach back to the era of democratic transition.

These organisations often award their own prizes, in a manoeuvre that potentially reflects the competing intentions of the public television broadcasters, which typically control the finances, and the filmmakers themselves. Of note is the Asociación de

Escritoras y Escritores Cinematográficos de Andalucía [‘the Association of Film

Writers—using feminine and masculine descriptors—of Andalusia’], known as ASECAN.

Founded in 1982, the association was the first of its kind in Spain, to be followed by equivalent bodies in Catalonia and Madrid (ASECAN 2004). Its aims appear similar to those of the Fundación AVA, in terms of promoting ‘the diffusion and reflection on audiovisual art in general and that made in Andalusia in particular, as well as promoting audiovisual culture and the distinct forms that connect it to writing’ (ibid., my translation), but ASECAN implements these aims in different ways. In particular, the group coordinates meetings and conferences for film professionals, and has, since 1983, awarded the Premios ASECAN, in which its members vote for the most outstanding work of the year from the Andalusian audiovisual sector. Demonstrating the links between the bodies mentioned here, in 2002 ASECAN awarded a prize to the Andalucía

Film Commission (AFC), established by RTVA, for its services to the distribution of

Andalusian film (Gómez Pérez 2013: 88).

In recent years, a number of studies have drawn attention to the imbalanced gender representation in the Andalusian film industry (Guarinos 1999; Pérez Rodríguez 2010;

Becerra 2013). In an attempt to propel forward the move to gender parity, professional organisations have formed with a focus on making women filmmakers more visible.

Andalusia has its own association dedicated to promoting the work of female film professionals: AAMMA, the Asociación Andaluza de Mujeres de los Medios

Audiovisuales [Andalusian Association of Women in Audiovisual Media]. The group acts primarily as a professional body for industry workers to join, enabling them to network, share experiences and campaign for change to existing structures. Since its formation,

AAMMA has pushed to make visible the work of women in the Andalusian film industry, working across the length and breadth of the region. One of the key ways in which the organisation has resolved to do this is through attendance at the vast majority of film festivals in Andalusia.

The Andalusian film industry also benefits from a delegation of the Asociación de

Mujeres Cineastas y de Medios Audiovisuales [Association of Female Filmmakers and

Audiovisual Professionals] (CIMA), which has been active in the Spanish film industry since 2006. The Andalusian branch, fronted by the dubbing actor Julia Oliva, was established in 2015. Soledad Pérez Rodríguez has written of CIMA as being a beacon of hope for gender equality in Andalusian film (2010: 32). As Duncan Wheeler has suggested, these female-led organisations would seem to indicate a change in strategy from what he deems the ‘post-feminist’ stances of several Spanish filmmakers, who had

67 previously resisted being categorised in terms of their gender (2016: 1059), as is also indicated by other scholars in the Fundación AVA report (Pérez de Guzmán 2010: 186).

The actions of these industrial bodies, whether bottom-up organisations formed by professionals or top-down initiatives introduced by publicly funded departments, merit study in terms of how they are shaping the organisation of the film industry in

Andalusia, and the impact that these initiatives have on dominant representations of the autonomous community. An initial reflection would be that the existence of these many professional associations points to a desire to increase the visibility of such an entity as a cine andaluz. The intentions and actions of the Fundación AVA and ASECAN point towards the intent to further professionalise and grow the sector in order to support it in becoming nationally and internationally recognised and competitive (in particular, honouring the work of the AFC in this area indicates such a desire). Further actions, such as the creation of the magazine CineAndCine in 2013, although shortlived (only three issues of the publication were produced before it was discontinued), demonstrated the optimism in the sector, perhaps triggered by the attention lavished upon sevillano Alberto Rodríguez’ La isla mínima, which had triumphed at the Goyas that year.

A key illustration of the role of these industrial bodies in shaping an idea of a cine andaluz is their active involvement in the development of the Ley del Cine de Andalucía, the green paper of which was approved in January 2016 (Audiovisual 451 2016). The law was a landmark initiative for the Andalusian film industry, and echoed the laws introduced in other autonomous communities, despite prioritising different areas such as progress towards gender equality in the filmmaking professions (alternatively, the primarily linguistic focus of the Llei del Cinema introduced in Catalonia in 2010 is

68 discussed in Chapter Two). The legislation declared a number of ambitious objectives for the Andalusian film industry, including incentivising filming in Andalusia, increasing the active presence of female film professionals, and establishing a new, dedicated source of funding known as the Cartera de Recursos Económicos para la Cinematografía y la Producción Audiovisual (Audiovisual 451 2016). The Ley was finalised with the input of a large number of professional bodies in Andalusia, including AAMMA, CIMA,

ASECAN and the Andalucía Film Commission. Crucially, enshrining these goals in law indicates recognition that the audiovisual industry in Andalusia is a powerful force in addressing inequalities in Andalusian society, and suggests that the Andalusian film industry is making its own efforts to pluralise representations of Andalusia.

It should be emphasised at this stage in the argument that the (re)conceptualisation of a cine andaluz via these initiatives points towards a desire to form a canon of Andalusian works, which by extension would represent the cinema of the autonomous community to itself and to other audiences. Of course, the formation of this canon is not so straightforward. It is also noteworthy that, while these awarding bodies and publications have been quick to embrace all contemporary production based in

Andalusia as cine andaluz, not all filmmakers welcome the implications of this label

(including Rodríguez himself, as noted in the introduction). The labels of the past hang heavy over their heads, meaning that even alternative labels cast an uninvited shadow.

Similarly, the actions of bodies such as AAMMA and CIMA to celebrate the work of female filmmakers indicate the dissatisfaction of many filmmakers with the canon, seeing its representation of the community as falling short. While this thesis recognises the endemic problems of setting out to study ‘Andalusian cinema’, or ‘cinema from

Andalusia’, its aim is to observe and analyse the diverse and perhaps discordant

69 methods of producing and curating a cine andaluz. A highly valuable means of conducting this observation is through the study of film festivals and their contribution to the forging of a canon, as is recognised by scholars in the growing field of film festival studies (Iordanova 2009, 2015; Chan 2011), yet this approach thus far remains relatively overlooked in studies of cinemas in Spain. The next section contributes to this area of research by situating two case studies within the landscape of film festivals in

Andalusia.

1.4. Film festivals in Andalusia

As the activities of AAMMA outlined in the previous section indicate, film festivals are gaining increasing recognition as an important platform from which to address and perhaps renegotiate forms of cultural identity. Andalusia has a history of these events that dates back almost 50 years at the time of writing. The first film festival in

Andalusia, the Festival de Cine de Autor de Benalmádena, was inaugurated in the province of Málaga in 1969, while the country was still under the dictatorship (Marín

Montín and Jiménez Pedrosa 2011: 519). At this pre-democratic stage, critics note that the community was already fighting for recognition for those marginal cinemas as yet overlooked by other events:

Este Festival ha sido, quizás, el más problemático a nivel nacional a lo largo

de toda su historia, y es que ha sido el primer festival que ha luchado de

forma constante por promocionar el cine marginado de todo el mundo (ibid.,

p. 520).

[This Festival was, perhaps, the most problematic at a national level

throughout its entire history, as it was the first festival that fought constantly

to promote marginalised cinemas from all over the world].

The festival’s iconoclastic reputation has been attributed, amongst other factors, to the event director Julio Diamante’s penchant for programming films made by little-known auteurs or that had fallen foul of censorship in their home nation (Utrera 1996: 18), such as the work of the iconoclastic Japanese director Nagisa Oshima and Rainer

Werner Fassbinder of the Federal Republic of Germany. The festival was also, as is perhaps evident, vocal about its anti-Franco stance (ibid.). After almost fifteen years, the

Festival de Cine de Autor eventually fell foul of funding reallocations introduced by the new democratic government in 1983, who advocated ‘una nueva política de festivales’

[‘a new politics of festivals’] (ibid.). The responsibility fell to the Ayuntamiento and the

Diputación de Málaga to plug the funding gap, but critics argue that the event was irrevocably changed from this point on, due to the divergent opinions of Diamante and the funders regarding what a festival should be (ibid.).

The Festival de Cine de Autor in Benalmádena presents a significant consideration for how festivals are to be understood in this thesis. As the trajectory of Diamante’s event demonstrates, to a certain extent, festival directors must bear in mind the preferences

(and perhaps political stances) of those in charge of the finances. Such a consideration appears, on the surface, to limit the possibilities of what a film festival can be, at least when funded by local authorities. As continuing to run a festival appears to dictate, key stakeholders must be borne in mind when considering what the ‘branding’ of the event will be. Given that, like Stringer’s investigation, this thesis also understands and focuses on ‘the festival as a particular kind of external agency that creates meaning around film

71 texts’ (2013: 62), those in charge of the organisation of the festival hold considerable influence over the ways in which these film texts are read, understood and used by audiences.

Although the event in Benalmádena is often declared to have been the first film festival in the region, the Alcances Muestra Cinematográfica del Atlántico [Alcances Atlantic

Film Showcase] was scheduled to begin in Cádiz the year before, in 1968, but was shut down at the eleventh hour by government authorities. Fearing that the event would never run again if its inaugural edition faced charges under the Public Order Act, the director and creator of the festival, Fernando Quiñones, urged frustrated cinephiles to abandon their protest (Miranda 2008: 15). The following year the event was reprised, and its early editions ran for a week, eventually increasing its running time to an entire month of cinema screenings in 1975 (Utrera 1996: 18).

The number of events relating to cinema in Andalusia began to multiply across the different provinces into the 1970s and 1980s, although they did not always appear in the guise of a ‘festival’. After the festivals in Benalmádena and Cádiz were established, what is now the Huelva Festival de Cine Iberoamericano [Huelva Festival of

Iberoamerican Film] began as a ‘semana de cine’ [‘week of film’] in 1975, and it would be defined as such until its fourth edition (ibid.). Utrera notes that the festival very much reflected the personality of its director and creator, José Luis Ruiz: a person with a love for cinema, with business and executive experience and skills in diplomacy (1996:

18). The festival reflected a view of cinema as ‘“industria”, “arte”, “cultura” y

“espectáculo”’ (ibid.), demonstrating a model perhaps less averse to a commercial approach than that employed by Julio Diamante at Benalmádena.

Events in Seville followed, with the Festival Internacional de Cine in 1980 (Utrera 1996:

19). With a separate section allocated for Andalusian films, this particular incarnation of the festival only lasted for four editions. Rafael Utrera attributes the event’s short life to various factors, not least the actions of the successive UCD and PSOE governments

(ibid.). Utrera’s writing about this ephemeral festival evokes the connection between place and cinema that these events help to create: he writes of the desire of Andalusian cinephiles to ‘ver a su ciudad convertida en capital del séptimo arte’ [‘see their city turned into a capital of the seventh art’] and evokes the footsteps of filmmakers like

Preminger and Bertolucci as they moved ‘su autoridad cinematográfica por las calles y cines sevillanos’ [their cinematographic authority through the streets and cinemas of

Seville] (ibid.). The glamour and celebrity invoked here recall Harbord’s statement concerning film festivals that ‘[e]ach city or town hosting the event is required to invent theatre’ (2013: 130).

Another festival was eventually established in Seville in 2001: the Festival de Sevilla,

Cine y Deporte, organised by the Fundación Andalucía Olímpica. This event was to experience numerous metamorphoses in its first decade of existence: in 2004, the festival dropped its specialism in sport, opting for the more generic title of the Festival

Internacional de Cine de Sevilla (Joly 2008). In this form, the event ran two parallel competition sections: one for feature-length films and another for short documentaries on sports (thus retaining an element of its previous niche) (ibid.). In 2008, the festival underwent its latest transformation to its current form, the Festival de Cine Europeo de

Sevilla.

The festivals selected for analysis here combine some of the longest-running and most recently established events in the Andalusian film festival calendar. Crucially, all of the

73 festivals include a section specifically advertised as showcasing Andalusian cinema.

These festivals can therefore be read as purporting to represent Andalusian film alongside collections of other work. This analysis will consider the reasoning behind the films selected, in order to determine the articulations of Andalusian identity that these texts convey. Alongside, the festivals themselves will be considered as events which make use of their host locations in strategic ways, branding Andalusian cities to local and international cinema audiences as an additional element of showcasing Andalusian identity.

Alcances Festival de Cine Documental, Cádiz

The first film festival taken as a case study in this investigation is the Alcances Festival de Cine Documental, which takes place in Cádiz for a week in September every year. It was the first film festival to be established in Andalusia, as previously described, and the fourth oldest in Spain (Osuna García 2016). The event began as a festival of fiction film, and enjoyed considerable fame as such. However, owing to the proliferation of festivals in Spain in the 1980s and 1990s and dwindling audience numbers, the decision was made in 2006 to select the specialism of documentary film in order to carve a more salient niche in a crowded market (ibid.). Having experienced sizeable cuts to the funding, the reimagined Alcances struggled to find its feet; the festival director at the time of this study, Fernando Osuna García, sensed that the audience had difficulty accepting the different direction the festival had taken, suggesting that nostalgia existed for its previous form (ibid.).

The founding festival director, Fernando Quiñones, stated repeatedly in his essays on

Alcances that the event was firmly intended for gaditanos, the people of Cádiz (1999).

As such, the city as place has played a pivotal role in the conception of the event, and in its development as a project for the local community. This sentiment of the festival as a local project was reinforced in the opening gala of the 2016 edition, which featured a screening of gaditano Antonio Labajo’s 2015 documentary, A la sombra de Moret [In the

Shadow of Moret]. The film recounts the demise of Los Pabellones, a much-loved local bar in central Cádiz, and the stories told by its members. The film was exhibited in the

Gran Teatro Falla, the significance of which, and of the other festival venues, is discussed below.

As well as the role that Cádiz plays in staging Alcances for local audiences, Osuna García

(2016) believes that hosting the festival in Cádiz is a major contributor to the success of the event at a national and international level. Reflecting a sense of local pride and the desire to showcase Cádiz to visitors, the city is included in the film festival programme via guided tours and the use of venues that display its cultural heritage. This programming decision positions the city as a part of the attraction and identity of the festival, supporting the assertion that film festivals plan their staging in accordance with the desirability of the location (Elsaesser 2005: 84). The almost daily arrivals and departures of (mostly European) tourists disembarking from cruise ships add to the sense of the city as a performed, transient experience, much like the Carnaval that graces the city with nocturnal street performances every year, and the Alcances festival itself.

The festival occupies three principal venues for its variety of events: the Centro Integral de la Mujer, the city’s centre for gender equality, serves as the festival hub. Besides the benefit of its location in Plaza Palillero, one of the city’s most central squares, selecting the Centro Integral de la Mujer as the meeting point for the festival activities suggests

75 the event’s support for the aforementioned efforts to promote gender equality being prioritised by the Andalusian administration. The ground floor becomes a point of encounter between audience and staff, where the administrative team and press officers work, members of the public purchase tickets for screenings and volunteers meet for their daily briefing. This approachable image is something that Osuna García stressed: the event aims to be accessible to all, and does not feature an exclusive red-carpet welcome for directors or other more famous faces for precisely this reason. Instead, a red carpet is placed outside for each member of the audience to tread upon their arrival at the more glamorous venue of the Gran Teatro Falla, where the inaugural and closing galas are held. Moreover, members of the public are invited to attend daily ‘desayunos con realizadores’ [‘breakfasts with filmmakers’], to discuss the making of the films screened at the festival with their creative teams.

As well as making use of the Centro Integral de la Mujer for registration, workshops and debates, Alcances is hosted by other venues which evoke the cultural heritage of Cádiz.

The eleventh edition of Alcances in its documentary form was both inaugurated and concluded with ceremonies in the Gran Teatro Falla, an iconic theatre in the historic centre of Cádiz.10 The theatre recalls Cádiz’ pedigree in the performing arts; the annual

Carnaval, in which groups of singers (chirigotas) fill the streets with a cappella renditions of satirical songs, is part of the city’s heritage and a significant draw for tourists. The selection of the Madrid-based comedy troupe named the Chirigóticas to compère the event represented a further nod to the Carnaval.

With its connotations of high culture, the choice of the Gran Teatro Falla to stage the opening ceremony is in somewhat stark contrast to the location of the screenings: the

10 In a move that further celebrated the city’s cultural heritage, the name of the building was updated in 1926 to honour the work of the Cádiz-born composer Manuel de Falla. 76 local multiplex, named Multicines Al-Andalus. It is interesting to note, however, the invocation of Andalusian heritage that the buildings share. The name of the multiplex invokes the much-mythologised Muslim kingdom of Al-Andalus, and by extension an era of Iberian history when much of the peninsula was under Moorish rule, as does the architectural style of the Gran Teatro Falla. The imagery and naming of these locations thus situate the local identity of Cádiz within an imaginary of a broader Andalusian heritage.

The marketing and publicity strategy in the run-up to the festival serves as an indicator of its intended audience. While making use of social media to publicise the festival’s live events, Alcances is predominantly advertised to the local Cádiz population. This emphasis is seen in the number of large-scale billboards and posters positioned on the side of the Centro Integral de la Mujer itself (which overlooks a square that joins several of the major commercial streets in Cádiz centre, thus making it a prime location for footfall) and on bus stops around the city. The festival’s eye-catching emblem for

2016—an anthropomorphised fish, designed by gaditana artist Rosa Olea—again foregrounded the artistry of the local population, and was displayed by many retailers around the city centre.

The programmed sections in the 2016 edition of Alcances represented the festival as a nexus of local, regional, national and international contexts. As stated previously, the screening of A la sombra de Moret in the opening ceremony served to produce connections between the gaditanos/as in the audience and the places that are emblematic to the local community. The programme information about the film reinforced this sense of foregrounding the local as a threatened entity, concluding that

‘[l]a globalización, una vez más, se acabará cobrando sus víctimas’ [‘globalisation will,

77 once again, end up claiming its victims’] (Alcances Festival de Cine Documental 2016:

4). Similarly, the inclusion of a section entitled Cádiz produce [‘Cádiz produces’] highlighted the role of the film festival as a platform from which to reflect the community back to itself, cementing social bonds of belonging.

Beyond the presence of the local in Alcances’ programming, other sections reflected the desire to promote and advocate for a cine andaluz. Of particular note was the section entitled Panorama andaluz, which made its début in the 2016 edition of the festival.

Tellingly, the programme described the section as intending to provide a dedicated space ‘para los documentales andaluces, más allá de su participación en otras secciones’

[‘for Andalusian documentaries, beyond their participation in other sections’] (2016:

20). This description denotes an understanding of Andalusian film as both representative of the autonomous community, and as filmmaking that fits within broader spheres that reach beyond the specificity of a label such as ‘Andalusian film’ (as implied in the festival’s name, which can be roughly translated as ‘reaches’). The themes emerging from films taken from this section, and their diverse representations of

Andalusian heritage, will be analysed more closely in Chapter Three of this thesis.

The overview of the Panorama andaluz also demonstrated how the relationship between a film festival and the awarding bodies of the film industry can at once be at the level of the autonomous community, the nation, and on an international scale. This relationship exhibits a symbiotic quality, in that, just as film festivals benefit from these award structures in order to legitimise the quality of their content, they also assure the cultural capital of the awarding bodies, consolidating them as authorities in their field by their prizes serving as markers of prestige and taste. As an example, the description of the Panorama andaluz highlighted its inclusion of the winners of the 2016 ASECAN

78 prizes for Best Short Documentary Film and Best Documentary Feature Film (Alcances

Festival de Cine Documental 2016: 20), thus contributing to the developing academicism of the Andalusian film industry.

While the 2016 Alcances programme encourages a favourable view of local, Cádiz-based filmmaking and the film industry in the wider Andalusian community, its programme of what it labels ‘national’ filmmaking prompts a more interrogative approach to the concept of the Spanish nation-state. This perspective is most salient in the section entitled Una cierta idea de España [A Certain Idea of Spain], which comprises a collection of documentaries from the last fifty years that centre upon forms of social protest in

Spain. The section featured films such as Pere Portabella’s Informe general [General

Information] (1976), made during the transition to democracy, and El largo viaje hacia la ira [The Long Journey to Rage] (Llorenç Soler, 1969).11 The section juxtaposed these archival works with recent films, such as Mi querida España [My Beloved Spain]

(Mercedes Moncada, 2015) and No estamos solos [We are Not Alone] (Pere Joan Ventura,

2015), as a means of showing the ongoing relevance of social protest and continuing debates in Spanish society, asking the question, ‘¿[r]ealmente hemos evolucionado tanto como sociedad?’ [‘have we really evolved that much as a society?’] (Alcances Festival de

Cine Documental 2016: 15). Notably, the description of Mi querida España as including interviews ‘a los que estaban excluidos de la versión imperante en el país’ [‘with those who were excluded from the dominant narrative in the country’] (ibid., p. 16) reflects the intentions for the festival to open a dialogue around the dominant discourse in

Spain (a cause to which, as discussed previously, the event is no stranger). Both the

11 El largo viaje hacia la ira is an extended version of an earlier production by Soler, Será tu tierra [This will be your Land] (1966), which was redacted by the authorities for its denunciation of the living conditions of Andalusian migrants in the suburbs of Barcelona (Soler 2011: 118, cited in Piñol Lloret 2016: 79). 79 narratives of these productions and their presence at the festival seem to encourage critical citizenship (Balibrea 2017: 3) and an invitation to query the dominant national discourse.

This advocation of critical citizenship is similarly reinforced by the focus of the 2016

‘homage’ section, a traditional feature at Alcances. Lluís Miñarro, a veteran Catalan film producer and director, is described as a ‘factor fundamental en el desarrollo del cine de autor no solo en España, sino a nivel internacional’ (Alcances Festival de Cine

Documental 2016: 28). Miñarro has often been categorised as an avant-garde filmmaker on the margins of the approved canon (Losilla 2016: 41–42; Triana Toribio 2016: 10), and has been openly critical of the Goyas and the Spanish Academia, declaring that the awards are used by the latter to ‘reinforce what is popular, what supports the industry by endorsing the financial investment that was made’ (2011: 63, cited and translated in

Triana Toribio 2016: 11). In celebrating the extra-hegemonic works of Miñarro, this programming decision therefore distances Alcances from the Academia, highlighting its regard for cinema that operates outside the established national canon.

Miñarro’s transnational profile also serves the outlook of Alcances. The retrospective showcases a number of his works that were made outside of Spain, which connect with other sections that exhibit the work of international directors. These sections often draw upon themes that align with contemporary debates in Spain; for instance, the 40 años de ausencia [40 Years of Absence] section gathers together films that broach the subject of the Argentinian dictatorship, a topic highly relevant to debates taking place around the role of cinema in the recuperation of historical memory in democratic

Spanish society. The festival programme also discusses the special screening of the work of Peruvian filmmaker Fernando Vílchez, who is also a member of the Alcances

80 jury, and highlights his successes at the Berlinale Film Festival as a mark of his recognition at prestigious international events. Drawing attention to these credentials appears intended to endow the festival with a transnational perspective that reaches beyond a mere celebration of the filmmaking of its home nation, autonomous community, or city; by extension, the programme seems designed to connect the local, regional, and national production that it showcases with a transnational perspective.

The Seville European Film Festival (SEFF)

Registering a record number of over 70,000 attendees in 2016 (Sevilla Actualidad

2016), the Seville European Film Festival merits some attention to shed light on the inner workings of the festival circuit in the region. The festival takes place annually in the capital city of Andalusia, with its aim to attract filmmakers, professionals and cinemagoers from all over Europe made plain in its name. Only adopting its current guise in 2008, the festival explicitly staked its claim to a European identity at a time when the continent (not least the Spanish state) was sliding into economic crisis. Its claim to such a character renders the festival significant in developing an understanding of what a European identity might signify to the festival programmers, and what it therefore indicates to the viewing public about what it means to be European and, perhaps, from Seville, all at the same time (and thus holds some sway in declaring a conjoined Sevillian and European identity possible).

Having openly situated itself in Europe ideologically, the festival’s geographical location also bears relation to its self-conscious identity. Seville is the urban and commercial hub of Andalusia, with a large university and student population. Often marketed by the local Ayuntamiento on the strengths of its architectural heritage, with historic sites like

81 the Giralda cathedral and the Alcázar palace gardens featuring heavily in images of the city, the postcard pictures of Seville at times seem to clash with the experience of visiting the place itself—visions of the past and present collide, as air-conditioned electric trams glide through historic squares. SEFF certainly appears to trade more on the forward-looking appeal of a youthful, cosmopolitan city. Its 2016 branding featured a postmodern pastiche of illustrations by Mariajosé Gallardo, a graduate of the city’s

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de Santa Isabel de Hungría, a darkly eclectic collage of portraits that bore minimal relation to the representations of the iconic buildings with which tourists are familiar.

Figure 1: Artwork for SEFF 2016 by Mariajosé Gallardo

The 2016 design marks a contrast with previous years; perhaps the most notable was the 2012 programme design, featuring a female flamenco dancer in a red traje, posing in front of the Giralda. The artwork was unveiled on a Sevillian rooftop overlooking the cathedral, in an interesting metarepresentation of the city.

Figure 2: SEFF director José Luis Cienfuegos unveils the 2012 programme artwork in front of the Giralda. Image: ABC Sevilla

Such a loaded history of self-representation indicates the importance of what Elsaesser

(2005: 85) has deemed ‘city-branding’ for the city of Seville when opening itself up to international events. The city has an extensive history of hosting vast public events, such as the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and the Seville Expo of 1992, openly placing itself in the international public eye following the Spanish transition to democracy. It seems, then, that the regional authorities understand only too well the economic benefits (and pitfalls) of these large-scale events for the city and its local, regional and international fame. Indeed, Elsaesser (2005: 85) expands on the benefits of these events with reference to the concept of ‘cultural clustering’, whereby companies seek ‘culture-rich environments’ for their head offices in order to attract retain young professionals who aspire to live in culturally dynamic environments. This strategy is evident in cities across Europe, particularly those with well-attended universities that produce a supply of graduates to feed the local economy (if only the city can convince them to stay). The result, Elsaesser concludes, is a ‘programmed’ city: one where there are events to attract these demographics and keep them entertained. Film festivals are a particularly appealing option, as they cost relatively little to run, attract both local and

83 external visitors, and help ‘develop an infrastructure of sociability as well as facilities appreciated by the so-called “creative class” that function all the year round’ (2005: 86).

As Chapter Two will also discuss in relation to the ‘branding’ of Barcelona, festivals thus form part of the cultural fabric of the city, appealing to citizens as active participants in creating its cultural and social capital. Moreover, they help to position the city as a nucleus for creative encounters, adding to the opportunities for establishing and strengthening professional networks and, ultimately, forging an industrial identity.

Evidence of Seville as a ‘programmed’ city abounds at the contemporary incarnation of

SEFF. Temporary decals adorned the steps leading to the Nervión Plaza multiplex, where the majority of the festival’s screenings took place, giving visitors the sense that the city temporarily embodied the film festival, endowing it with a material reality, so that their experience was completely framed by the meaning of the European Film

Festival. Similarly, the branded subsidised bus passes that SEFF offered to accredited festivalgoers lent the sense of participating in the festival even in the act of travelling through the city to attend its events in various venues, adding to the impression of the festival as a ‘time-event’, as Janet Harbord (2013) describes them. Indeed, the pervasiveness of SEFF’s 2016 marketing strategies around the city of Seville certainly bore testament to the transformative demands of contemporary film festival events, recalling Harbord’s reference to the theatricality that host cities must create (ibid., p.

130). In the case of Seville, temporary adornments to public spaces repeatedly recall to festivalgoers and the general public that their experience of the city is programmed and programmable, a display to direct how they view and interact with their urban surroundings.

Figure 3: SEFF branding on the steps leading up to the Nervión Plaza multiplex

Harbord (2013: 130) cites the ‘liveness’ of events like film festivals as being part of their appeal, in that they promise ‘a performance witnessed but not reproducible’. She goes on to explain that this irreproducibility is further underscored by the traditional means of reporting on festivals: journals and reports of the day’s events, to echo André Bazin’s diary of a festival insider, would be (and typically are still) published after the fact.

Contemporary technologies have called into question the irrevocability of this temporal disconnect between the event and its being reported. It is now commonplace for festivals to use social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to document the day’s events as they happen via text, images and video footage, thus almost eradicating the delay in the journalistic process. A particularly notable instance in which this recording of events is strictly prohibited, however, is in the auditorium itself. Thus, in a strange reworking of Harbord’s theory, the very spontaneity or contingency of festivals has almost in itself become repeatable, archiveable, play- backable, while the screenings of the films themselves now come to represent the ‘live event’ (2013: 132).

SEFF capitalised upon the inimitability of ‘liveness’ in a number of ways, of which a stand-out instance was the screening of La voz en lucha [The Voice in Protest] (Miguel A.

Carmona and Jorge Molino, 2016). Shown at the Teatro Lope de Vega, the film documented an incident forty years earlier, when a scheduled concert by Manuel

Gerena at the same venue was cancelled at the last minute by the authorities. In his frustration, and not wishing to disappoint the audience, Gerena performed on the steps outside the theatre using a megaphone. At the end of the screening, Gerena appeared unannounced on the theatre stage, and performed a one-off show that night. The privileging of ‘liveness’ in this instance created a sense of exclusivity around the event, both uniting its audience in their shared experience and ensured that those who had been unable to secure a ticket would be limited to learning of the performance via the festival’s various communication channels.

This chapter has observed that, in the early cinematic period, representations of

Andalusia by Andalusians were few and far between, and were commonly influenced by the ideas and interest of private investors. For Spanish filmmakers, and latterly some

Andalusian film professionals, the commercial appeal of stereotypes and the deployment of the ‘strategic exoticism’ of people and place generally eclipsed the desire to represent more ‘realistic’ daily life in Andalusia, at least in hegemonic cinema. A lack of legislation around early productions led to commercial trends taking precedence, furthering the predominance of popular stereotypes of Andalusia. The dearth of funding and, for many, adverse political and cultural circumstances led Andalusian filmmakers such as José Val del Omar and Francisco Elías to work abroad. With the dominance of the political regime over the national film industry, stereotypes proved too useful for

‘managing contradiction’ of diverse cultural identities within Spain to accommodate

86 alternative representations; even production houses established in Andalusia in the

1950s have in hindsight been found to have been peddling bourgeois stereotypes of

Andalusia for financial gain, even when initially claiming to intend otherwise.

The increased focus on promoting Andalusia as a film set for external producers in the

1960s, chiefly for commercial benefits and tourism, indicated the priorities of the regime and shows a perhaps intentional disregard for the issues around Andalusia’s lack of self-representation. Dominance of the Nuevo Cine Español and the Escola de

Barcelona further restricted the styles of filmmaking accepted into the industrially promoted ‘canons’ of the era, limiting the representations of Andalusia that found fruition.

Under García Escudero, the roles of legislative support for a film industry, particularly regarding funding, became apparent. The Fondo de Protección played a significant part in determining the kind of films that were made and distributed. The funding broke with the former traditions of film made in Spain, revealing the ability of funding allocations to shape movements in cinema and legitimise chosen forms of representation. Nonetheless, the galvanisation of Andalusian filmmakers during the

Transition demonstrates the space that can still be created for peripheral movements.

However, without financial support or adequate resources, these movements struggled to consolidate themselves. It was only with the intervention of the Junta de Andalucía in the late 1990s that the Andalusian film industry became more clearly defined.

Within this context, the final section of the chapter has analysed two film festivals in

Andalusia in terms of their articulations of interconnected identities. The structural decisions made at these editions of SEFF and Alcances both intersect with regional policies such as the Ley del Cine de Andalucía and evolving industrial networks to

87 create a picture of the contemporary directions of and priorities envisaged for diverse understandings of the Andalusian film industry. Having observed the Ley del Cine de

Andalucía as the consolidation of an industry in its own right, and parsing the creation of professional networks as an indication of broadening perspectives into nuances previously scarce among the sporadic film productions in Andalusia, this chapter has observed how these two events are navigating the intersections between local, regional, national and transnational identities. Local identities are affirmed by film texts that speak to places at the heart of the community, a theme particularly emphasised in the case of Alcances. At SEFF, places were reclaimed through live events alongside film, as in the case of Manuel Gerena’s performance in the Teatro Lope de Vega. The regional emerges in the advocacy for Andalusian film, placing it both within its own exceptional cultural context and within wider debates around European identity. The national is present in latent references to films’ nationalities, but plays a more secondary role, at

Alcances more than at SEFF. Lastly, the spaces of intercultural dialogue created by these events, between films and their creators, embeds connections between local communities and transnational networks. In Chapter Three, analyses of films screened at these events are situated within these structural formations in order to determine what these texts reveal about understandings of screening Andalusian identity. First, a separate case study of the industrial contexts in a different autonomous community is presented: that of Catalonia.

Chapter 2. Identity on screen: which Catalonias are visible?

Existing scholarship has covered the history of Catalan cinema in depth (Hopewell

1986; Porter i Moix 1992; Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 1998; Romaguera 2005;

Comas 2010; Epps 2012; Rodríguez Granell 2016). As such, this chapter does not aim to reiterate these statements; rather, it intends to view this history through the lens of the various policies at national and, eventually, regional and international levels that influenced the course of Catalan filmmaking since its inception, in order to demonstrate the consequences of this legislation for the aesthetic and narrative priorities of Catalan cinema through the decades. After all, scholars have noted that

‘cinema in Catalonia as in Spain as a whole has been subject to a vertiginous series of politically and ideologically motivated interventions, protections, stimuli, cuts, quotas, norms, and normalizing, normativizing projects’ (Epps 2012: 74). Ultimately, it is argued that negotiating these regulations has, over the decades, formulated a certain ‘official’ Catalan cinematic identity, and has subsequently provoked the emergence of counter-canonical cinemas, which can be viewed as no less Catalan, in reaction to it.

In recent years, Catalan cinema has been described as a local cinema ‘thinking and filming globally’ (Martí-Olivella 2011: 188). This description is consistent with the notion of the ‘glocal’, which identifies locality as an intrinsic aspect of globalisation and which highlights its ‘heterogenising’ properties (Robertson 2012: 191).

Burkhard Pohl and Jörg Türschmann have applied the term to cinema, defining glocal cinema as ‘el producto de la relación entre estrategias cinematográficas hegemónicas en expansión, y las (re-)construcciones de lo local, regional y nacional,

por parte tanto de los mismos actores globales, como de los actores locales,

regionales y nacionales, en competencia por la supremacía económica y cultural’

[‘the product of the relationship between expanding hegemonic cinema strategies

and (re-)constructions of the local, regional and national, as much on the part of the

same global actors as of local, regional and national actors, in competition for

economic and cultural supremacy’] (2007: 19). Indeed, the scholars observe that in

the case of Spain, the assertion of the local in the face of Hollywood cinema has been

more propelled by institutions than by directors (ibid.).12 The involvement of

Catalan institutions in the articulation of a certain Catalan identity is one of the

topics discussed in this chapter.

In Catalan cinema, one of the principal ways in which the local is most clearly made

visible (or audible) is through the decision to film—or to screen films—in the

Catalan language. As we shall see, this aspect of local identity is indeed favoured by

Catalan institutions, which have attempted to legislate in support of films being

made and screened in Catalan. However, a number of films by Catalan directors are

conspicuously not made in Catalan—a notable example being a number of films by

Isabel Coixet.13 For Jaume Martí-Olivella, this breed of Catalan cinema’s international

appeal itself rests on ‘its capacity to recreate Catalan culture’s own in-between and

transnational location’ (2011: 203).

This understanding of a Catalan cinema that references its own liminality in order to

position itself globally implies an inherent and intricate tension. Does Catalan

12 Nuria Triana Toribio’s categorisation of ‘neo-vulgar films’, in which the national of Spain is asserted with disregard for its transnational legibility (2003: 154–55), proposes an exception to this rule. 13 For a detailed exploration of the implications of Coixet’s decisions to film in English, see Triana Toribio (2017). 90 cinema’s ability to speak to a global audience depend entirely on its showcasing and dissecting of its own fragmented identity? For it to exist, must the concept of a

Catalan cinematic identity always already be contested? Within Barry Jordan’s understanding of transnational filmmaking as inevitably contingent upon and inflected by the national, he affirms that ‘[i]n this context, the “nation” is nowadays already dispersed, decentered, fragmented, networked, repopulated, and seriously contested, from within and without’ (2015: xviii–xix). It is within this context of symbiotic contingencies of global and local forces that the fragments of Catalan identity distinguished here will be situated.

The vehicle and arena for this glocal perspective has primarily been Barcelona. It has been observed that, particularly since the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, the city has effectively become a metonym for Catalonia itself in the collective cultural imaginary

(Martí-Olivella 2011: 189). Barcelona has come to symbolise Catalonia to a global audience, although it has been argued that international visitors are often encouraged by local authorities to overlook its Catalan status in favour of viewing it as a Spanish city (Deleyto and López 2012: 160). The essentialised ‘Spanishness’ of

Barcelona informs the tourist experience, as is evident from the flamenco performances, colourful paella on offer along the Rambla and Spanish spoken by the staff in its hospitality businesses. This image is translated onto the screen in such films as Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008), starring ‘una Barcelona que, representada mediante sus lugares más característicos, esos que la identifican para una mirada extranjera, deviene en el marco donde se desarrollan las vivencias de unos personajes de paso’ [‘a Barcelona which, represented by its most emblematic places—those which identify it for a foreign gaze—constitutes the backdrop for the

91 experiences of characters who are passing through to unfold’] (Poyato and Luque

2014: 44). The city as ‘escaparate cultural’ [‘cultural window display’] (ibid., p. 33) that Allen presents disavows its Catalan identity, in part through the complete absence of the Catalan language (Deleyto and López 2012: 164–65). It is this touristic aspect of Barcelona that conceivably feeds into Martí-Olivella’s characterisation of the city as a ‘ciutat de pas’ [‘crossroads’] (2011: 188), a meeting point of innumerable cultures and peoples, not least of Spanish and Catalan cultural symbols. Alternatively, Barcelona as a meeting point of cultures has been understood more optimistically in Pedro Almodóvar’s Todo sobre mi madre [All

About My Mother] (1999), which, Samuel Amago has argued, presents ‘a postnational conception of community belonging that transcends the purely national — be it

Catalan or Castilian’ (2007: 17).

At the same time, the contemporary cinematic image of Barcelona is contested, at least by numerous films by Catalan directors, as at once mainstream and underground, as commercialised yet anti-capitalist. Since the mid-twentieth century, directors from Catalonia have drawn upon realist modes of filmmaking to capture the city’s marginalised spaces and individuals as a response to the image of

Barcelona promoted under Francoism (Poyato and Luque 2014: 40). The works of filmmakers such as Ventura Pons and Cesc Gay have sought to go beyond the cinematic image of Barcelona rendered for consumption by audiences under the dictatorship, aiming to represent the idiosyncracies of the city and its characters

(Losilla 2016: 29–31). Conversely, it has been argued that filmmakers like José Luis

Guerin, and subsequently Mercedes Álvarez and Isaki Lacuesta, approach representing Barcelona from an aesthetic perspective that aims to document

uncertainties by refusing to delineate divisions between subjectivities and radical

alterities (ibid., pp. 32–33). Depictions of the spaces of Barcelona attest to a struggle

for dominance between institutional representations and lived experiences of the

city, resulting in ‘a contested space, caught up in conflicting discourses that interlink

cultural identity and power’ (Wilson 2014: 205).

Such is the cultural and discursive baggage of Barcelona that, while some local

directors such as Ventura Pons have attempted to reinscribe the city with the gaze of

an auteur, others have opted to work outside of the city, or often internationally

(Martí-Olivella 2011: 190; Losilla 2016: 29) (although other factors, such as funding

opportunities and more established film industries, may also have influenced the

decision to work abroad). Isabel Coixet has spoken of the freedom that she derives

from making films ‘fuera de tu barrio, de tu país’ [‘beyond your neighbourhood, your

country’], and the escape from everyday life that such projects provide (Donapetry

2017: 471). The international work of directors, such as the aforementioned

filmography of Coixet and a number of films by José Luis Guerín, respectively, adds

weight to the view that contemporary cinema made by Catalan filmmakers espouses

a glocal perspective that resists conforming to the assumed markers of Catalan

identity.14

As such, just as Catalonia is not merely Barcelona, Catalan cinema is not limited to

films that are made in the capital. Like the films discussed above, the corpus of films

selected in this thesis use diverse locations to construct narratives that can be

decoded as delineating and interrogating catalanitat. As will be discussed in Chapter

14 Indeed, Coixet has expressed her resistance to any label of nationality at all, identifying her films as an expression of herself above their identification with a particular language or country (EFE 2003, cited in Maurer Queipo 2007: 261). 93

Four, recent Catalan films screened at festivals have adopted the Costa Brava as their subject matter, or have turned to international debates between states such as

Spain and Morocco to locate their argument. As other scholars have observed of recent films set in Barcelona (Rodríguez Granell 2016: 23), the at times iconoclastic narratives of these films locate them in a counter-canonical space that confronts the underpinnings of official representations of Catalan identity. The themes expounded by these films shed light on the complex ways in which conflicting approaches to

Catalan identities are situated locally, within Spain, and on the international stage.

Beyond location giving Catalan cinema a fingerprint that transcends national borders, the use of language in Catalan film has long been a significant (but often contentious) marker of catalanitat. Decisions to foreground the Catalan language in film have often originated from the administration rather than filmmakers, who have often expressed disdain for policies that treat cinema as a tool for linguistic normalisation projects rather than as an art form (Comas 2010: 28). The controversial Llei del Cinema legislation introduced in 2010 was lambasted by the actor Eduard Fernández as ‘no una llei del cine sinó una llei lingüística’ [‘not a film law but a linguistic law’] (Comas 2010: 29). Many directors opt to produce their films in a regional language, yet distribute their films widely at international film festivals and in independent cinemas across continents, constructing a glocal perspective through this strategic positioning of local features within textual themes with universal appeal. This proposition of the cosmopolitanism of Catalan cinema is strengthened by the ‘polyglossia’ of films that have emerged since the Olympic regeneration of areas of Barcelona, such as Joaquim Jordà’s Mones com la Becky

[Monkeys like Becky] (1999) (Martí-Olivella 2011: 195), which combines four

languages in a single feature. This trait is especially common to contemporary

documentaries, where the encounter of multiple languages, and within them a

variety of accents, often reflects the lived reality of metropolitan centres such as

Barcelona, or the transnational issues that they confront, as is the case with José Luis

Guerín’s 2001 documentary, En construcción [Under Construction] (Loxham 2014:

166). Indeed, many Catalan directors have opted to shoot their films entirely in

languages other than Catalan, a decision that runs counter to the administrative

support for Catalan-language productions, whether intended in this way or not.

While the language or languages in which these films are made ultimately inflects

the representation of a Catalan identity that these texts transmit, this chapter aims

to recognise that the industrial and commercial contexts at play also influence the

decision to film in a given language or languages (or, indeed, with minimal language

at all), and that it is the resultant tension between these considerations that shapes

the representations of Catalan identity that can be read from these texts.

2.1. ‘Entre un cinema català amb visibilitat i un altre que no la té’: Previous legislation and its impact on representations of Catalonia

Early efforts to shape cinema through legislation in Spain and Catalonia

From the era of the introduction of film into Spanish society, legislation has played a role in mediating the cinematic texts that were able to reach mass audiences.

Consequently, this legislation profoundly shaped and conditioned the cultural imaginaries available to early cinemagoers. Initially, such regulations were concerned with protecting the morality of Spanish citizens from the alleged potential of the filmic medium to corrupt and mislead; with this aim in mind, the Royal Decree of 1912 and the

95 subsequent ‘Reglamento de Espectáculos’ introduced by the Civil Governor in Barcelona in 1913 sought to censor productions of the era (Martínez Bretón 1993: 112). Despite these restrictions, scholars have noted that during this incipient period of cinema in

Spain, ‘the community that is presenting most images to itself is Catalonia’ (Triana

Toribio 2003: 18). The rulings were met with responses from a number of creative figures from Catalonia over the next two decades, who worked to vindicate the medium’s function as an art form. The luminaries adopted different strategies to achieve their aim; where some like Sebastià Gasch and Lluís Montanyà advocated the avant-garde approach of their co-signatories of the Manifest Groc, playwrights like

Adrià Gual adapted celebrated Spanish-language texts for the screen (Epps 2012: 59).

Aside from having to respond to the restrictions that censorship imposed on early film, the question of profit also created a convoluted situation for filmmakers (and industrial bodies) to navigate. As Brad Epps (2012: 60) notes, the potential to make a healthy surplus on a film not only acted to dissuade the censors, but also positioned the film in a multinational market that exceeded the boundaries of both long-standing nation-state apparatuses like Spain and the non-state nation of Catalonia. Other industrialised countries had participated in and contributed technology and skills to film within Spain since the arrival of cinema in the territory, and this phenomenon only extended during the First World War when Catalans working in exile began to contribute to the industry of their homeland (ibid.). Thus, Catalan cinema in particular has long been marked as an international effort, which has shaped the very identity of the industry and its productions.

1930s and 1940s: Catalan cinema under the Francoist dictatorship

The arrival of the Francoist dictatorship bore witness to tightening censorship within cinema on the peninsula. Not only were productions expected to toe the line in terms of their narrative content, but they also faced increasing competition from multinational productions (Epps 2012: 54). Under the Francoist regime, or for much longer, as some critics claim, ‘Catalans could be articulated as good patriots and good Catholics only in

Castilian Spanish and only, of course, within the parameters of the Spanish state’ (ibid., p. 53). Nonetheless, despite the repression of sub-state nationalities under the dictatorship, Catalan filmmakers found ways to ensure that evidence of a Catalan cultural identity endured. Epps (2012: 50) references the work of Catalan director

Ignacio F. Iquino, who punctuated his 1948 film El tambor del Bruch [The Drummer of

Bruch] with ‘echoes and traces’ of Catalan identity, the call of ‘visca la independencia’

[‘long live independence’] and the backdrop of the iconic Montserrat mountain providing reference to the language and land of Catalonia respectively. Despite these allusions to Catalan cultural identity, Iquino’s decision to operate within the parameters of the sanctioned narratives led to him being accused of currying favour with the regime; indeed, so deftly did the director navigate the requirements of the censors that he was awarded the designations of Interés Nacional [National Interest] and Interés

Especial [Special Interest] for El tambor del Bruch and another of his films, El Judas

[Judas] (1952) (Epps 2012: 54). The director’s strategy saw him praised and lambasted in equal measure for fostering a ‘business-like attitude in an otherwise beleaguered

Spanish film industry’ (ibid.), indicating the degree to which filmmakers’ creative options have often been curbed by the industrial conditions of their time.

Negotiating labels: The Dictablanda and the Escola de Barcelona

In the middle years of the dictatorship, an event would occur in the Spanish film industry that would provoke a decisive bifurcation in attitudes to filmmaking on the peninsula, and which would induce a particularly noteworthy response from Catalan filmmakers. Held in 1955, the Conversaciones Cinematográficas, or the Conversaciones de Salamanca, constituted what has been referred to as ‘la toma de conciencia colectiva’

[‘the raising of collective awareness’] with regard to cinema in Spain (Aragüez Rubio

2005: 122). The first of its kind in the Spanish film industry, the meeting brought together delegates from the political left as well as from the regime (ibid.). The outcomes of the conference were several; in terms of filmmaking, it was determined that Spanish cinema should ‘engage with Spanish “reality”’, partly in line with the pan-

European quest to promote a counterpoint to the fantastical, big-budget inventions of

Hollywood (Triana Toribio 2003: 156). The conference also aimed to further the professionalisation of filmmakers through the Instituto de Investigaciones y

Experiencias Cinematográficas (IIEC) (Aragüez Rubio 2005: 123), the legacy of which can be observed in the proliferation of film schools and degree courses in cinematography, as will be discussed later in this chapter.

In the years following the Conversaciones de Salamanca, filmmakers working under the regime adopted divergent strategies. Some opted to operate inside the parameters of the dictatorship and attempted to profit from its rewards, as was the case with directors such as Carlos Saura and Luis García Berlanga, both of whom were present in

Salamanca; alternatively, some filmmakers aimed to ignore these restrictions altogether and manufacture an independently-funded film industry (Galt 2006: 2). During this time, a new generation of filmmakers graduated from the IIEC in Madrid (known from

1962 as the Escuela Oficial de Cine), who would collectively become recognised as the

Nuevo Cine Español. The rise of this ‘critical, neo-realist-driven’ wave of filmmakers provoked a counterpoint in Catalonia, in the form of the group of filmmakers that would be dubbed the Escola de Barcelona (Epps 2012: 69).15 Declaring itself more concerned with aesthetics than addressing social issues, the Escola received criticism from those who believed in mobilising the cinema to challenge the ‘bourgeois reform on display in the Conversaciones Cinematográficas (Cinematic Conversations) associated with the

New Spanish Cinema and held in 1955 in Salamanca, a city that many Catalans came to identify with Spanish centralism almost as much as Madrid’ (ibid.). Interestingly, while the Escola de Barcelona is professed to have been a reaction against the NCE, Román

Gubern asserts the hypocrisy inherent in the bourgeois connections of the Escola, which mirror the views that many held of its counterpart in the Spanish capital (cited in Epps

2012: 69).

Yet, as other scholars have argued, the films of the Escola de Barcelona can be read as a rejection not only of the work of the Escuela de Madrid, but also of categorisation altogether. For Rosalind Galt, the productions that emerged from the group exemplify this resistance: ‘[l]acking continuity over time, consistent deployment of experimental forms, and any direct engagement with Spanish or Catalan national politics, these films

[…] are structured by a refusal to cohere around signification’ (2007: 196). Directors themselves eschewed labels that would identify their work with nationalist discourse; indeed, the Escola did not consist solely of Catalan directors. One filmmaker commonly

15 The producer and scriptwriter Ricardo Muñoz Suay coined the term in Fotogramas magazine in 1967. Casimiro Torreiro considers the label a strategic move by Muñoz Suay to connote the international acclaim enjoyed by the ‘Escuela de Nueva York’ [‘New York School’], as well as a targeted grab at funding that García Escudero was offering to graduates of the Escuela de Madrid (2010: 322). The literature refers to both the Escuela de Barcelona (in Spanish) and the Escola de Barcelona (Catalan); the Catalan term is used in this study. For more on the Escola de Barcelona, see Riambau and Torreiro (1993). 99 aligned with the collective, José María Nunes of Portugal, openly declared, ‘I make

Barcelona cinema, not Catalan cinema’ (Riambau and Torreiro 1999: 155, cited and translated in Galt 2007: 197). Thus, as its filmmakers positioned their identities on a sub- or supranational level, evading engagement with Catalan nationalism, ‘the School’s avant gardism demanded both a local and an international identity, a doubled structure that did not so much oppose national discourse as radically refuse its liberal progressive manifestations’ (Galt 2007: 198). It is this elision of debates surrounding national identity that would be the Escola’s most enduring contribution to subsequent cinemas in Catalonia.

1980s to the millennium: Democracy and new legislation surrounding cinema: the Servei de Cinematografia and the Ley Miró

Scholars acknowledge that the legislation created in Spain in the years immediately following the dictatorship had a profound impact on representations of identity, and specifically on ‘the reconstruction of nationalist consciousness and the affirmation of political and cultural difference’ (Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 157). The varying cultural policies put in place by successive democratically elected governments, as well as the unstable economy (Monterde 1993: 90), meant that even after the collapse of the dictatorship, filmmaking in the regions of Spain was irregular and of varying quality (Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 157).

The two-phase view of the development of cinema in the autonomous communities advocated by Barry Jordan and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas (1998) fits well with the focus on the impact of legislation on Catalan cinematic production that this thesis adopts. The scholars propose that the devolution of powers to the comunidades autónomas in 1980 to 1981 marked a pivotal moment in the communities’ trajectory of self-representation,

100 much like the way in which I am assessing the Ley del Cine of 2007. For Jordan and

Morgan-Tamosunas, the intervening years of 1975 to 1981 represented for Catalonia ‘a phase during which filmmaking in the region formed part of a wider political process aimed at recovering a distinct cultural and national identity’ (1998: 158). In these nascent years of democracy, Catalan cinema did not yet have the backing of public funds, and as the ailing film industry was not perceived as a secure investment, the previous source of investment from the bourgeoisie was depleted. The situation polarised Catalan film production, with output that was either commercially focused at the national level or auteur films that echoed the work of the Escola de Barcelona, leaving little room for commercial cinema intended ‘for a wider Catalan public’ (ibid.).

While Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas’ focus on a Catalan cinema for a mass audience is highly pertinent, in that the audience figures are what typically attract retroactive funds, this focus precludes Catalan film cultures that exist outside of the mainstream, yet that still represent Catalan cinematic identities in their own right: specifically, those formats such as short films and those intended for film festivals. More latterly, at least, this cadre of films would attract financial support of its own amid growing recognition of the gains to be made by strategically positioning films at international festivals, where they would be seen by large and diverse viewerships and thus were able to disseminate their imaginings of catalanitat far and wide.

During these interim years before the restoration of the Generalitat, and in lieu of the

Catalan community having the means to generate its own protectionist legislation,

Catalan filmmakers were active in establishing a succession of professional bodies to shape the profile of a Catalan cinema from their perspective, and in order to germinate an audience for a burgeoning Catalan film industry (Losilla 2016: 30). Not long after the

101 death of General Franco, in December 1975, the Institut del Cinema Català (ICC) was established, considered ‘the first of a number of attempts to define what Catalan film and a Catalan film industry ought to be doing and how Catalan film professionals should develop their sector’ (Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 159). The following year, the first Congrés de Cultura Catalana was held, which shared the aims of the ICC and placed particular emphasis on the importance of linguistic normalisation, with film seen as playing a key role in this effort (ibid.). The conference also sought to promote the production of ‘a Catalan cinema which better reflected and critically explored the realities of the nation’ (ibid.). By the time the Departament de Cultura was created in

1980, the inaugural Jornades de Cinema Català conference had already taken place the previous year at the 18th Setmana de Cinema de Barcelona (Porter i Moix 1992: 361), giving shape to the newly autonomous community’s film industry and its goals from the perspective of filmmakers themselves.

With the Departament de Cultura came new aims for Catalan film. The Institut del

Cinema Català introduced the Converses de Cinema de Catalunya (ibid., p. 364), which began in 1981 and effectively superseded the Jornades conference. The discussions shifted the priorities for Catalan cinema from strengthening the argument for autonomy

(which had, for all intents and purposes, now been won) to fortifying the technical capabilities of the film industry, in order that all aspects of production could take place within Catalonia (Monterde 1993, cited in Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 161)— and thus remain under the control of the Generalitat. With powers now vested in the

Departament de Cultura, the objective of strengthening Catalan national identity through cinema by means of linguistic and political stance still remained, but with the accompanying pillar of industrial autonomy. To this end, the Generalitat created the

102

Servei de Cinematografia in order to increase the funding allocated to the film industry.

These subsidies were bolstered by television networks—namely TV3—which began to provide financial backing for Catalan cinema at this time (Comas 2010: 25).

The position on how to reconstitute Spanish national cinema that won out in the early

1980s was that which the main nationalist parties in Catalonia supported, as did many mainstream industry professionals and the PSOE (Triana Toribio 2003: 110). This view advocated looking to the literary and cultural heritage of Spain, but also of the Basque

Country and Catalonia as communities within their own right. Many Catalan films released in the immediate aftermath of the death of Franco and in the 1980s were dedicated to recovering historical memory, or telling the story of those on the losing side of the Civil War (Comas 2010: 25).16 Numerous proponents of this style of filmmaking declared that films from Catalonia should be in Catalan (ibid.). From this position, cinema was understood as a political tool, and films made in this vein were rewarded with funding (ibid., p. 111). Shortly after being concretised in the form of the

Ley Miró, this stance was also enshrined in Catalan legislation (Porter i Moix 1992:

349).

In contrast to this cadre of films that instrumentalised the medium as a tool for constructing political and historical narratives, the same long decade following the death of the dictator also witnessed a surge in production of genre films. Irreverent comedies, chiefly by the director Francesc Bellmunt, emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s; filmmakers such as Francesc Betriu (Sinatra, 1988; La plaça del diamant

[Diamond Square], 1982) and Jordi Cadena (Barcelona sud [Barcelona South], 1982; La

16 Some such films listed by Comas include La ciutat cremada [The Burnt City] (Antoni Ribas, 1976), La vieja memoria [Old Memory] (Jaime Camino, 1977) and Història de la Generalitat de Catalunya [History of the Generalitat de Catalunya] (Jordi Feliu, 1982). 103 senyora [The Woman], 1987) turned their hand to crime features and literary adaptations (Comas 2010: 26). At this time, wider political changes, such as the replacement of Pilar Miró by Fernando Méndez Leite as Director General de

Cinematografía, and Spain’s entry into the European Economic Community at the start of 1986, brought changes to policy concerning the film industry in Spain as a whole

(ibid., p. 27). Near the end of the decade, the Semprún decree of August 1989 is viewed by some critics as signifying a turning point in the priorities of the Spanish film industry at large: an increased concern with the commercial returns generated by productions, in order to reduce the film industry’s dependence on state funding (Pavlović and others

2009: 155). While some Spanish productions found an audience under this model and increased their percentage of screen time, the ‘cuota de pantalla’ [‘screen share’] of

Catalan films suffered, even within Catalonia (Comas 2010: 27).

Despite the increasing financial pressures placed on the Catalan film industry during this period, the 1990s bore witness to the increased influence of filmmakers like the formerly self-exiled Joaquim Jordà, who regained a position of prominence, and began teaching on the Master de Documental de Creació at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in

Barcelona. Scholars have noted that Jordà became something of a ‘guru’ for his students-

—one of whom was José Luis Guerín—and peers alike (Losilla 2016: 32), demonstrating the resounding influence of the teaching of filmmaking at universities upon Catalan film culture. The group of filmmakers inspired by Jordà, among whom were Mercedes

Álvarez and Isaki Lacuesta, would go on to develop a trend identified as quite divergent from the ‘institutional’ cinema of the 1990s that had been encouraged by legislation: a cinema that focused on subjectivity and radical alterity (ibid.). Carlos Losilla positions their work in a context ‘entre un cinema català amb visibilitat i un altre que no la té’

104

[‘between a Catalan cinema which is visible and another which is not’] (2016: 33).

Losilla identifies a ‘territori del dubte’ [‘territory of doubt’] in which this contemporary

Catalan cinema outside of the mainstream moves, experimenting with the idea of the limit, of presence and absence (ibid., p. 36). The films of this generation explored and attempted to burst open the liminal spaces not only of the documentary medium, but, by extension, of Catalan identity itself (ibid., p. 33).

Under the Pujol administration in the 1990s, the position that Catalan cinema should reflect the idiosyncrasies of Catalan culture and language gained traction. Industrial bodies were created over the course of the decade to supervise this project; however, these entities often met with objections from members of the central Spanish government, ostensibly concerned about the political motivations of Catalan audiovisual policy. A notable case in point is the Consell Audiovisual de Catalunya (CAC),17 created on the 5th of July, 1996. In a strategy that further emphasised the elision of the Spanish nation-state in favour of constructing a transnational identity for the Catalan film industry, CAC took inspiration from the French industrial model (Comas 2010: 154).

Building upon the powers of the previous audiovisual council for Catalonia (Tornos Mas

2007: 5), CAC supposedly operated independently from the Generalitat, although its president was nominated by the Spanish government and four of its members were selected by the Gobierno, the Parlament de Catalunya and municipal bodies, respectively (ibid.). In the ten years that followed, CAC experienced a progressive increase in power concentrated in the hands of a diminishing number of members, including the ability to control content and access to the audiovisual market (Candela

Mas 2016: 31) in service of its stated aim to preserve Catalan linguistic and cultural

17 Its Spanish denomination, the Consejo Audiovisual de Cataluña, is often used in the literature. 105 pluralism (ibid., p. 33). It was upon the introduction of the Ley 22/2005, which granted

CAC further powers, that the Gobierno voiced its objections, considering the legislation to contravene its own capabilities. After unsuccessful attempts to reach an accord between the Gobierno and the Generalitat, the central government eventually suspended the law, invoking Article 161.2 of the Constitution. When, in 2006, Article 82 of the Ley orgánica 6/2006 ruled that CAC was now an independent regulatory body in the realm of public and private audiovisual communication, entirely separate from the

Generalitat (Tornos Mas 2007: 6), several members of the Partido Popular objected.

One MP for the Partido Popular, Sr. Elorriaga, declared the amendment unconstitutional and in violation of ‘los límites de la nación española’ [‘the limits of the Spanish nation’]

(Cortes Generales 2006: 33).18 On the grounds that a politically affiliated body should not be allowed to control and audit audiovisual production, Elorriaga contended that the actions of CAC were in contempt of the freedom of expression protected by international organisations to which Spain was subject (ibid., p. 48). Such a case demonstrates the conflicting objectives of the Catalan and Spanish governments, and the ability (and readiness) of the latter to overrule the former if its intentions are considered in violation of the cultural and political unity of Spain.

The tensions evident in the exchanges between the central Spanish government and the

Generalitat regarding the autonomy of the Catalan film industry offer an explanation for the motivations of the Ley del Cine, introduced across the Spanish state in 2007. Viewed in light of these circumstances, the Ley becomes a strategic move on the part of the central government to be able to grant powers of representation to the autonomous

18 While critics dispute CAC’s ongoing connections to the Generalitat, they acknowledge concerns surrounding its violation of the Spanish constitution, noting that CAC’s ability to impose a black screen for three months to sanction activities of television channels could be considered tantamount to censorship (Tornos Mas 2007: 15). 106 communities, but within terms dictated by the central administration, and in ways that did not explicitly favour one autonomous community over others. However, as will be discussed below, the Catalan administration’s legislative response in 2010 indicated its desire to ensure further protections for representation of Catalan identity through film that were not accounted for in the state legislation.

2.2. The Ley del Cine and its implications for Catalonia

Much as occurred in the 1980s prior to the introduction of the Ley Miró, the Ley

55/2007, ‘del Cine’, was indicative of the view that public powers had to be applied to manage the audiovisual sector within Spain (BOE 2007). The law attempted to tread the line of treating Spain as a país de países [‘country of countries’], in that it acknowledged the role of the autonomous communities in this task, yet ultimately it was to be the state administration that took charge of its application. Funds to benefit cinematic projects were to be managed by ICAA, newly proclaimed a state agency; nonetheless, the legislation assured that the autonomous communities would be free to set up their own sources of financial support as they saw fit.

From an ideological perspective, the 2007 Ley del Cine’s aim to promote ‘la dimensión pluricultural y plurilingüe del estado’ [‘the pluricultural and plurilingual dimension of the state’] (BOE 2007) appeared to suit the aims of the cultural arm of the Generalitat, which responded swiftly to these opportunities. Not two months later, the Acadèmia del

Cinema Català was established on the 21st of February 2008 (although it would not be presented publicly until November that year (Comas 2010: 339)). Recalling Triana

Toribio’s observation that academies are often used as ‘a tool of nationalism and protectionism’ (2016: 3), its foundational statement made its intentions clear, declaring

107 that the Acadèmia aspired to be ‘la veu unitària de la cinematografia catalana formada per tots els sectors creatius i productius de la professió en matèria artística i científica, de forma anàloga a d’altres academies cinematogràfiques’ [‘the unifying voice of Catalan cinema, formed of all of the creative and production sectors of the profession in its artistic and scientific capacities, akin to other film academies’]. The following week, the secretary for Culture of the Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació, Eduard

Voltas, announced a new project to develop a points-based system to favour Catalan- language films, which would later become the Catalan Llei del Cinema (Comas 2010:

338). These initiatives indicate the desire on the part of the Catalan government to consolidate the Catalan film industry by way of an academised structure that would be recognised internationally, while simultaneously defending Catalan identity as understood through its language.

Even at this initial stage, the plans were met with mixed responses from professionals within the Catalan film industry. Filmmakers were immediately concerned that the linguistic normalisation expounded by the new system would favour films about

Catalan history and literary adaptations, to the detriment of other forms of cinema

(Comas 2010: 338). It is clear to see why; as previous sections have shown, many films made by Catalan filmmakers have for decades looked beyond the Catalan territory and its cultural heritage, and to other linguistic paradigms that promote polyglossic understandings of place and identity. The post-2007 promotion of linguistic normalisation and cultural exceptionalism would have marginalised a vast quantity of

Catalan-made films, or indeed have made their creation impossible, as producer Ricard

Figueras argued of his 2007 film, La soledad [Solitary Fragments] (cited in ibid.).

Consequently, upon the public inauguration of the Acadèmia in late 2008, its president,

108

Joel Joan, assured that use of the Catalan language would never be a condition of entry into the Acadèmia, interpreting Catalan cinema as ‘el realitzat per professionals catalans amb vocació d’arribat a tot el món’ [‘that made by Catalan professionals destined to reach everyone’] (cited in Comas 2010: 340). Despite this reassurance, in subsequent years, the Catalan industry’s concerns surrounding linguistic aspects of the proto-Llei del Cinema would be echoed by agents beyond Catalonia.

The Catalan Llei del Cinema (2010)

On the 1st of July 2010, the Catalan Tripartit government, composed of the Partit dels

Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC), the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) and

Iniciativa per Catalunya, introduced its own Llei del Cinema. The purpose of this law was ostensibly to support Catalan linguistic identity by focusing on ensuring that more

Catalan language was available to audiences on screen, whether the film was originally made in Catalan or was dubbed from another language (Manias-Muñoz and others

2017: 128). More significantly, Article 18, a key component of the law, declared that

50% of the analogue copies of films shown in Catalonia had to be distributed in Catalan, either via dubbing or subtitling; for digital copies, this figure increased to 100% (BOE

2010: 69183). The Llei can be understood as an attempt to enshrine in law the idea of

Catalan as a European language on a par with Spanish, and thus carries the implication that speaking and understanding Catalan is a part of being Catalan and a right that

Catalans should be able to exercise. Some critics have proposed that the legislation was a more or less direct response to data showing that the vast majority of films consumed in cinemas in Catalonia were screened in Spanish, a statistic at odds with Catalonia’s

109 extremely high rate of cinema attendance for its size.19 As with previous pieces of legislation released across Spain, the Llei also intended to combat the dominance of US distributors in the Catalan market (Petit and others 2010: 23). Beyond market competition concerns, the Ministry of Culture in Spain has also extolled subtitling original-version films in Catalan as a means of promoting cultural diversity and multilingualism within the European Union, as reflected in the European Commission’s approval of a €12m support scheme in 2010 to support dubbing and subtitling films in

Catalan (European Commission Press Release Database 2010).

The 2007 Ley del Cine contributed to the implementation of the Catalan Llei del Cinema through its allocation of funding from the Spanish Government for the support of regional cinema. A combination of this funding from the central government, funds from the then Institut Català de les Indústries Culturals (ICIC – known as the Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals since late 2011) and the private sector coalesced in the

Catalan Fund for the Promotion of Exhibition. Thanks to this financial support, a network of public-private cinemas was established in Catalonia under the Llei del

Cinema which agreed to prioritise cinema made in the autonomous community, especially films in Catalan. EU-made cinema was next in line, to be shown with Catalan subtitles if not made in Catalan or Spanish; lastly, other cinema deemed of cultural or artistic interest made outside the EU was to be subject to the same linguistic rulings

(Petit and others 2010: 24). This strategy addresses an issue regarding contemporary modes of film consumption in Catalonia, namely that ‘[t]he existing structures of film distribution make it difficult for the audience to gain access to internationally-renowned

19 In a study published by the then ICIC and the European Audiovisual Observatory in 2008, Catalonia was found to be the sixth European market for global cinema attendance, and the second in Europe in terms of attendance frequency per capita, with 3.46 tickets sold annually per head of population (Petit and others 2010: 22). Despite these figures, in 2007, only 3% of screenings in Catalonia were in Catalan (ibid., p. 24). 110 and artistically superior cinema’ (ibid., p. 25)—an aim shared by film festivals in the territory. Concordant with the available statistics on the dominance of US-made commercial cinema in Catalonia, this perspective also upholds the long-established institutional discourse of Catalan cinemagoers deserving (but not necessarily demanding) a more ‘highbrow’ cinematic experience that confirms its status as an art form (Faulkner 2013: 16). It is in legislative material like this, therefore, that the cracks between the views of government, industry, and audiences when shaping a national cinema begin to show.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, despite the Tripartit’s consensus on the Llei del Cinema, the project received criticism from sectors across the film industry. Film exhibitors immediately condemned the stipulations of Article 18 in particular. Distributors argued that the demand for Catalan-language films was insufficient for such measures, and asserted that the industry was in dire enough straits without further criteria to fulfil before films could reach audiences (Clares Gavilán and others 2014). Indeed, numerous cinemas closed their doors in protest to call for modification of the law, ostensibly simulating the impact that the legislation would have on theatres. Citizens in turn boycotted cinemas to voice their indignation against the perceived ‘anti-Catalan’ sentiment shown by the multiplexes (L’Accent.cat 2010).20 These debates ultimately meant that when the Llei del Cinema came into effect on the 16th of January 2011 under the newly formed government of Artur Mas and the Convergència Democràtica de

20 In a statement that laid bare the divergent interests of Catalan audiences and industry, a spokesperson for the Gremi d’Empresaris de Cinema de Catalunya used the industrial action to call for people to ‘tingui en compte la realitat de la demanda de la societat catalana’ [‘to consider the reality of what Catalan society is demanding’] (L’Accent.cat 2010). Another article observes the curious fact that, under the proposed legislation, Catalan films coproduced with Spain, such as Isabel Coixet’s Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio [Map of the Sounds of Tokyo] (2009), would have been subject to the Llei’s requirements, due to their being filmed in English (Europa Press 2010). 111

Catalunya (CDC) party, the controversial Article 18 was not applied for the time being

(Catalunya Ràdio 2011).

In order to establish a consensus between the divided parties who stood to be affected by the law, Ferran Mascarell was reappointed as the Minister for Culture (having served in the position under the previous government). Adding to the pressure that Catalan nationalist voices were applying for the law to remain intact, the then director of the

Acadèmia del Cinema Català, Joel Joan, wished Mascarell luck, advising that ‘des de

Madrid estan disposats a tallar-li les ales’ [‘those in Madrid are ready to clip his wings’]

(ibid.). Mascarell withheld the implementation of Article 18 while attempting to resolve the tensions between the different industrial parties and Catalan political agents, during which time he faced accusations of ‘parking’ the legislation under the new administration from a number of parties in favour of the law (Nació Digital 2011). His move to sign an agreement with large distributor Fedicine and the Gremi d’Empresaris de Cinema de Catalunya on the 26th of September 2011 was strongly criticised by Joan

Puigcercós, leader of the Esquerra República de Catalunya political party, who accused

Mascarell of conceding to the major distributors by discounting the sanctions and quotas of which the law was principally composed. Puigcercós’ critique echoed the sentiment of many Catalan nationalist politicians; the law was widely viewed as a major advancement in the protection of the Catalan language and formed part of a package of laws introduced under the Tripartit to defend Catalan linguistic normalisation, with cross-party support from the PSC, Esquerra Independentista (EI) and Convergència i

Unió (CiU) (Europa Press 2011). Indeed, the law was only voted down in the Parlament by members of the PP and Ciutadans (Plataforma per la Llengua 2011). Aside from the argument in defence of Catalan cultural identity in cinema, Puigcercós also invoked the

112 right of Catalan consumers to be addressed in spoken and written Catalan, as outlined by the ‘codi de consum’ [‘code of consumption’] enshrined in Catalan legislation (Europa

Press 2011). This point was seconded by the civic pressure group, Plataforma per la

Llengua, who called for an end to the ‘discriminació única dels espectadors catalans’

[‘unique discrimination against Catalan viewers’] in reference to their 2010 study which revealed that Catalan was the only language with so many speakers in the EU and North

America that was not the majority language in films shown in the area (Plataforma per la Llengua 2011).

While acting president and member of the CDC party, Artur Mas made plain his equation of the Catalan language and national identity amid the discussions of the Llei del Cinema. Presiding over a meeting of the Consell Social de la Llengua Catalana, in an allusion to Catalan culture, he mentioned ‘red lines’, among which he included the

Catalan language, ‘que si es trespassen amb una voluntat de destrucció per a nosaltres seria “casus belli”, des del punt de vista de la defensa del nostre país’ [‘which, if crossed with the intent to destroy, would for us constitute “casus belli”, from the perspective of the defence of our country’] (Generalitat de Catalunya 2011). Earlier in the meeting, Mas had cited cinema as an important arena in which to evidence progress of the Catalan language, indicating the sector’s perceived strategic significance in the political manoeuvres to normalise Catalan as a symbol of national identity (ibid.).

Ultimately, it would not be the central Spanish government in Madrid that would clip the wings of the Llei del Cinema’s proposals, but the European Commission, which in

2012 declared the 50% quota requirements discriminatory against other languages and highlighted the incompatibility of the pronouncement with other EU regulations on free trade (El País 2012). Mascarell voiced his indignation that ‘la ley fue discutida en un

113 origen porque teóricamente favorecía el catalán, y acaba con una resolución que pone en duda que el castellano se vea favorecido respecto de las otras lenguas europeas’ [‘the law was originally disputed because in theory it favoured Catalan, and it is ending with a resolution that questions whether Castilian is favoured over other European languages’]

(ibid.). Mascarell eventually opted to modify the law to exempt European films from the obligation to dub into Catalan, in the hope that the legislation would still be allowed to stand (La Vanguardia 2014). In this revised form, the law remained in place, but the obligation was essentially substituted for case-by-case industry agreements with distributors and exhibitors.

By implementing the Llei del Cinema legislation, the Mas government placed great importance upon the projection of films in the Catalan language in Catalonia—a stance which firmly linked the institutional vision of Catalan national identity to Catalan language and not to Spanish. Indeed, from the statistics collected since the implementation of the Llei, it seems that these cultural policies prioritised the access to cultural products in the Catalan language above concerns of viewership. For instance, in the years 2013 and 2014, a greater percentage of films were shown in Catalan, yet audience figures for Catalan-language screenings dropped from 4.43% to 3% of the market share, with Spanish-language projections accounting for the remaining majority

(Caballero Molina 2015: 195)—the same proportion as that reported in 2007 (Petit and others 2010: 24). While due consideration should be given to questions of where these films were shown and the potential audiences that they may have reached, these outcomes reveal a disconnect between the official proposals of how to defend Catalan national identity and the means in which Catalan citizens live their lives or wish to see themselves represented. When considered in the light of the Generalitat’s policies that

114 simultaneously promote ‘linguistic normalisation’ and the principle that one need only be a resident of Catalonia to be Catalan, the Llei acts as a useful object of scrutiny with which to observe the articulation of Catalan national identity by its institutions.

As the amendments to the Llei demonstrate, regulating the commercial landscape to favour project(ion)s of a certain Catalan identity is an objective not easily achieved. This case reveals that determining how Catalan cultural identity may be produced and consumed is not merely in the hands of the government. In this instance, the Catalan government, represented by the Minister for Culture, saw no other way forward than to compromise with distributors within the film industry and dilute its strategy for bringing about linguistic parity in cinemas across Catalonia. The moves deployed by the industrial bodies, multiplexes and cinemagoers alike demonstrate the multiple actors implicated in designing and defining the cultural experience of cinema in Catalonia and the ways in which ideas of Catalan identity manifest through cinema. Significantly, these tensions highlight the perceived importance of the role of cinema in cementing community.

The Llei del Cinema’s intention to secure parity between the Catalan and Spanish languages in cinema did of course not go unnoticed by Catalan filmmakers. As the first section of this chapter has illustrated, the hegemonic form of cinema that the

Generalitat’s policies aspired to foment is inconsistent with the work of a number of

Catalan filmmakers. Some critics believe that the strategy of protecting Catalan language in cinema by law may indeed provoke a response opposite to that originally intended: that filmmakers deliberately choose not to film in Catalan, or to subscribe to other restrictive notions of Catalan identity that governments attempt to instil. As Carlos

Losilla suggests, ‘[p]otser només entorns com el del cinema català permeten aquest

115 tipus de situacions: l’intent (sempre frustrat) de construir una indústria a partir de la llengua i un cert model cinematogràfic crea espais aïllats i marginals on sorgeixen gestos d’experimentació i creativitat que es poden assimilar a la dissidència, a la vulneració de les regles’ [‘it could be that only contexts like Catalan cinema permit these kinds of situations: the attempt (always in vain) to construct an industry from the basis of language and a certain cinematic model creates isolated and marginal spaces where experimental and creative gestures emerge that can become a kind of dissidence, to the detriment of the rules’] (2016: 40–41). What remains to be seen is the nature of the ongoing response of these filmmakers to the legislative measures taken by the Catalan government. I will return to this concept of the opening of marginal spaces in Catalan cinema with regard to contemporary Catalan films in Chapter Four. Before doing so, it is pertinent to consider the influence of industrial bodies upon the depiction of Catalan identity through film, and their support for hegemonic or peripheral cinematic spaces.

2.3. Who decides? The role of industry bodies in Catalonia

An understanding of the roles of the industrial bodies—both state-appointed organisations and those established by professionals to connect and devise their own conception of Catalan cinema—brings together the discussions in this chapter so far surrounding the divisions within the Catalan cinema industry. Industrial bodies perform multiple functions in their role of authenticating a film industry, both tangible and intangible: affiliation validates members’ professional practice; their offices provide networking opportunities and repositories of resources, as well as constituting a

‘physical home’ for the cinema industry (Triana Toribio 2016: 2). The vision of Catalan cinema promoted by the Generalitat in recent years, which might be referred to as an

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‘official’ version, has centred on the belief that the Catalan language is essential to the construction of a cinematic canon in Catalonia. As evidenced by the Llei del Cinema, this form of filmmaking asserts the local in the face of dominating, ‘globalising’ external forces—US commercial films and their distributors—and mirrors the glocal tensions that emerge in this construction of Catalan identity discussed above.

As such, non-Catalan-language cinema made by established Catalan directors with an international presence, such as Isabel Coixet, might be viewed as reacting against these institutions and operating outside of their defined parameters of a Catalan cinematic canon. However, these filmmakers still receive institutional support, in that the international and commercial success of their work asserts and legitimises the presence of Catalan filmmaking on a global stage.21 It is a further form of cinema that appears less concerned with outright commercial success, but which pursues more critical and arthouse appraisal, that is investigated in this study. These films typically receive support from institutional bodies that have been established by professionals within the field, concerned with a form of filmmaking that is ostensibly more an experiment with the medium than a pursuit of the financial profits and national posturing that is bound up in the aforementioned feature films. While appearing not to prioritise the construction of a

Catalan cinematic canon, these institutions do nonetheless contribute to shaping a cadre of Catalan filmmaking that is inevitably enmeshed with the economic concerns of commercial cinema, but that ultimately constructs an arena of film production within

Catalonia that sits at the fringes of dominant production. As later sections of this chapter will explore, the Catalan film festival circuit is a prime display of these films and the image that this ‘alternative’ showreel of film production in Catalonia intends to

21 Coixet was awarded the Premio Nacional de Cine y Audiovisuales de la Generalitat de Catalunya in 2004, and has garnered international prizes from the Berlinale (2003), the Mostra di Venezia (2005), and the Toronto Film Festival (2015), to name a few (Zecchi 2017: 14). 117 construct. These film festivals often act as springboards for emerging filmmakers in the autonomous community, some of whom go on to garner institutionally sponsored awards and obtain access to larger budgets to support commercial productions within the ‘official’ canon. As such, observing the mechanisms by which these events function can shed light on the alternative positioning of Catalan cinema that some of them promote.

Industrial bodies, whether supported by the Generalitat or administered by professionals, often play an instructive role in the programming of these events, or even in the making of the films that are selected. As such, these bodies also assume the role of tastemaking institutions in Catalan cinema. As other researchers have recognised, these tastemakers within national cinema industries legitimise certain types of cinema by awarding prizes and collaborating amongst themselves to substantiate their own authority (Triana Toribio 2016: 9–10). This mechanism is especially acute in the

Catalan film industry as a cinema that is peripheral to the hegemonic cinema of Spain promoted by the Spanish Academia, which has been described as ‘resolutely seeking the middlebrow’ (Triana Toribio 2016: 13, in reference to Faulkner 2013). As the remainder of this chapter will argue, the decisions of these tastemakers in Catalan industrial bodies thus play a crucial part in delineating a Catalan cinematic space that distinguishes itself from the model promoted by the Spanish academy.

The following section explores the function of two such bodies, the Catalan branch of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores and the collective of film schools in

Catalonia, to establish their influence on the canonical and ‘oppositional’ cinemas

(Labayen and Souto 2012: 230) that have shaped the history of the Catalan film industry. Like much of this chapter, this section has been structured to work in parallel

118 with the first chapter of the thesis, which presents a similar discussion of the context of the Andalusian film industry. Structuring these two chapters in similar ways throws light on the diverse roles and intentions that industrial bodies play and prioritise in fostering a cinema industry, and has implications both within these two autonomous communities and in other national and international contexts.

SGAE Catalunya: supporting new talent

One of the organisations that has played a significant role in supporting the Catalan film industry since the end of the twentieth century is the Catalan arm of the Sociedad

General de Autores y Editores, or SGAE. Originally formed by film industry professionals in 1932 as the Sociedad General de Autores de España, the renaming of the organisation in 1995 reflects the increased recognition of Spain’s multiple cultures and communities, as well as alluding to its support of professionals across a range of the state’s creative industries.

SGAE Catalunya exemplifies the opportunities that these industrial bodies possess to steer the focus of the Catalan film industry. The influence that the organisation deploys via awarding prizes to emerging Catalan filmmakers and being present at film festivals across Catalonia indicates the role that it adopts in supporting new talent, initiating filmmakers into an auteurist tradition that is reinforced and reproduced through these processes.

The prizes that SGAE Catalunya awards reflect the organisation’s intentions to promote new talent within the Catalan film industry, and particularly those that celebrate both the film schools that contribute to the academicism of the Catalan film industry and the auteur films that they produce. The annual Premis SGAE Nova Autoria [SGAE Prizes for

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New Authorship], coordinated by SGAE’s Fundación Autor, reveal the mechanisms of award capital and peer validation, in that the prizes were founded ‘with a desire to discover, promote, and help publicize audiovisual productions made by students from

Catalan film schools’ (Sitgesfilmfestival.com 2013). Previous winners have gone on to achieve recognition and success on Catalan, Spanish and international cinema scenes, and count director Mar Coll and scriptwriter-turned-director Àlex Pastor, both graduates of ESCAC, among their numbers (SGAE.es [n.d.]). Indeed, the name of the award itself indicates their purpose to promote authorship and auteur cinema in

Catalonia among emerging Catalan filmmakers, an emphasis which in turn elevates cinema as an art form with high cultural capital and social value.

The means in which SGAE Catalunya interacts with film festivals is also indicative of the importance of these events as a platform from which to disseminate these tastes to audiences and consolidate the status of the organisation as a tastemaker. The Nova

Autoria prizes are awarded at each edition of the internationally famed Sitges Festival

Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya, the film festival ‘with most prestige and the widest media coverage in Catalonia’ (Generalitat de Catalunya [n.d.-b]). As such, the awards represent a prestigious platform from which to promote the work of Catalan filmmakers in front of an international audience.

As well as collaborating with the Sitges Festival, SGAE Catalunya has consolidated its involvement in an array of projects across other Catalan film festivals. The initiatives in which it has participated demonstrate its role as a tastemaking organisation that curates and promotes emerging talent. For instance, SGAE Catalunya has an ongoing collaboration with the Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones de Barcelona, which centres on showcasing the talents of female creative professionals in the Catalan film

120 industry. One such project consisted of organising an open-air screening of Les amigues de l’Àgata [Agata’s Friends] (2014), the début feature-length production by Laia Alabart,

Alba Cros, Laura Rius and Marta Verheyen. Consistent with SGAE’s agenda, the production team are all graduates of the degree in Communication offered by the

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona; the film itself was their end-of-degree project (SGAE.cat [n.d.]).

As well as promoting the work of emerging Catalan filmmakers, the activities of SGAE

Catalunya position the organisation as an important participant in the peer validation process via celebrating films that have received prizes elsewhere. By the time of the screening, Les amigues de l’Àgata had already won awards at the 2014 edition of

Festival Abycine, and at D’A Film Festival (then known as the Festival de Cinema

D’Autor de Barcelona) and the Festival de Cinema de Tarragona in 2015 (ibid.).

Promoting the film and its team in such a way thus contributes to the reciprocal process of peer validation, whereby foregrounding Les amigues de l’Àgata ratified the prizes bestowed upon it by other film festivals in Catalonia.

The activities of SGAE Catalunya evidence the intentions of the organisation to reproduce the successes of acclaimed young filmmakers, through measures that favour a didactic approach to filmmaking in the auteurist tradition. The UPF students’ achievements prompted further support from SGAE, who went on to work with the convenors of the course in Comunicació Audiovisual at UPF to run a programme of workshops, connecting students with established professionals in the field (ibid.). The film’s directors also delivered a workshop describing their experiences in the industry from SGAE Catalunya’s headquarters as part of the 2017 edition of D’A Film Festival.

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This strategy of mentorship and didacticism is consistent with the agenda of the Catalan film industry to identify and promote Catalan talent through the channels of film schools, deploying the strengths of those who have a deep knowledge of the workings of the industry to enable their successors to find success at local, national and international levels. Ultimately, this proven approach has implications not only for the nature of the representation of Catalan culture locally and internationally through the film texts themselves, but also through the reputation and profile of the industry at home and abroad. Namely, the work of organisations like SGAE Catalunya serves to affirm that the Catalan film industry is a structured and well-planned apparatus that now finds itself able to compete on a world stage, as the analysis in Chapter Four of selected films that it has produced will demonstrate. The next section examines the ongoing contribution that film schools in Catalonia make to establish the academic prestige and validity of the Catalan film industry.

Catalan film schools and collaborative projects

Film schools have a long but uneven history in Catalonia. Their initial raison d’être was linked to the promotion of film as an object of academic study under the Second

Republic, with a course on the aesthetics of cinema being held at the University of

Barcelona in 1932 (Epps 2012: 60). However, under Franco, the focus of film schools in

Catalonia expanded to incorporate political resistance to the regime. The heavy censorship of film and tight controls over its creation and ideological messages meant that the ‘oppositional practices’ that film schools in Catalonia favoured had to be conducted externally to the official state industry (Labayen and Souto 2012: 230).

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These two foundational principles coalesced in the Aixelà film school, established by the renowned Catalan filmmaker, Pere Portabella. Evidencing its political stance, the school began as an alternative to the regime-backed Escuela Oficial de Cine in Madrid (Labayen and Souto 2012: 231), and fundamentally condemned the regime and its ideology. As in previous centres of film education in Catalonia, the school was grounded in the academic study of film and offered classes in which theoretical debates were staged, although this focus can be at least partially attributed to the fact that the school lacked access to filmmaking equipment (Portabella 2001: 124, cited in ibid.). Latterly, when the school was able to provide students with practical experience and teaching, classes would still focus on analysis and discussions of their work. The political stance of the school also persisted in practical work: under the supervision of Portabella, students formed production teams to document cultural and political events, evidenced in the film Poetes Catalans [Catalan Poets] (1970) (Labayen and Souto 2012: 231). As well as counter-Francoist ideology, Aixelà students engaged with international politics, as expressed in the text ‘A modo de manifiesto-propuesta del grupo XIII’ [‘By way of manifest-proposal of group XIII’] that they produced in November of 1968, in line with the spirit of the protests in Paris in May of that same year (ibid.).

The case of Aixelà indicates some of the influences that have persisted from early training programmes in Catalan cinema. The thread of didacticism and an inherited tradition evidenced in Portabella’s influence at Aixelà has endured via the recruitment of prominent Catalan filmmakers who were operating under the dictatorship in contemporary film schools in the democratic period. A number of Catalan universities have become known for their influential offerings in film education, many of which have connections with pioneers of cinema in Catalonia. The Universitat Pompeu Fabra in

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Barcelona offers the Màster de Documental de Creació, which counted the aforementioned Joaquim Jordà among its teachers. Considered a key member of the

Escola de Barcelona, Jordà would have a profound influence on his students, who included José Luis Guerín, Mercedes Álvarez and Isaki Lacuesta, all of whom have established themselves at the forefront of Catalan documentary-making.22 Jordà’s production, Mones com la Becky [Monkeys like Becky] (1999), is often cited as seminal, and exemplifies this model of mentorship. A collaboration between Jordà and students of the Masters in Documentary at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, it is regarded as connecting the iconoclastic spirit of the Escola de Barcelona with the new generation of Catalan filmmakers (Quintana 2014: 14).

Other more recently established film schools in Catalonia also evidence this mentorship tradition, albeit mobilising it with a view to achieving markedly different objectives. One such school is the Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisual de Catalunya (ESCAC), the first official Catalan film school to open in democratic Spain in 1993. ESCAC employs decorated filmmakers to teach its students, such as Mar Coll, who heads up the

Department of Direction. Born in the early 1980s, Coll represents a different generation of filmmakers from the likes of Portabella. A graduate of ESCAC herself, the success of

Coll’s films—and acting roles—at festivals in Catalonia and Spain and at both the Gaudí and Goya awards serves to certify the school as a centre capable of training students to produce award-winning, ‘successful’ projects. The implication is that Coll’s mentorship is desirable to enable future young filmmakers to achieve recognition from these same entities.

22 Scholars have noted the role that mentors have played in the Spanish auteurist tradition, particularly in the production of art, avant-garde, and social realist film (Triana Toribio 2016: 10). The role of mentor has been shown to stretch beyond the director; as Tom Whittaker argues, the producer Elías Querejeta was instrumental in mentoring the auteur directors of the Nuevo Cine Español (2011: 5). 124

In such a way, Coll’s presence indicates the kind of film projects that ESCAC intends to cultivate among its protégés: films that will succeed at festivals and at the Academy awards. Once again, these achievements strengthen the feedback loop previously discussed, in that all awards won by graduates validate the effectiveness of the ESCAC model: the list of national and international prizes displayed on its website attests to this strategy (ESCAC.com [n.d.]). In turn, the achievements of ESCAC serve to raise the local, national and international profile of the Catalan film industry, and contribute to the economy of cultural capital in which it circulates.

The desirability of this model of mentorship, prioritising practical experience over theory and publicising work at film festivals that ESCAC espouses, and the recognition that it reaps from Catalan, Spanish and international awarding bodies, is evidenced in its replication at other subsequently established peripheral film schools across

Catalonia, such as the Escola de Cinema de Reus (ECIR). Formed in 2013, the school website adopts the same promotional strategy, citing the achievements of one of its director-employees, Fernando Trullols, in winning the 2012 Goya for the best short fiction film (ECIR.com [n.d.]). The most recognised of all the productions on which ECIR has collaborated, though, has been Timecode, Juanjo Giménez’ short film from 2016 that has amassed over 60 prizes across screenings at more than 150 film festivals at the time of writing (Betancourt 2017), including the accolade of being the first Spanish short film to receive the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Further analysis of Timecode, its themes, and its ambivalent readings of Catalan identity, is conducted in Chapter Four of this thesis.

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2.4. Film festivals in Catalonia

Film festivals are a relevant object of study in order to analyse the Catalan film industry, as they operate as a space within which the professionalism and auteur aspirations promoted by the aforementioned Catalan industrial bodies are reproduced. From one perspective, film festivals occupy a privileged space with regard to sheltering productions from commercial priorities and economic concerns. Fran Benavente has argued that film festivals can be viewed as ‘laboratories’ for creative exploration, as they remove films from institutional discourses that bear upon commercial cinema (2004:

68). However, I propose that this assumption is contingent upon the organisational structure of the festival in question. In many cases, multiple agents contribute to the image of a festival, informing audiences’ readings of these events and their construction of identities (Wong 2011: 159).23 If an event receives backing from an institution, or involves a curator previously or currently involved with one, then the priorities and vision of the cinematic identity that should be salient in the event is inevitably reflected in the programming. The implications of such programming decisions for the representation of a given Catalan identity will be analysed in the case studies presented below.

Indeed, more recent theorisations on film festivals point to the increasing commercial awareness, if not concerns, of these events. Tanja Krainhofer has proposed that film festivals have become ‘an alternative form of distribution and exhibition next to regular commercial cinema’ (2018: 39), in particular acting as ‘national distributors for acclaimed arthouse fare’ (ibid., p. 41). For Krainhofer, the strategies by which film

23 As Mari Paz Balibrea (2017: 219) has argued, neoliberal subjects are encouraged to engage in projects of ‘identity work’, amassing a portfolio of experiences with high cultural capital in order to assert their own cultural status. Attending film festivals carries significant cultural capital in this regard. 126 festivals are increasing their international reach (such as collaborations with VoD platforms and screening live fora in multiple countries via videolink) constitute a vein of cinematic activity that runs in parallel to more conventional exhibition methods, increasing the potential audience of arthouse cinema (ibid., p. 41). Some film festivals have already begun to distribute films themselves, as is the case with Rotterdam and

Karlovy Vary (ibid.). As such, the festival circuit plays an increasingly significant role in publicising national cinemas globally, and in many cases offers an alternative platform to competitive commercial routes with different priorities. While these activities certainly do not preclude film festivals from retaining their function as ‘laboratories’ for experimentation, they imply a self-conscious awareness of the potential to mobilise the artistic reputation and cultural capital of film festivals to attract a large audience.

Film festivals can therefore play an important role in publicising and bolstering regional film industries, including the cinemas of the autonomous communities in Spain. The potential of film festivals to support and expand the distribution networks available to regional productions can often lead to regional events using their influence ‘to highlight national and regional works and further the region’s (film) economy’ (Reichel-Heldt

2007, section 1.1, cited in de Valck and Loist 2009: 210).

Crucially, it should be noted that several film festivals in Catalonia, and across Spain more broadly, have a heritage founded on their constituting ‘sites of cultural and political resistance’, particularly against the ideological censorship enacted upon cinema under the Francoist dictatorship (Alberich and others 2012: 445). The aforementioned Sitges Film Festival, which began its life as the Primeras Jornadas

Internacionales de Escuelas de Cinematografía in 1967, foregrounded this political engagement in its first edition, when a number of filmmakers presented their manifesto

127 condemning state-run institutions which exercised control over the film industry under the regime and decrying the mission of the 1955 Conversaciones de Salamanca (ibid.).

Following police intervention and numerous arrests, the festival was reincarnated the following year in the form in which it is now recognised. While many events have undergone similar transformations, these early incidents highlight the foundational identity of these festivals as ‘oppositional’ sites where subversive ideas and films at the margins of hegemonic production can be shared.

From the beginning, film festivals in Catalonia also overtly proclaimed an international outlook through both naming decisions and programming. The first documented film festival in the region, even before Sitges, was the Semana Internacional del Cine de

Color de Barcelona [‘Barcelona International Week of Colour Film’], which began in

September 1959 (Alberich and others 2012: 444). As its name suggests, the event focused on showing the latest advances in colour film from around the world. The incipient festival at Sitges already fostered an international outlook, showing films from the then USSR and Asia (ibid., p. 445). During the dictatorship, these events constituted

‘a window onto cultural exchange with the outside world’ (ibid., p. 449). The cinematic landscape as it pertains to film festivals in Catalonia has thus placed international exchange at its core, forging a Catalan cinematic identity synonymous with cross- cultural influences, and which often looks beyond the Spanish nation for inspiration.

Since the establishment of these early film festivals in Catalonia, the number and diversity of events has mushroomed. At the time of writing, 47 events are registered with the principal industrial network, Catalunya Film Festivals (Catalunya Film Festivals

2018b). Particularly since the turn of the millennium, film festivals on a vast array of themes have proliferated, ranging from those giving visibility to religious communities

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(Barcelona Jewish Film Festival, established in 1999), alternative modes of audiovisual consumption (the Serielizados festival, focusing on TV series, which began in 2014), international communities (the Asian Film Festival in Barcelona, founded in 2011) and, closer to home, traditional ways of life within Catalonia (for example, the Most festival in Vilafranca del Penedès, established in 2010, screens films which focus on winemaking). Indeed, many festivals staged outside Barcelona concentrate on the particularities of the social and cultural heritage of the area, including Most, the

Cerdanya International Film Festival (since 2010) and the Festival Gollut de Ribes de

Freser (since 2014—its title commemorates the Golluts, dwarves who were eradicated from the area due to discrimination and stigmatisation) (Catalunya Film Festivals

2018a). While the many niches that these events occupy alludes to the need to specialise in order to survive and stand out in the packed festival calendar, it is also important to note that the specificity of the events’ concerns, often linked to their location, increases the visibility of the atomisation of Catalan identity and the diversity of Catalan culture beyond the hegemony of Barcelona. It also happens that many of these events have begun since the introduction of the Llei del Cinema, which may speak to the increased support for these communities to promote themselves through their own events.

The proliferation of these smaller events serves a number of purposes for the Catalan film industry. First of all, it plays a role in granting filmmakers increased opportunities to screen their work more widely, and to reach audiences in more remote areas across

Catalonia. Secondly, these events embed a cinematic identity and film culture in sparsely populated regions. Thirdly, the considerable number of festivals supports the aforementioned mechanism of award capital, affording opportunities to win more

129 accolades that can be displayed as a mark of the quality of the work. Lastly, and perhaps most significantly for this investigation, the specificities of these events serve to frame these cinematic identities in varied, nuanced ways, reflecting and projecting the diverse cultural identities found in the Catalan territories. Just how these phenomena occur, and the nature of the cinematic identities that they transmit, is the focus of the analysis of two festival case studies that follows this section.

More generally, for the Catalan film industry, film festivals act as an important showcase

(and, to a degree, a protected space) for Catalan films—particularly small, independent productions—that are excluded from multiplexes as a result of the financial implications (Riambau 2006: 117). Catalan films have previously performed well at international festivals, including being screened at Cannes 2006 (Albert Serra’s Honor de Cavalleria, known in English as Honour of the Knights or Quixotic) and winning an award at Sundance in 2004 (La ruta natural [The Natural Route], by Àlex Pastor) (ibid.).

Critics have argued that decisions made at policy level to target success at film festivals limits the audience that can access Catalan films (Manias-Muñoz and others 2017: 135).

This thesis contends that this is an important consideration to bear in mind when considering the articulations of Catalan identity that are made available at film festivals; more precisely, it raises the point that these films may reflect narratives that are not made available in more commercially driven environments. From this perspective, it seems that the Catalan authorities wish to prioritise a certain kind of films, and seek the prestige that their visibility at film festivals offers as an appraisal of the quality of this branch of Catalan cinema and of the professionals that produce it.

Adding to their political interest, film festivals in Catalonia also represent an opportunity to spread linguistic normalisation of Catalan. Since 2008, the Departament

130 de Cultura of the Generalitat has maintained an agreement with Catalunya Film

Festivals, directing funding towards subtitling the festivals’ submissions into Catalan

(La Vanguardia 2016a). As will be discussed in the context of the following case studies, the use of Catalan at film festivals in Catalonia reveals the identity formations that they promote for themselves and encourage within their audiences, as well as the nature of the glocal festival communities that they intend to forge.

‘La finestra més internacional’: Filmets, Badalona

Founded under the dictatorship in 1969, Filmets (and its earlier guises) is one of the oldest film festivals in Catalonia, closely following the Sitges Film Festival. The event has always held an international outlook, as its original title, the Mundial Badalona de Cine

Amateur [Badalona Amateur Film World Event], indicates. At the same time, the festival took root in the wider film community in Catalonia, collaborating with other amateur film collectives such as the Unió de Cineastas Amateurs [Amateur Filmmakers’ Union] in

Barcelona and events from other Catalan provinces, stretching from Figueres to Valls.

Like many festivals across Spain, and most of those in this study, the event has adapted throughout the years, being renamed the Festival Internacional de Cinema i Video de

Badalona [‘Barcelona International Festival of Cinema and Video’] in the late 1990s, eventually becoming Filmets in 2001 with the added assistance of the Ajuntament de

Badalona and Badalona Comunicació SA (Festival Filmets [n.d.]).

Filmets presents an interesting object of study as it represents a Catalan film festival that is somewhat on the geographical periphery. While the majority of film festivals currently staged in Catalonia take place in Barcelona, Filmets has always been based in

Badalona, some ten miles north along the coast of the Mediterranean. The festival

131 therefore offers an opportunity to observe how a smaller event taking place outside of the Catalan capital (as opposed to the much-fanfared Sitges event) presents itself, and whether it also situates itself on the directional periphery of the festival landscape within Catalonia.

Filmets’ programme adds to its value as a case study among film festivals in Catalonia, as it includes sections that highlight eminently local cinematic output. Of particular interest is the section entitled ‘Badalona en curt’ [‘Badalona in short’, with the same idiomatic polysemy in Catalan as in English], which showcases the work of filmmakers from the town. Such a programming decision demonstrates the aforementioned desire to promote the creative output of Badalonins to each other, as well as to the international community that Filmets intends to attract. Indeed, the substantial official selection, labelled ‘INTERNACIONAL’ on the programme schedule, sees Catalan productions competing alongside films from around the world for the accolade of the

Venus de Badalona for Best Film. Situating Catalan productions in this context presents the opportunity to explore the representations of identity that such juxtaposition produces.

In line with the aforementioned role of film festivals as distributors, the Filmets website cites one of the event’s aims as being to promote ‘les produccions catalanes que no tenen una finestra de difusió internacional’ [‘Catalan productions which don’t have a window of international diffusion’] (ibid.). This objective certainly tallies with its programming in recent years, as will be discussed below. This metaphor of Filmets as a window for a global audience onto a local culture was echoed in the 2016 edition by the mayor of Badalona, Dolors Sabater, who declared the event to be ‘la finestra més internacional que projecte Badalona fins allá’ [‘the most international window that

132 projects Badalona outwards’] (2016). The window allegory appropriately describes the bilateral function of the film festival: Filmets serves to project Badalona outwards, while simultaneously reflecting the local concept of other cinemas from around the world through the programming decisions and presentation of awards. Consequently, Filmets participates in shaping local audiences’ ideas of global cinemas, and therefore their understanding of how the identity of Badalona—and Catalonia—tessellates with these other ways of being.

Further analysis of Filmets’ programming decisions indicates the multifaceted visions of identity that the event intends to promote. In conjunction with its emphasis on local talent through the ‘Badalona en curt’ section, Filmets has separate awards for the best film made in Badalona, Catalonia, Spain, the European Union, and globally. The hierarchisation implied in this award pyramid speaks for itself. This advocacy for new local directors is reflected in the prizes awarded: in 2016, the award for Best Film made by a Badalona director was worth €1,000, greater than the €750 awarded to the Best

Catalan, Spanish, and European Union films respectively (Festival Filmets 2016). In similar support for local talent, since 2014 the winners of the award have for the most part studied at film schools in Catalonia (or occasionally beyond); Bruno Aretio and

Florencia Luna, directors of the 2014 winner Mar de fons [Swell], are both alumni of the prestigious ESCAC film school in Barcelona. In 2015, the title went to Las pequeñas cosas

[The Little Things], a short film made by Carla Simón for her Masters project at the

London Film School.24 The 2016 winner, Ricard López, studied at Badalona’s own Escola d’Art i Superior Pau Gargallo; his winning début, La folie [Madness]—a stop-motion animation impression of the night Pablo Picasso created Guernica, his famous painting

24 Simón would later gain national acclaim at the Goyas for Estiu 1993 [Summer 1993], and international fame when the film was submitted to represent Spain in the category of Best Foreign Language Film at the 2018 Oscars. 133 of the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War—was the output of his Masters project. Taken in conjunction, these facts indicate Filmets’ participation in galvanising emerging filmmakers’ work into an acclaimed cadre of auteur filmmaking in Catalonia.

Professional training in Catalonia is also common to the winners of the Best Catalan

Film category. Dani de la Orden, who won the award in 2014, is an ESCAC graduate, and the opening credit sequence of his winning film, Nadador [The Swimmer], proclaims this affiliation. Fernando Trullols, who won in 2016 for his production Marcianos de Marte

[Martians from Mars], attended the Masters in Audiovisual Communication at the

Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, and now teaches a course at the Escola de

Cinema de Reus on the making of the film, as well as delivering courses on the Masters in Production at ESCAC (Escola de Cinema de Reus [n.d.]). As previously demonstrated, the significant domestic publicity that these directors receive through both the selection and commendation of their films at Filmets provides support for home-grown talent, as these accolades are commonly used in promotional materials, trailers, and credits on distributed prints to raise the films’ profiles elsewhere.

In a reflection of the influence of awards on films being selected for other events, and in contrast to the winners in the Badalona category, the Best Catalan Film award has tended to honour more established directors. The award-winners at the 2014, 2015 and

2017 festival editions had all previously collected Gaudí awards for their earlier work.

As such, the selection of Catalan films at more recent editions of Filmets has tended to grant its local and international audience an opportunity to watch the latest offerings from filmmakers who have received the approval of the Acadèmia del Cinema Català, insinuating that the festival’s values align to some extent with the priorities of the administration. The celebration of these directors has the effect of canonising and

134 perpetuating a Catalan film tradition, which in turn is in the interests of representing

Catalonia as an independent national identity on the international stage.

The prominence of the Catalan language at the 2016 edition of Filmets would certainly suggest similar principles to those supported in the 2010 Llei del Cinema. Screenings were predominantly introduced in Catalan by the festival coordinators, except on occasions where directors involved in discussions did not speak the language. The majority of screenings were shown or subtitled in Catalan, with the result being that the event married the local language with international content. This decision had the effect of the festival asserting catalanitat, when understood as intrinsically linked with the

Catalan language, as an eminently glocal identity.

Within the use of language, the organisers of the 2016 edition of Filmets constructed a clear narrative around the festival’s perceived and intended role in the local cultural identity. On the opening day of the event, the festival director declared that Filmets had recuperated the tradition of filmmaking in Badalona, situating its role in a local landscape that stands apart from the rather overwhelming presence of Barcelona.

Reiterating the emphasis on the film festival as a key axis of local identity, Dolors

Sabater stated that Filmets ‘ens ajuda situarnos i projectarnos’ [‘helps us to situate and project ourselves’] (2016). Thus, as recognised by its coordinating team, the contemporary aim of Filmets is unequivocally to function as a sociocultural nucleus, through which residents both understand themselves by triangulating their local identity and make themselves understood beyond their community. Whether and how the Catalan films in its 2016 selection contribute to this aim is discussed in greater detail in Chapter Four.

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D’A Film Festival, Barcelona

In contrast to Filmets, the Festival de Cinema D’Autor de Barcelona (also known as D’A

Film Festival), held in spring in central Barcelona, is a much more recently established event, launching in 2011. Taking place at the latter end of the festival calendar within

Spain, D’A’s programme consists of award-winning films and a substantial number of

Catalan premieres. Whereas Filmets is primarily focused around its competitive section,

D’A only features one selection in which films compete for a critics’ award: that of

Talents, ‘devoted to newcomers with fewer than three films under their belt’ (CCCB

2017). The model has clearly won favour with the Catalan academy; in 2018, the festival was awarded the Acadèmia’s Pepón Coromina award in recognition of its development as an event.

Studying a festival like D’A alongside Filmets can shed light on the nature of the centre/periphery dichotomy operating within Catalonia. Like many of the other film festivals staged in Catalonia, D’A has always taken place in Barcelona. A tension has existed for quite some time between Barcelona and the Catalan territory at large, primarily produced by divergent political governance; Barcelona was governed by the political left until 2011, whereas Catalonia as a whole was controlled by the right-wing regionalist administration of Jordi Pujol (Montaner 2012: 52). Barcelona can thus be considered to represent a distinct landscape within which to position—both geographically and ideologically—a Catalan film festival. D’A is a particularly pertinent case study through which to investigate the roles of cultural institutions within the construction of a film festival’s identity, as it enlists and collaborates with some of

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Barcelona’s most recognised audiovisual institutions as the venues for its events.25 The implications of Barcelona as a backdrop for D’A will be examined later in this section.

D’A’s festival programme also contrasts with that of Filmets through the design of its sections and the designation of its films. While Filmets offers separate sections in which a local, badalonin identity is denominated, the closest approximation to a ‘local’ section that D’A offers is ‘Un impulso colectivo’ [‘A collective impulse’], curated by Carlos

Losilla, which comprises recent films made in Spain considered to represent the vanguard of national audiovisual production. Unlike the programme at Filmets, D’A identifies films made by Catalan and Spanish directors alike as from ‘Espanya’; using the

Catalan noun in this case constructs a discourse in which the language of the film festival is Catalan but the nationality remains Spanish. Similarly, D’A’s 2017 programme heralds 57 of its 88 screenings as Catalan premieres, but also lists Spanish premieres, thus separating the two territories. This strategy implies an understanding of Catalonia as a geographical region of Spain, as opposed to a sub-state national identity in its own right. Importantly, this contrasting position on the role of semantic terms in delineating a Catalan identity as separate from identification as Spanish opens up an alternative position from which to read Filmets, and sheds light on the divergent practices of film festivals within Catalonia in terms of understanding and representing Catalan identity.

Finally, the considerable difference in the age of the two festivals furnishes this study with the opportunity to consider the ways in which the two events approach the curation of their heritage, and how these decisions contribute to defining their identity and position in the cultural landscape. As a much younger festival, D’A does not have the

25 As a self-conscious move in this regard, in accompaniment to the festival in Barcelona, D’A also ‘tours’ some of its programme around other areas of Catalonia—and, since 2018, in other cities across Spain—in order ‘to favor the decentralization of the festival’ (D’A Film Festival [n.d.]). 137 same legacy to draw upon as Filmets, yet this legacy might simultaneously act as baggage for the more inveterate event. Setting out to understand the trajectories of the two case studies provides, in the first instance, an opportunity to observe the challenges that impact long-running film festivals in Spain, many of which have opted to specialise in order to compete with other events in the festival calendar. At the same time, observing D’A’s philosophy enables a sharp focus on the contemporary position of film festivals both in Catalonia and within their broader spheres of operation.

In terms of the self-defined role of D’A in the cinematic landscape of Barcelona and

Catalonia, the festival appears to have been conceived with the goal of acting as an alternative distributor in mind, much like Filmets. According to the festival website, D’A aims to offer its audiences the opportunity to view ‘el millor de la cinematografia contemporània, amb una serie de pel·lícules de llarg recorregut internacional, èxits i premis de crítica i públic, combinades amb propostes de nous talents i cinematografies, tant internacionals com locals’ [‘the best of contemporary cinema, with a series of films that have enjoyed substantial international exhibition, success and critical and public awards, in conjunction with proposals of new talent and cinemas, both international and local’] (D’A Film Festival 2018). The words of Carlos R. Ríos, director of the festival, suggest the didactic principles of the event: ‘[l]a nostra tasca—sent com som un festival internacional no especialitzat—ens exigeix prioritzar entre les pel·lícules que no veurem a les sales de la nostra ciutat. Explorar, proposar i difondre aquestes pel·lícules inèdites és l’essència d’un festival com el D’A’ [‘our task—as a non-specialised, international festival—requires us to prioritise the films that we will not see in the theatres of our city. Exploring, proposing and disseminating these unseen films is the essence of a festival like D’A’] (2017). However, unlike Filmets, the festival programme

138 does not emphasise the catalanitat of its selection, focusing more on introducing audiences to films from outside Catalonia than explicitly positioning Catalan films within international cinematic movements. Before reflecting upon these impressions through the programming decisions taken at D’A’s 2017 edition, I will address the significance of the cultural landscape of Barcelona and its refractions of Catalan identity.

Selecting Barcelona as a location for a film festival predicates a multitude of perspectives on Catalan identity. In recent decades, the capital of Catalonia has become one of the most visited destinations in Europe (Observatori del Turisme a Barcelona

2017: 17). Hosting the Olympic Games in 1992 led to enormous investment in the city’s cultural facilities (Subiro s 1999: 16), contributing to its global recognition as an attractive visitor destination. Indeed, during this time, culture was instrumentalised locally ‘as a tool to ensure social cohesion within the city’s urban transformation’

(Degen and García 2012: 2). These developments transformed Barcelona into being perceived as a city as theatre, able to morph constantly into guises designed to entertain, surprise and delight the public (Waterman 1998: 54)—whether resident or visitor.26 As such, its identity is performed and consumed in endless permutations by those who encounter it.

As part of its theatrical character, it has been proposed that Barcelona’s citizens themselves are recruited to the process of producing and reinforcing the city’s cultural capital (Balibrea 2017: 23–24). Treating citizens as ambassadors of the ‘Barcelona brand’ can again be traced to the discursive practices in the lead-up to the Olympics, when the then Mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall, presented the Games as an

26 Indeed, tensions have arisen regarding the concern that tourists’ desires are being prioritised over residents’ needs; see, for example, civil protests surrounding the number of visitor- targeted AirBnB rental properties (Burgen 2017), and citizens’ claims that they would prefer that Barcelona welcomed migrants over tourists (Burgen 2018). 139 opportunity for the Catalan community to express its character on a global stage (ibid., p. 155). The increased sense of agency and active participation in culture that citizens experienced during this period has given way to the treatment of culture as a commodity for citizens to consume (ibid., p. 23). For Balibrea, the Barcelona municipal government established a form of subjectivity stemming from the concept of a ‘critical citizenship’ which took root in civil movements under the dictatorship, and which, she argues, has come full-circle to align with the functions of the administration (ibid., p. 3).

Within this complex landscape that implicates visitors and residents of Barcelona as contributors to its brand, film festivals can be viewed as exemplifying the theatricality that the Barcelona city-image—and the tourism board that created it—seek. These events celebrate and consolidate residents’ participation in the function of city-as- theatre, while affirming attendees’ capital as cultural subjects.27 Moreover, their transient nature creates interest while asserting the city’s ability to shape-shift, creating contrast with Barcelona’s more enduring visitor attractions, such as the architectural works of Antoni Gaudí. It is, however, important to note that the film festival can be viewed as a specifically ‘bourgeois public sphere’, as Cindy Wong (2011: 159) posits,

‘given the middle-class status and locales in which they foster debates and discussions’

(ibid., p. 161). This perspective nuances the discussion of the coding of Barcelona’s spaces, and reveals that the management of culture is frequently exclusionary as well as conducive to cohesion.

In addition to the implications of Barcelona as a film festival location, D’A makes use of buildings in which a number of the city’s cultural institutions are housed. These

27 Like many arts festivals, film festivals privilege and exclude certain subjects, in their mobilisation as an exclusionary sphere for individuals to build and assert cultural and social capital. See Waterman (1998). 140 locations in themselves impart an additional layer of meaning, and cultural capital—or

‘social value’ (Harbord 2002: 39)—to the festival, and their selection delivers insight into the festival image intended by the organising committee. As other scholars have noted, ‘[t]he development of cultural institutions was part of the very process of differentiating forms of high art from mere mass entertainment, and constructing new hierarchies of taste and discrimination’ (Waterman 1998: 57, paraphrasing Bassett

1993: 1774), as was certainly the case for film. Couching film in institutions dedicated to archives and centres for art and culture—in other words, ‘efforts towards preservation, elevation, education’ (Triana Toribio 2016: 3)—speaks to the further promotion of film as a didactic, high-culture product, in order to legitimise cinema and build the respectability of a national film industry. As will be discussed below, hosting film festivals in these places inflects the events with specific understandings of cinema and interpellates audiences towards a view of film as high art.

Following the principle that ‘cultural institutions are mirrors for the people and society that construct them’ (Carr 2003: 47), selecting these locations thus places D’A at the heart of a debate concerning the identity of Barcelona and its citizens. Reinforcing the powerful influence of these institutions, David Carr continues, ‘[s]ince what we know configures who we are, we might also say that the crafting of truth in cultural institutions is a process of becoming, renewing, or confirming ourselves’ (ibid., p. 48).

As such, the collaboration between these institutions and D’A transmits a potent message as to the institutional endorsement that the festival programme receives and the social role that these institutions play in framing desirable models of citizenship at these events.

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In 2017, the festival made use of four primary locations in central Barcelona: the SGAE

Catalunya headquarters, the Filmoteca de Catalunya, the Centre de Cultura

Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and the Aribau Club multiplex cinema. In the first instance, it is interesting to observe that, through their names, two of these four venues claim to represent the cultural output of Catalonia as a whole. This discussion will first analyse the roles of these two locations, then concentrate on the significance of the more locally framed venues, considering the meanings they confer on the film festival and the films screened.

The building that houses the Filmoteca de Catalunya opened in the Raval neighbourhood of central Barcelona in February of 2012. Studies have referred to the decision to locate the Filmoteca in the Raval, alongside a number of other cultural institutions such as the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona [Barcelona Museum of

Contemporary Art] (MACBA) and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

[Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture] (CCCB), as a last-ditch attempt by the

Ajuntament de Barcelona [Barcelona Town Hall] to ‘dinamitzar el sempitern conflictiu barri del Raval mitjançant equipaments culturals’ [‘stimulate the eternally contested neighbourhood of the Raval by way of cultural facilities’], with the aim of attracting tourists and citizens from other areas of the city to visit the neighbourhood (Ortega Roig

2013: 2; 8). Others consider the facility to be irrelevant to the needs of the district’s inhabitants (Fernández González 2012: 214). It is within this context of criticism that the Filmoteca asserts its intentions to bring about the ‘recuperació, la conservació, la investigació i la difusió de les pel·lícules i les obres audiovisuals’ [‘recovery, conservation, investigation and diffusion of films and audiovisual works’] (Filmoteca de

Catalunya [n.d.]), aims which align with the scholarly observations on the process of

142 elevating film to high art mentioned previously. Housing the largest archive of Catalan cinema in Catalonia, the centre aims to diffuse audiovisual culture through exhibiting these materials to the public (ibid.). Its contribution to the 2017 edition of D’A was to screen the festival’s Focus section, paying homage to the work of Barcelona-born

Mexican director Amat Escalante. The festival programme announced that his work

‘sovint ha despertat controvèrsia’ [‘has always sparked controversy’] (D’A Film Festival

2017: 24), thus framing the Filmoteca (and, by extension, the D’A film festival) as a locus of encounter with the transnational that engages in contentious topics (rather ironic, in fact, considering the controversy of the Filmoteca’s presence in an area that is home to a multiethnic population, predominantly of immigrants from outside Europe). The programme went on to announce that, with the exception of Heli (2013), none of

Escalante’s works had yet been screened commercially in Spain (ibid.), placing the

Filmoteca at the forefront of current debates in the world of cinema.

As noted earlier in this chapter, D’A 2017 featured a collaboration with SGAE Catalunya, which used the event to publicise its role in supporting upcoming Catalan filmmakers.

Specifically, SGAE’s Barcelona headquarters hosted a talk entitled ‘New narratives: distribution and promotion’, targeted at industry professionals, with support from

ICEC’s Servei de Desenvolupament Empresarial [Business Development Service] and

Europa Creative Media. Underscoring the festival’s commitment to professionalising the creative talents working in Catalonia’s audiovisual industry, the partnership also legitimises the representations of Catalan cinema found at the festival, as well as positioning the festival itself as a key event for the Catalan film industry.

The decision to host some of the festival’s events at the CCCB, not far from the

Filmoteca, further reveals the support that the form of Catalan cinema offered by D’A

143 receives from local political bodies in Barcelona. The CCCB is part of a consortium formed by the Diputació de Barcelona and the Ajuntament, which cover 75% and 25% of its annual running costs, respectively. Confirming the involvement of local politicians in the institution, Ada Colau, at present the Mayor of Barcelona, is the vice-president of the General Council of the CCCB (CCCB [n.d.]). Perhaps more significantly, screening the festival films at the CCCB indicates that the long-standing strategy within Catalonia of promoting cinema as an art form endures at D’A, with these cultural settings serving to perpetuate the understanding of cinema—specifically, auteur cinema—as art.

In light of these observations, it is noteworthy that some of D’A’s locations seem particularly devoted to continually reshaping and questioning the idea of a stable, ‘true’ identity, whereas others are committed to preserving the documents that evidence the past. For example, while the Filmoteca de Catalunya houses a centre for conservation and restoration, thus conserving past ‘truths’, the CCCB identifies its mission as debating extant ‘truths’ and considering possible future articulations. The combination of these two influences on the festival produces a tension that is indicative of debates surrounding Catalan identity: on the one hand, the desire to recuperate a national past as grounds for a national future, which is complicated by the notion of an identity that contests and unmakes itself.

Through its programme and locations, D’A curates a form of cinema that is elevated as culturally distinctive and superior to the efforts of the Spanish academy, creating an alternative—ostensibly superior—Catalan space that promotes cinema as high art. The tastemakers in charge of programming the festival showcase deliberately high culture in the form of avant-garde, art film, reinforced by the nominative umbrella of ‘autor’

[‘auteur’] cinema. In such a way, this tastemaking mechanism that sits outside the

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Spanish academy serves to position this Catalan cinematic identity as external and superior to the model promoted by Spanish institutions.

As at Filmets, the programming at D’A reflects a certain idea of identity in Catalonia. One of the sections of D’A which is most salient to this analysis is the aforementioned ‘Un impulso colectivo’ section, ‘devoted to the latest batch of Spanish directors emerging on the fringes of the industry, who produce their films totally independently and are shaking up the cinema scene in this country’ (CCCB 2017). In 2017, this section juxtaposed the work of Catalan directors, such as Elena Martín, one of the stars of Les amigues de l’Àgata (Júlia ist [Julia is], 2016, of which the festival offered the Catalan premiere), and Basque director Leire Apellániz (El último verano [The Last Summer]

(2016)). The name of the section itself indicates an amalgamation of Catalan directors’ work alongside cinema from other autonomous communities in Spain. The section was programmed by Carlos Losilla, an eminent Catalan film critic who has been a member of a number of selection and awarding panels at festivals across Spain (San Sebastián

Festival [n.d.]). He also teaches on the Masters course in Contemporary Film and

Audiovisual Studies at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, indicating the pervasive role of these degree programmes not only in the production of Catalan cinema, as discussed above, but also in the valuation of the work created by their alumni. Losilla has previously written of a tendency within contemporary Catalan cinema to highlight absence or presence, and an overriding sense of uncertainty which he interprets as ‘un posicionament no tant enfront del <> com davant el

<>’ [‘a positioning not so much towards the “Catalan issue” as towards

“Catalan cinema”’] (2016: 29). It is this debate surrounding the position of Catalan cultural identity in contemporary global affairs, and the interrogation of the

145 assumptions upon which such an identity might be based, that this section, and the D’A

Film Festival more broadly, is inclined to foreground. The extent to and means by which contemporary films from Catalonia engage with these questions will be analysed in depth in Chapter Four.

In seeking to establish the industrial and political contexts of filmmaking in Catalonia, this chapter has observed the travails of the Catalan film industry in times of dictatorship and democracy. It has found that filmmaking in Catalonia has engaged with political themes, but has also eschewed them in pursuit of freedom of artistic expression. Examining contemporary legislation—the increased autonomy to fund films in Catalonia granted by the Ley del Cine, and the subsequent linguistic protectionism of the thwarted Llei del Cinema—has shed light on the move by the Catalan government towards equating Catalan linguistic identity with the official view of Catalan citizenship.

Industry bodies and film schools, on the other hand, are contributing to the ongoing academicism of the Catalan film industry, through mentoring emerging filmmakers in the ways of a tradition that puts Catalonia on the map at film festivals. A large part of this stamp of quality is bestowed by film festivals themselves, which play a crucial role as distributors for these films prized for their artistic innovation over their commercial potential. However, the events approach this role from divergent perspectives on

Catalan identity. While Filmets rewards highly local auteurs (from the town of Badalona itself, as well as from Catalonia in contrast to Spain), situating Catalan cultural output as able to compete precisely on the merit of its Catalan-ness, D’A privileges the setting of

Barcelona’s transnational attributes over asserting an eminently Catalan, or indeed barcelonin, identity. These differing portrayals of Catalan identity emerge in part through the set-up of these events, particularly through their programming. To

146 understand the nature of these negotiations in greater depth, Chapter Four will analyse a number of the film texts that these events deploy. The next chapter begins this process of close analysis for festival films from Andalusia.

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Chapter 3. Constructing identity in Andalusian films post-2007

Chapter One of this thesis addressed the policies surrounding contemporary film production in Andalusia, and indicated ways in which legislation shapes the films that are currently produced. The chapter demonstrated that the Alcances festival navigates the inscription of Cádiz as a city with an identity that is at once eminently local and transnational, making use of iconic places in Cádiz and local testimonies in order to do so. SEFF similarly openly situates itself as a European film festival, couching press conferences and discussions on diversifying the Andalusian film industry within this context.

Taking this perspective as a point of departure, this chapter of the thesis analyses a number of Andalusian festival films, taking into account the conditions of their exhibition to consider what forms of Andalusian identity they propose and subsequently reflect back onto the events that host them. This aim responds to the final research question of the thesis outlined in the Introduction—namely, to investigate what the films shown at the contemporary film festivals studied in this project articulate about understandings of Andalusianness. This question will be addressed by way of assessing how the themes identified in these films intersect with recurring debates surrounding cultural identity in Andalusia. The thematic structure of this chapter has been selected in response to the conspicuous recurrence of two particular elements in Andalusian-made festival films during the period of investigation: one is the repeated appearance of Africa in the Andalusian imaginary, and the other is the dominance of music in negotiating Andalusian cultural identity. The first section of this chapter will analyse films that address perspectives on African places and bodies that

148 bear connections with the African continent, negotiated via personal archives dissected on film. The second section addresses the ongoing navigation in cinema of the role and history of music and performance, and most notably the flamenco tradition, as a foundational emblem of Andalusian cultural identity.

‘Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West.’ – Edward Said (2003: 22)

In the films analysed in this section, all of which are documentaries, memories and imaginaries of Africa, particularly the continent’s northern countries, form part of the protagonists’ understanding of their own identities. All three films chart the

‘exploration’ of the continent from within Andalusia, and offer reflections on the ways in which the ‘putative object’ of Africa has inflected, and continues to inflect, Andalusian identities. The complex processes of Othering African territories and bodies emerge as instrumental in understanding the negotiations of historical constructions of its own

Otherhood that continue to take place in Andalusia, a process in which the relatively recent capacity for self-representation in film proves crucial.

The means in which these mechanisms of Othering are processed and narrated in these films shed light on the workings of the contemporary Andalusian cultural imaginary.

For instance, it is telling that in more than one of the films, the concept of Africa appears to stand in as a metonym for what actually refers to the northern countries of the

149 continent, particularly Morocco. The first film, África 815 (Pilar Monsell, 2014), documents a conversation between director Pilar Monsell and her father, Manuel, who recalls his memories of a love affair with a Moroccan man in the 1960s while posted in the Western Sahara with the Spanish army. Throughout the film, Africa is present in his memory, a now geographically distant place from his home in Málaga, but that appears to remain close at hand in his thoughts. A similar imaginary of a place, this time of the

Moroccan city of Casablanca, is documented in Manuel Horrillo’s La fabulosa Casablanca

[The Fabulous Casablanca] (2016), where former residents of the city who have since returned to Spain reminisce about their experiences of living there. The last film in the section, Gurumbé. Canciones de tu memoria negra [Gurumbé. Afro-Andalusian Memories]

(Miguel Ángel Rosales, 2016), addresses Spain’s connections with Africa from a different angle: that of the country’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, and how its legacy has contributed to the Spanish idea of Africa. It is interesting to observe that the narratives of África 815 and La fabulosa Casablanca, both of which were presented as part of the Panorama Andaluz at Alcances, centre on the personal testimonies of individuals recalling their experiences in Africa, while Gurumbé, shown in the Panorama Andaluz at SEFF, attempts to challenge exclusionary narratives of collective Andalusian identity via examining archives and conducting interviews with researchers and musicologists. The divergent strategies of the films, and their resultant evocations of nostalgia and shame towards the Andalusian past, are particularly poignant given these presentations.

The history of Africa in the Andalusian imaginary

Before conducting close readings of these films, it must be acknowledged that the

Spanish imaginary of Africa, and particularly North Africa, has a long and problematic

150 history. Its complexity is inherited from the ambiguous relationship that Spain maintains with the history of much of the Iberian Peninsula as a colony of the Arab and

Berber Muslims in the Middle Ages, which is most significantly recognised (and capitalised upon) in Andalusia. This anxiety is intermingled with the protracted processes of Othering of Spain that have taken place within Europe, reflected in narratives such as the Black Legend, and the infamous nineteenth-century aphorism,

‘Africa begins at the Pyrenees’, usually attributed to the French author, Alexandre

Dumas, père (Colmeiro 2002: 130). As Daniela Flesler argues in her important book, The

Return of the Moor, the contemporary resurgence of this historical Othering continues to trouble Spanish national identity:

Perceived as "Moors", Moroccan immigrants embody the non-European,

African, and oriental aspects of Spanish national identity. Moroccans turn

into a "problem", then, not because of their cultural differences, as many

argue, but because, like the Moriscos, they are not different enough. Like

Freud’s uncanny, or Derrida’s specters, Moroccans become for Spaniards

the return of the repressed (2008: 9).

For Flesler, ‘[t]he Morisco “problem” and its successive problematic “solutions” reveal

Spain’s deep anxiety over the demarcation of national belonging’, which persists in the twenty-first century (ibid.). Within Spanish cultural production, the writer Juan

Goytisolo accused many Spanish authors of the tendency to orientalise Arabs in twentieth-century Spanish society, along with other marginalised groups such as quinquis, gitanos and homosexuals (Sotomayor 1990: 8–9).28 Scholars have observed that this ambivalence towards the region of the Maghreb in particular persists in

28 For more on Goytisolo’s writings and his portrayal of Africa, see Sotomayor (1990) and Davis (2007). 151

Spanish literature of the twenty-first century (Campoy-Cubillo 2012: 12). This stance towards those perceived as Other to the Spanish nation is thus highly revealing as to the myths the nation constructs about itself.

Such ambivalence is perhaps particularly unsurprising with regard to Andalusia when the historiography of the region’s relationship with Africa, and particularly the Islamic heritage of its northernmost countries, is considered. Blas Infante, considered the founding father of Andalusian nationalism, extolled the ‘Moorish’ heritage of the region as evidence of Andalusia’s exceptional cultural heritage, epitomised by the idea of al-

Andalus, the medieval kingdom that preceded the Reconquest (Calderwood 2014a:

401). Indeed, the region has been known to make strategic use of its perceived exoticism for self-serving ends, particularly when it comes to its touristic image both within and outside Spain. As scholars have argued, in twenty-first century Andalusia, the visibility of Muslim and Arab identities is mobilised with an economic motive, in a way intended to appeal to tourists, but which restricts and reduces the concept of these identities (Rogozen-Soltar 2007: 865–66; Calderwood 2014b: 46–49). This motive of cultural exceptionalism offered by the heritage sites in Andalusia clashes uncomfortably with the desire to demonstrate that the autonomous community deserves to be positioned in a ‘modern and secular’ Europe (Rogozen-Soltar 2007: 865).

In connection with the previous point, the title of this subsection recognises that, within the processes through which Spain has been Orientalised, Andalusia in particular has been ‘Othered’ in opposition to Western Europe, especially during the nineteenth century. A large number of travel writers, many hailing from France, produced work that romanticised Andalusia and particularly the region’s gitano communities, often to the extent of fabricating characters in the image of what they expected to see when

152 travelling around Spain (Pantoja 1999: 57). Much of this orientalisation can be attributed to the international renown of the figure of Carmen, in whose enduring image many stereotypes of the gitano community and the exoticism of Spain, and particularly femininity, have coalesced. Most of all, it is Carmen as she appears in George Bizet’s late- nineteenth-century operatic adaptation of Prosper Mérimée’s novella who is credited with popularising the stereotype of the gitana. As a woman from Seville, a city in the heart of Andalusia which still bore (and bears) the marks of centuries of Moorish rule and is one of the closest Spanish peninsular cities to North Africa, Carmen embodies the idea of an exotic Otherness that appealed so greatly to French Romantic writers visiting

Spain: ‘[t]he lush Southern culture of Andalusia that came to stand for Spain as a whole, as Carmen did, contains within it a promise of Easternness that reinforces a sense of

Spanish Otherness. Carmen comes to encompass the French Romantic vision of

Spain/Andalusia as this Other’ (Powrie and others 2007: 22). As José Colmeiro elaborates, the text’s conflation of gypsy identity along with its agglomeration of

Spanish and Andalusian stereotypes confuses ethnic, national, and regional cultures, repositioning ‘both Spain and Gypsies in Europe as exotic internal others’ (2002: 127).

Indeed, it is this ‘dangerous attraction of a sexual and ethnic Other’ that perhaps explains the character’s appeal to nineteenth-century French bourgeois audiences

(Powrie and others 2007: 6). The potent Othering of the Andalusian body will prove important for the negotiation of Othered bodies from Andalusian perspectives in the films discussed in this chapter.

While filmic adaptations of the novella have since emerged from across Western Europe and the United States, as well as South America and Africa, Spanish directors have also drawn upon the Carmen myth as inspiration for their films, as is the case of Carlos

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Saura’s 1983 adaptation, Carmen (Powrie and others 2007: x) (and, as noted in the introduction to this thesis, Ocho apellidos vascos, itself an inverted nod to the classic

Basque/Andalusian dyad). An array of filmic interpretations have appeared, but their adaptations still cling to the central premises of sexual passion, desire and death

(Powrie and others 2007: 6), embodied in the figure of Carmen. Her character thus demarcates gitana identity as fatally Other, unknowable, unpredictable and alluring. In

Colmeiro’s words, the ‘fundamental ambivalence’ that endures in the Carmen myth echoes the sense of the ongoing lack of resolution of Otherness in contemporary culture, perhaps thus explaining ‘the romantic fascination with the marginal, bohemian, exotic, and premodern, but also reveals the need to tame it, to control it, and ultimately to neutralize and destroy it’ (2002: 128).

What the Carmen myth ultimately exemplifies, then, is the commodification of

Otherness proposed by bell hooks, which can be used as a demonstration of power and dominance: ‘[w]hen race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the Other’ (2006:

23). As he kills her, Carmen’s body is subjected to don José’s power over her; the drama constructs a dichotomy of ‘the cold, rational, and noble North (France, but also more specifically Navarre) versus the hot-blooded and lower-class South (Spain, but also more specifically Andalusia)’ (Powrie and others 2007: 18). The intrinsic power dynamic in the commodification of Otherness proves an important consideration in terms of how these films discursively position Africa to negotiate Andalusian identity.

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The films in this section present ambiguous, often conflicting relationships between their protagonists and the idea of Africa. In the cases of África 815 and La fabulosa

Casablanca, it is observed that North Africa is exoticised by those interviewed in the documentary, recalled as a distant and fabled land to which Andalusians escaped during the mid-twentieth century, fleeing political or sexual oppression, or seeking employment to provide for their families in the midst of a harsh economic period in rural Spain. Conversely, Gurumbé presents the African continent as an overlooked contributor to Andalusian cultural identity and to one of the region’s most prized cultural expressions: flamenco music. In both instances, the complex relationship with the idea of Africa as a cultural, geographical and ethnic Other to Andalusia is exposed and negotiated, in an attempt to decipher where the imaginary of Africa should fit (as indeed, all three films seem to argue that it must) into an understanding of how contemporary Andalusian cultural identity is formulated.

Renegotiating the Andalusian past: The view of Africa from Andalusia

In order to understand the ongoing negotiations of Africa in Andalusian films, it is first necessary to contextualise the precursors to these cinematic representations of the spaces that these films depict. For decades, Western European and North American cultural production has exoticised North African places. The urban spaces of Morocco have received particular attention in cinema, and films shot (or merely set) in these locations are often temporally situated during the era of the French and Spanish

Protectorate in the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, the city of Tangier has featured in many films, most often made by European directors and starring

European or North American actors. Patricia Pisters dates the city’s significance in the global cultural imaginary back to the nineteenth century, arguing that it has been 155 perceived since that time as ‘an extremely complex, chaotic, dangerous and at the same time alluring and open city’ (2010: 175)—a description instantly reminiscent of that used by Powrie and others to analyse the construction of Carmen’s character as Other.

This ambiguous vision of Tangier is revealed in a number of European- and U.S.-made films released following the Second World War, with the depictions of the city in films such as the French director André Hunebelle’s 1949 production Mission à Tanger

[Mission in Tangier] cementing its image as a ‘spy’s nest’ during the post-war period

(ibid., p. 177). Spanish productions also took part in this portrayal of the city as a den of illicit activity and a fascinating place, as titles like Los misterios de Tánger [The Mysteries of Tangier] (Carlos Fernández Cuenca, 1942) suggest. This film would inspire a string of other Spanish-made films based in the city (Elena 2014: 381). These texts can be understood to have reinscribed North Africa, particularly Morocco, in the Spanish national imaginary as an exoticised Other, rather than as communities which interacted with, informed and contributed to Spanish (and particularly Andalusian) society.

Decades later, both fiction and documentary contemporary filmic texts have continued to mythologise Tangier’s reputation for danger and glamour, as in the tellingly named

1986 Spanish production, El sueño de Tánger [The Dream of Tangier] (Ricardo

Franco),29 the 1987 James Bond film, The Living Daylights, where the famous British spy tracks down his Russian adversary in the city, and the 1996 documentary, Tanger,

Legende einer Stadt [Tangier, Legend of a City], by German director Peter Goedel, which reprises a nostalgic celebration of Tangier’s ‘golden years’ of the 1940s and 1950s

(Pisters 2010: 178).

29 El sueño de Tánger was one of the first films to receive the subsidies outlined in the Ley Miró (Muñoz 1991). 156

As well as Tangier, of course, perhaps the most famous Moroccan city to have been represented in film for Western audiences is Casablanca. Michael Curtiz’ 1942 eponymous film about the city contributed substantially to portraying Casablanca as an enclave of illicit activity, involving characters who were often on the run from their respective nations’ authorities. As might be predicted when comparing the film with the above comments, it has been claimed that Casablanca is actually based on the Tangier of the epoch (Elena 2014: 379). In Western filmic representations of both Tangier and

Casablanca, researchers have identified a tendency to romanticise these Moroccan cities. Scholars have referred to Homi Bhabha’s use of images of Tangier and Casablanca to demonstrate the postcolonial temporalities that both metropolises construct.

Outlining his ‘temporality of Casablanca’, Bhabha invokes the famous line in Curtiz’ film,

‘Play it again, Sam’, as typifying the desire for repetition and fixity: ‘an invocation to similitude, a return to eternal verities’ (1994: 261). As Patricia Pisters expands, ‘as demonstrated with contemporary films like Last Summer in Tangier and Tangier,

Legend of a City, it remains difficult for the former colonizer to let go of the past, which is therefore revisited very often in a nostalgic fashion, projecting personal loss onto the collective loss, sticking to a “temporality of Casablanca”’ (2010: 184).

It should be noted that more recent cinematic output in Spain has made efforts to subvert the discursive paradigm of colonial nostalgia from a Spanish perspective, although many of these films structure this reinscription from the position of Spain as a host country for immigrants. This positioning results in the Spanish gaze falling upon

‘the new “others” in its midst’, and does not often include the perspective of the individuals with whom the films hope that the audience will identify (Rabanal 2014:

136). A notable example of a film which aims to subvert this perspective, recasting a

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Spanish male protagonist as Other in a Moroccan town, is Retorno a Hansala [Return to

Hansala] (2008) (ibid., p. 137). The film was directed by Chus Gutiérrez, a filmmaker from Andalusia, whose previous works have also reflected a critical observation of

Spanish society’s processes of Othering.30 As will be discussed in this section, despite attempts to critically engage with the colonial past, the absence of perspectives of the

North African fellow citizens and partners evoked in La fabulosa Casablanca and África

815 result in the nostalgia for a bygone era being reinstated in the accounts that these films explore.

In direct relation to the nostalgic imaginary of Africa, at times, the film texts under analysis here portray African territories as dreamlike in character. Near the beginning of África 815, it becomes plain that Manuel has constructed Africa as a dream; a land where he will be able to realise all of his undisclosed desires. In his memoir, Manuel captions the 5th of March, 1964 as ‘el día de mi liberación’ [‘the day of my liberation’], and explains that travelling to Africa was ‘uno de mis grandes sueños’ [‘one of my greatest dreams’]. The desert landscapes that recur in Manuel’s grainy sepia photographs merge with his nostalgia to take on an oneiric quality, as if he is attempting to recall a place where perhaps he has never been, but has only imagined. The inhospitability and barrenness of the North African desert conveyed in his photographs recall the isolation of the Spanish meseta, producing an uncanny resemblance that is strangely familiar. While for Manuel, the desert is portrayed as a place of contentment, it does recall the recurring theme of ‘Spain’s plains as the realm of inner exile’ (Kovács

1991: 31) in the Spanish cinema of the dictatorship, and, indeed, beyond (Davies 2012:

68). It is as if Manuel captures these landscapes on film in an attempt to find a sense of

30 Gutiérrez declared that her 2002 film, Poniente [West], reflected ‘a world of migrations, because we are all the result of them’ (cited in Santaolalla 2003: 49). 158 meaning and belonging that he was denied in Spain. For Manuel, the deserts of North

Africa became his ‘El Sur’, where he was ‘young and happy and in tune with life’, ironically replacing Southern Spain as the utopian daydream for the protagonist in

Victor Erice’s 1983 film (Kovács 1991: 33). In recording the vast, empty landscapes of the desert, Manuel’s photographs contrast the Sahara with his descriptions of his former home in urban Madrid, his gaze exemplifying how he exoticises the land as Other to his home terrain.

Figure 4: La vida en rosa: Manuel’s title for his memoirs of his time in North Africa reveals the extent of his nostalgia

As well as the conceptual difference that Manuel delineates between Spain and Africa, it is apparent that the geographical distance between the two holds an appeal for him and contributes to the exoticism of the Western Sahara. He declares that part of his motivation for travelling to Africa was to ‘irme lo más lejos posible de Madrid y de casa’

[‘to get as far away as possible from Madrid and my home’], and it seems that he was able to gain ideological as well as spatial distance from his home. For the young Manuel,

Spain represented the heteronormative family unit, conservative social mores that criminalised his sexuality, and a life regimented by the fascist authorities. As well as its

159 material denomination, Manuel describes the Western Sahara as a virtual desert of laws in comparison to Spain—an ironic characterisation, as he had been posted there to live a life of military obedience, synonymous with discipline, order, protocols, and a rigid vision of masculinity as heterosexual. Whereas Manuel was able to be open about his sexuality while on post in El Aaiún, Spain under Franco did not make room for him as a citizen. In this sense, Manuel’s life can be read as standing as a metonym for Andalusia, and the broader tragedies of oppression and the consequences of an enforced collective identity at the individual level. Of course, it can never be said that his life would have necessarily unfolded the way that he dreamt had he had the freedom to live as a young gay man in Spain, just as imagining that a fully autonomous Andalusia would have been able to pull itself from its economic suffering is impractical. Nonetheless, Manuel’s story retraces the oft-trodden tracks of nostalgia laid by decades of Spanish cinema, lamenting past events and their impact at individual, regional and national levels.31

The former residents interviewed in Manuel Horrillo’s La fabulosa Casablanca exhibit a similar relationship to their past life in the city, recalling wistfully the liberal social attitudes to which they had grown accustomed. In their memories, Casablanca is depicted as a quasi-utopia, a paradise lost where families from different countries

(albeit invariably Western ones) coexisted in freedom and prosperity. Their testimonies echo the idealistic vision of the North African city as an enclave for liberal Spanish exiles to escape dictatorial repression.

31 Curiously, Manuel’s experience of alienation from twentieth-century Spain has a striking parallel with the life of Juan Goytisolo, whose heterosexual marriage, then subsequent life in Morocco with a former gay lover, almost describes Manuel’s life in reverse. For both men, North Africa therefore seemed to represent a place of sexual freedom, in stark contrast to the repression to which they were subject in Spain.

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Othered bodies: Racialised identities in Andalusia

A problematic facet of this nostalgia is that it is solely based on the perspective of the

European families who settled in these places. As a result, in both África 815 and La fabulosa Casablanca, what is absent is the testimony of the Moroccans alongside whom they resided during that time. In África 815, this absence creates room for a one-sided representation of the local community from a Spanish perspective. Aside from exoticising the African continent itself, it becomes clear that Manuel had fantasised about the people he would encounter there: ‘hombres diferentes, con otras razas, otra cultura, otras esquemas’ [‘different men, of other races, other cultures, other frames of reference’]. As well as envisioning the places in which he finds himself as distinctly

Other, Manuel constructs the Maghrebi people who inhabit these places as exoticised

Others. Just as North Africa became a place of sexual liberation and discovery for

Manuel, so the Maghrebi body comes to symbolise experimentation and sexual freedoms for him.

Previous scholarship has recognised the tendency to sexualise the Muslim body in

Spanish cultural production; Stanley Black has noted that in Juan Goytisolo’s work, the writer observes a dichotomy between the ‘sensualidad que encarnaban los musulmanes’ [‘sensuality that the Muslims embodied’] (1977: 91) and the sexual repression that, he argues, emerged as an attempt to forge a Spanish national identity grounded in Catholicism following the Reconquest (Black 2001: 23). This sentiment endures in Francoist Spain in the repressive Catholicism and strict sexual mores from which Manuel found his escape in North Africa. His desire for the North African body is perhaps in part informed by this continued understanding of the Muslim North African as a more sensual being, or at least as more open to their own sensuality, than was

161 permitted to Spanish citizens in the Spain of the dictatorship. By this token, it would seem that Manuel perceived his lovers as Other to himself, and suggests that his pleasure was, to some extent, derived from their Otherness. Through his admiration of his Moroccan lovers’ presence in his photographs, Manuel is, in a sense, seen to consume the Other.

Crucially, the aforementioned attitude of ‘fundamental ambivalence’ (Colmeiro 2002:

128) to the Othered Maghrebi body is confirmed in Manuel’s consternation at his ultimate inability to possess his partners or control their actions. Manuel seems offended by their personhood, unwilling to accept it; their own desires are illegitimate, inferior to his own intention to possess them as a lover. His denial of their agency is most clearly seen when he discovers his lover’s intention to move to Europe, and interprets it as an abuse of his trust:

‘[y] él, como todos los musulmanes del Maghreb, su obsesión por huir de

África y de incorporarse al mundo, a Europa, al mundo moderno; lo que

ellos creían y veían a la tele, ellos creían que era Europa. Luego, cuando

llegaron aquí...llegaron aquí y se iban decepcionando poco a poco’.

[‘and, he, just like all the Muslims from the Maghreb, (had) his obsession

with escaping Africa and becoming part of the world, of Europe, of the

modern world; what they believed in and saw on the TV, they thought was

Europe. Then, when they arrived here...they arrived here and, little by little,

they became disappointed’].

Manuel’s pain at feeling deceived by past lovers manifests in his agglutination of all of

‘them’ as having the same ulterior desire: to reach Europe at whatever cost, including

162 entering into what he now believed to be a sham relationship. In a reinscription of human bodies as colonised territories, Manuel appears to stand in for Spain (and, as a

European country, for Europe): a country invaded by Others determined to take advantage of what it can offer them. His description of the men’s perceived desire to leave Africa for Europe evokes a sense of victimhood at the hands of an invasive Other, yet Manuel does not appear to read his own arrival in North Africa as a similarly intrusive act. In the same way as he believed his lovers conflated European countries,

Manuel conflates the African countries to which he travelled, compounding their

Otherness to Spain by agglomerating them into a supposedly homogeneous territory.

The title of the film itself evinces this, avoiding naming the specific countries in which

Manuel served. The exoticised imaginary of Africa that Manuel has nurtured is compounded by his occasional confusion of the countries within it in his memories; initially posted in El Aaiún, on the edge of the Western Sahara, he later makes reference to men he met in Morocco and Tunisia, at one point appearing to begin to say Morocco before changing his statement to Tunisia when he recalls realising that one of his lovers was using him to travel to Europe. His criticism of his lovers’ view of a homogeneous

Europe is therefore mirrored, and challenged, by his parallel (and somewhat neocolonial) view of Africa.

In contrast to the Othering of the Maghrebi body by Manuel in África 815, Gurumbé attempts to denounce the injustice of the ongoing racialised bounds of Spanish, and specifically Andalusian, identity. In broad terms, Gurumbé seems to question the foundations of what is permitted to constitute contemporary Andalusian identity, and demands a reassessment of what the film suggests has been constructed as its central tenet: ethnicity. By referring to cultural traces in dance and music, as well as human

163 remains, the narrative makes the case that a dissimulated black culture lies at the heart of contemporary Andalusian identity (with, it seems, the term ‘black’ standing in as a metonym for African culture, and specifically referring to those individuals who were ensnared in the slave trade). Through the heavy involvement in the slave trade of some of the region’s urban centres, Seville and Cádiz, the narrative proposes that Andalusian culture in particular has for centuries drawn from the cultural encounters produced therein, even if on many occasions these were subdued and have likely been erased due to the power structures in place. The means by which Gurumbé subverts what it identifies as the connection of Andalusian culture with non-black ethnicity recalls

Werner Sollor’s term, ‘cultural insiderism’, used by Paul Gilroy (1993: 3) to illustrate the means by which English national identity has been constructed as white and as inextricable from a cultural identity. In the case of England, Gilroy argues that this process ultimately constructs the nation as ‘an ethnically homogeneous object’ (ibid.), a concept which, as scholars have observed, exerts continued influence upon the forms of nationalisms in the Spain of the autonomous communities (Flesler 2008: 38).

While numerous films from across Spain have attempted to critique the at times xenophobic attitude towards ‘outsiders’, critics have noted that their strategies often culminate in reinforcing the marginality and ‘voicelessness’ of the individuals they depict (Rabanal 2014: 136). Indeed, there are problems with the means by which

Gurumbé configures blackness. First and foremost, the full title of the film, Gurumbé:

Canciones de tu memoria negra (officially translated as Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian

Memories, but literally meaning ‘songs of your black memory’), interpellates an

Andalusian audience through its dissection of the (or ‘your’) Andalusian past, yet its naming of blackness presupposes a non-black audience through the perceived need to

164 state its difference. Moreover, the film at times appears to cast black bodies as a spectacle of Otherness. This spectacle is clearest in the scenes where black British flamenco artist Yinka Graves’ performance follows the festival in Senegal. The camera pans up from her feet, drawing attention to Graves’ body as a site of contestation of the whiteness of flamenco, but in doing so appears to fetishise her difference from the audience’s expectations of a flamenco dancer. In such a way, to use Sara Ahmed’s words,

Gurumbé appears to ‘welcom[e] the stranger as the origin of difference’ (2000: 4, emphasis in the original), thus persisting in coding the black body as outside of

Andalusian identity.

What is interesting about the stance presented in Gurumbé in this respect is that, through emphasising the presence of the black African community in early-modern

Andalusia and attempting to redraw the boundaries (primarily in terms of race) of what is viewed as Andalusian, the narrative seems to mount the claim to Andalusian identity on the principle of jus sanguinis (the right to citizenship via one’s ancestry). This position is potentially problematic, in that the inverse implies that if one cannot profess to have ancestral heritage from a given place, then one has no right to live there. This theory in turn clashes with the contemporary political issues surrounding migration that are raised in the film’s final sequence, which reveals the impact of classing certain bodies as outsiders. In appearing to condemn the means by which Frontex polices the

Andalusian coastal border, the sequence jars with the film’s prior intimation of a right to citizenship based on ethnic heritage; the implication of this notion is, therefore, that EU countries have no obligation to accept those who cannot claim asylum on the basis of possessing a family history in the destination country.

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The involvement of this gaze from the shores of Andalusia upon North Africa is particularly relevant when considering the portrayal of collective identity, and in particular, its intersection with the changing configurations of bodies in places, in contemporary debates surrounding immigration. The Othering tendencies revealed, but not necessarily questioned and problematised, by África 815 and La fabulosa Casablanca are troubling in the context of the humanitarian crisis surrounding migration flows.

Miguel Ángel Rosales has expressed his intention to comment on contemporary issues of immigration through Gurumbé (La Vanguardia 2016b). This discourse is most evident through the closing scene of the film, which draws the narrative alarmingly close to present-day events. In the last minutes of the film, interviews with academic Arturo

Morgado and journalist Abuy Nfubea coalesce on the same topic: the cumulative stereotyping and resultant dehumanisation of people of African origin in Western thought and contemporary media. Nfubea concludes that this tendency to use dehumanising descriptors for migrants is the present-day crystallisation of the mentality of slavery, where certain bodies are constructed as dangerous and strange

(Ahmed 2000: 4). Subsequently, in a scene that jars with the visual language of the rest of the documentary, footage that appears to imitate surveillance tape depicts the work of the ‘European Network Patrol’ on the Andalusian coast. With crosshairs and sound effects recalling thriller films, the scene seems almost to descend into parody; stylistic effects aside, it depicts the platform Frontex, an initiative set up in 2004 by the

European Union to patrol its external frontiers. In 2016, the year of Gurumbé’s release, an additional bill was introduced to strengthen the Frontex proposal.

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Figure 5: Distant threat? The coast of Africa in a border guard’s binoculars, from the closing scene of Gurumbé

There is a grave irony in this final scene, in that, after explaining in detail that

Europeans (specifically, chiefly Portuguese and Spanish merchants) brought African slaves to Spain and wider Europe on boats, the film now shows that migrants on boats from the African continent are being policed and kept out. If África 815 and La fabulosa

Casablanca reveal the privileged movement of white bodies between Andalusia and

North Africa, then Gurumbé attempts to challenge the depiction of non-white bodies as outside the bounds, ideological and territorial, of Andalusian collective identity.

Bodies out of place: Embodying Andalusian identity

Having discussed the relationship between place and memory, it is apparent how places become integral to a sense of identity, and thus a feeling of belonging. Embodied experience of places, and the perception of bodies within those places, inflect a sense of belonging (or not) in a place (Ahmed 2006: 135). The three films in this section address this experience of ‘bodies out of place’, whether that sense of being ‘out of place’ is felt by the owners of those bodies themselves or by individuals who encounter them and

167 intuit their presence as strange. The inscription of this strangeness can shed light on what is coded as a normative identity for inhabitants of these places, in this case

Andalusia, by delineating what is considered ‘outside’ the cultural identity of the region

(Ahmed 2000: 3–6). In the cases of África 815 and La fabulosa Casablanca, it is

Spaniards, or individuals born in Morocco to Spanish families, who experience a feeling of strangeness in their adopted home (in both cases, Málaga, on the Andalusian coast).

Conversely, Gurumbé attempts to recode the black African body, arguing its right to belong as an agent in Andalusian cultural identity.

La fabulosa Casablanca begins by contextualising the human traces that have shaped contemporary Casablanca, particularly in terms of the encounter of numerous nationalities and the stratification of communities in the city. Like the French who settled there, the families who arrived from Spain imported traditions that they associated with their homeland; Spaniards, many of whom were from Andalusia (Otazu

2016), set down roots in particular barrios [neighbourhoods] of the city, opened bars, and, in 1947, the Centro Español, to receive their countrymen and women as they continued to arrive. Through this context, the physical mapping of Casablanca is immediately linked to questions of nationality. One of the interviewees affirms the apparent effacing of regional identities, as the Spaniards worked in solidarity to produce a feeling of belonging as a minority community in an unfamiliar land: ‘Lo que sí es que éramos todos españoles—allí no había catalanes, ni vascos, ni gallegos, ni andaluces, éramos todos españoles—y era un frente común, entonces no había diferencias’ [‘One thing’s for sure: we were all Spanish—there were no Catalan people, or Basques, Galicians, or Andalusians; we were all Spanish. It was something we all had in common; back then there were no differences’]. This statement supports the idea that

168 identity is relational: that, when outside a native country, identities are employed as markers of difference, and are often homogenised into a reductive category that is meaningful both to the residents of the receiving country and to those who form part of the new, larger group. In line with the observation that diasporic communities often attempt to reconstruct a symbolic ‘home’ in the destination country (Stock 2010: 25), perhaps this sublimation of regional identities into a more homogenised community marked as ‘Spanish’ occurs as a result of the encounter with a ‘national’ difference that is also understood as ethnic difference.

One division that the film’s interviews highlight within this supposedly harmonious community, however, is that of class. One speaker considers that the Andalusian migrants to Casablanca could be relatively neatly divided into two categories: those who travelled for economic motives, leaving behind families and a patria [homeland] to which they one day hoped to return; and those usually highly educated individuals who relocated to seek political refuge, ‘la mayoría de una cultura diferente’ [‘most of whom were from a different culture’]. The implicit class division in this supposedly united diaspora community further highlights that the Spanishness, and by extension

Andalusianness, present in Casablanca was not as easily reducible as the previous statements proposed.

Subsequent scenes in La fabulosa Casablanca reveal that the linguistic codification of

Andalusian places functions to classify certain bodies as strange. We see this chiefly through Pedro Casablanc, who was born in Casablanca but whose parents were from

Andalusia. The uneasy experience of moving to Málaga that Casablanc describes as the camera follows him through the city’s streets implies the inherent instability of attempting to map an identity onto a spatial location. ‘Returning’ to a culture that he had

169 never known, and that he experienced vicariously through the memories of others,

Casablanc’s description of his experience, coupled with the long shots that frame him within the urban landscape of Málaga, evokes a phenomenological separation between himself and the spaces that he now inhabits. As Casablanc describes his experience of speaking French as marking him as an outsider, he passes bars with signs written in

Spanish. Casablanc appears marked out as uncanny, in the sense that others recognise him but do not know how to categorise him; while his knowledge of Spanish enables him to ‘pass’ as a local, his linguistic and cultural differences separate him from his spatial milieu. The linguistic landscape composed by these signs and slogans does not accommodate his bilingualism. In being uncanny, Casablanc embodies the ‘momentous, if momentary, extinction of the recognizable object of culture’ (Bhabha 1994: 180), highlighting the artifice of, in this case, Andalusian culture. In ‘passing’ as Andalusian, yet speaking in a language that is not Spanish, Casablanc’s presence constitutes a site of rupture, exposing the limits of a fixed Andalusian cultural identity. In a phenomenon reminiscent of Bhabha’s ‘splitting’ (1994: 188), Casablanc finds himself negotiating seemingly contradictory identities in a society that demands certainty. Casablanc’s narrative as a migrant who is able to ‘pass’ as Spanish appears to exemplify the displacement of the ‘homogeneous narrative of the modern Western nation’ that

Bhabha proposes (Pisters 2009: 302).

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Figure 6: Out of place? Pedro Casablanc walks through the streets of Málaga in La fabulosa Casablanca

Through its portrayal of the city of Casablanca, La fabulosa Casablanca acknowledges what Isabelle McNeill recognises as the spatialisation of memory. McNeill’s argument that cities ‘can be positioned in film as points of intersection between past and present’

(2010: 124) is supported in Horrillo’s film, using form to connect memories recalled by those who lived in Casablanca decades previously. By juxtaposing images from the archives of the city with those from the present day, the film evokes the passage of time and, significantly, the conflict between former residents’ ossified memories and the dynamism of the city’s present. The film demonstrates this most effectively when

Casablanc narrates his recollections of his former school, the Instituto Español. As the voiceover continues, the camera moves at eye level through an empty school corridor, evoking the space being described. Due to the absence of Casablanc (or indeed anyone) from the shot, the camera implies that this image is how he imagines the school now, highlighting the passage of time since he was there. The following sequence dispels this dream of absence, as teenagers gather and talk in the school courtyard, eventually passing through the same corridor. The arrival of a different generation presents a clash of temporalities: the emptiness of the space imagined by Casablanc, as in his memory he 171 no longer occupies it, and its contemporary use by a new cohort of students. Recalling the subjectivity of memory, the sequence simultaneously demonstrates the repeated reinscription of urban spaces by an ever-changing population. These scenes expose the role of memory and the past in the formation of identity, and the influence that these recollections have on the contemporary construction of self. Through this assertion of the present, the scene uproots the use of Casablanca as a repository of memories for its

European former residents, affirming the city as a changing, living place.

Linked to the changing interactions between people and places in the city is the idea that the meaning of a place, and what it means to belong there, is fluid. This sentiment put forward by La fabulosa Casablanca has implications for both Málaga and Casablanca, and for connections between people, place and identity as a whole. In capturing

Casablanc’s experience of living in Málaga as an immigrant from Morocco, the film implies a tacit acknowledgement that the understanding of what Málaga ‘means’ will be inflected, and decided, by its residents—who are, in some cases, those who consider themselves citizens not merely of that city, but ‘de cualquier parte’ [‘of anywhere’], as

Casablanc declares at the end of the film (incidentally, echoing the description of

Bogart’s Rick Blaine as a ‘citizen of the world’ in Michael Curtiz’ film). Evoking a cosmopolitan understanding of place, Casablanc’s words suggest an interpretation of the meanings of place (and of identity) as mutable. Just as what Málaga signifies is both informed and transformed by its residents and visitors, Casablanca’s significance to different people is constantly changing.

As such, the film implies that different responses to these changes are inevitable. Of the present and former residents of Casablanca interviewed in the film, René Cerdan, the son of internationally-acclaimed local boxing star Marcel Cerdan, resents this change:

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‘[y]a no es nuestra Casablanca. Odio esa Casablanca, porque no es lo nuestro’ [‘It isn’t our Casablanca any more. I hate that Casablanca, because it isn’t what we’re about’].

Conversely, Candide Carrasco is accepting of this inevitability: ‘[y]a no existe, y está bien, porque ese país pertenece a la juventud marroquí; pertenece a la gente que están allí, que lo viven, que lo sienten’ (sic.) [‘it no longer exists, and that’s fine, because that country belongs to the young people of Morocco—it belongs to the people there, who live it, who feel it’]. While Cerdan seems intent on maintaining a fixed understanding of

Casablanca, a ‘temporality of Casablanca’ where the city serves as an unending repetition of nostalgia (Bhabha 1994: 261), the interjections of Carrasco propose that, much like McNeill’s conceptualisation of memory, the city represents a palimpsest

(2010: 125), an organism that variously decays and regenerates according to the priorities of its inhabitants.

Personal and collective archives

The narrative of La fabulosa Casablanca reveals the tension between the treatment of the city as both a personal and a collective archive. It supports the inexorable change evoked in Carrasco’s perspective, at the same time as it illustrates both the physical and perceived metamorphoses of Casablanca as inevitable, but as contentious among residents. The resonance of this theme with contemporary debates in Andalusia is highlighted in a scene in which a shot of a central city street, presumably from the era of the Protectorate, is superimposed with its counterpart from the present day. The visible modernisation of the street, implying an erasure of the past by the present, is overlaid with a voiceover from a young Casablancan student, who expresses consternation that

‘Casablanca es un vestigio del dominio francés y estamos destruyéndolo todo por unos ignorantes’ [‘Casablanca is a vestige of the French rule and we are destroying it all

173 because of a few ignorant people’]. Her view that the colonial buildings should be retained is supported by an interview with Rachid Andaloussie Benbrahim, the head of the Casa Mémoire in Casablanca, whose evocation of the ‘richesses’ [‘wealth’] of heritage buildings in Andalusia raises questions of preservation of historical sites and indicates their perceived importance for the stabilisation of a collective cultural identity.

Benbrahim advocates the practice of preservation as:

[L]a réconciliation avec soi-même, avec l’espace, le cadre de vie, et puis

après, justement, la réappropriation de ce patrimoine extraordinaire.

[‘[R]econciliation with oneself, with space, with the surroundings in which

one lives, and then, the fitting reappropriation of this extraordinary

cultural heritage’].

Connecting the preservation of Casablanca’s colonial buildings to those built in

Andalusia recognises the complexity of negotiating a supposedly coherent cultural identity. Benbrahim’s statement forges a link between self and place, indicating the fundamental connection between the two. By invoking a past that permeates the present through both the memories of former residents and the temporal layers that compile to form the palimpsestic city, La fabulosa Casablanca suggests the vital importance of reconciliation with memories of the past in order to make space for more inclusive notions of identity.

The instabilities inherent in the perspectives offered in both África 815 and La fabulosa

Casablanca ultimately stem from their recourse to personal archives documenting one side of the encounter with Otherness. These sources imply that, while the meanings of places and identities are shown to be mutable, for their creators, identity is often

174 founded on a fixed idea of a specific place at a given temporal moment. It is clear that this particular relational dynamic of the North African and Andalusian pasts is a crucial component of their understanding of their identity. In África 815, the spectator’s access to Manuel’s past is mediated via his photographs, and a scene showing a photograph of the director Pilar Monsell and members of her family is one of the most revealing moments of the film. Her father shows her an image of her alongside her siblings, flanked by her father and a young man. Casting her gaze over the image, the meaning of the scene becomes revised and reinterpreted; through Pilar’s perspective and her father’s divulgations, the viewer recognises the young man at his side as Manuel’s lover, posing in a fantasy of the family that Manuel might have constructed for himself.

This scene is especially revelatory in that it reminds the viewer that the past is always reconstructed from the position of the present, whether in terms of personal or collective narratives. Manuel’s reconstitution of his family unit alludes to a wistful desire to have reconfigured the heteronormative marriage expounded by the national ideology, reflecting upon a time when he felt forbidden from publicly conducting his personal life as he would have wished. The inclusion of the image calls to mind

Marianne Hirsch’s contention that the family album ‘can expose the relationship between family photography and the ideological structures of—in this case—the

American family romance with its ever shifting meanings’ (1997: 47). In this scene, it is the Spanish familial blueprint under Franco that is queried, made material by Pilar’s perspective as a citizen of Spain now challenged to revise the family model within which she grew up. If the family can be understood as a metonym for the nation, Manuel’s revelation of his desire to reconfigure the formula for the prescribed ‘nuclear family’ reveals his wish to rework the Spanish nation into a form in which he could belong.

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Ostracised as he felt during those years, his memoirs tell a story of a man whose identity did not fit the mould of a Spanish citizen. Left feeling out of place as a citizen of nowhere, his story equates to a rupture in the project of an essentialising collective identity.

Figure 7: Reconfiguring family, reformulating the nation: Manuel’s fantasy family portrait in África 815

Like África 815, La fabulosa Casablanca constructs Casablanca as a site of nostalgia through sources created by the interviewees in the film; this time, it is found footage recorded on Super 8 film that depicts scenes of families at the beach. As well as clearly indexing the ‘past-ness’ of the footage, the Super 8 medium is also profoundly self- reflexive, laying bare the device of the documentary while simultaneously recalling the cinematic capital of the city of Casablanca. The fact that the memories of even former residents of the city are mediated via film highlights the extent to which Casablanca has been mythologised. This mythology is shown to continually disrupt the present, as the footage is interspersed with interviews with Casablancans now living in Spain and the

United States.

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Indeed, the film is ostensibly structured to present the viewer with Manuel’s perspective; the emphasis placed on his ‘family’ photograph is a particular instance in which Western values are exposed. For whatever reason, ultimately the viewer is not offered the perspective of Manuel’s romantic partners from Morocco and Tunisia.

Marianne Hirsch’s use of Kaja Silverman’s theories of ideopathic and heteropathic identification can be useful to consider the implications for identity formation, as she notes: ‘[t]o admit the other into one’s familial image offers different and broader possibilities from admitting the other into one’s image of self. The latter process, as

Silverman shows, is most often incorporative and cannibalistic, ideopathic. But the former, especially if based on the connection between familiality and humanity, is no less problematic’ (1997: 276). In the case of Manuel’s family photograph, the process would be classed as an admission of the Other into his family image, in Hirsch’s terms.

As Sara Ahmed reminds us, this dynamic is problematic, in that ‘welcoming the

Stranger’ in this way disguises economies of differentiation that produce and perpetuate inequalities (2000: 150–51). In this light, Manuel’s desire to include his lover Ahmed in his family suggests an attraction to his strangeness that does not consider Ahmed’s agency; this assumption is conceivably the reason for Manuel’s heartache when Ahmed pursued his own desire to leave him.

The films analysed in this section all foreground material objects as key to understanding the past, but where África 815 and La fabulosa Casablanca privilege private photographs and video footage, Gurumbé draws upon archives that are preserved in institutional repositories in Andalusia, evoking their relevance to the collective history of the community. The re-examination of the paper archive is presented as a foundational element of the film. In an early sequence, a long shot down

177 a corridor created by aisles of shelving in the provincial archives emphasises the sheer number of records documenting the past. The next voiceover, that of academic researcher Aurelia Martín Casares, colludes with the visual representation of the volume of archives on the topic, as she explains the conflict between the beliefs of the library staff that there had been no slaves in Spain and the abundance of archival evidence that she found to the contrary when conducting her doctoral research in

Granada. As Martín Casares consults the files, the camera frames the document using an extreme close-up with shallow depth-of-field, emphasising the materiality of the written source. By combining the images of the material archive with Martín Casares’ findings, and contrasting this evidence with alleged popular opinion, from the outset Gurumbé encourages a revisiting of the archive to uncover overlooked elements of the Spanish

(and, as it transpires, Andalusian) past, and positions an understanding of the past as instrumental to understanding one’s identity.

Figure 8: A long shot frames Aurelia Martín Casares among the archives in Gurumbé

Evincing the volume of evidence that remains unfamiliar to the general public, the editing decisions made in the archive scene represent history, and thus the construction

178 of a national identity, as a selective process. This omissive version of history is denounced by participants in the series of interviews that serve to structure the documentary; in his interview shown in the film, Isidoro Moreno, Dean of Anthropology at the University of Seville, describes this strategy of disavowing Spanish involvement in the slave trade by omitting it from the educational curriculum as ‘la historia silenciada’

[‘silenced history’], pointing again to the selectivity of the cultural identity that has been cultivated in Spain.

As such, in Gurumbé it is clear from the outset that material objects will occupy a key role in the film’s address of the hidden past that it purports to uncover. However, the film goes beyond written records in order to forge this connection with collective history; camerawork and sound combine to situate the human body itself as an archive of collective memory. This appeal is founded in the establishing scene, where the camera focuses on a collection of preserved human bones being handled, with the most prominence given to a skull. The sequence then cuts to a close-up of the skull as a pair of bare hands carefully place it on a workbench, repeating these actions with other human bones to assemble a skeleton. The tactile sounds of the bones meeting the surface of the bench are followed by a sound bridge, in a manner that introduces sound (or its absence) as a key element of the filmic text.

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Figure 9: Haptic history: A researcher handles a preserved skull in Gurumbé

The initial absence of visuals and minimal sound except for the crisp crackling of the plastic wrapping preserving the bones encourages a reading of the opening scene in terms of what Laura Marks (2002: xiii) has termed ‘haptic visuality’. Marks’ term invites an understanding of film spectatorship as a synaesthetic experience, in which most notably the sense of touch is invoked through sight and sound. The presence and sound of material objects inflects how they are perceived visually and the ways in which viewers relate to them. Invoking a haptic response to objects in the film affects how they are read; in the case of this scene, the haptic response to the rustling plastic is grafted onto the images of the hands and skull, provoking a psychosomatic enquiry as to its texture as the researcher’s fingers grip the contours of the bone. If ‘haptic visuality returns to acknowledge the material presence of the other’ (Marks 2002: xviii), then the symbolic rendering of the past in material—human—form in this scene uses ossified remains to confront the viewer with the Other par excellence. The Otherness of the human skeleton is filmed so as to make it inescapable; in the same way as it documented the paper archives, the camera focuses its shallow depth-of-field on the bone in extreme close-up. During almost every second that the skull is present on

180 screen, its darkened eye sockets are turned to face the viewer; an Otherness that is indisputably human interrogates the spectator, appearing to demand that they reflect on their shared embodied experience.

Marks’ haptic visuality serves to remind us that the materiality of the body can supersede the cultural ideals which overlay phenomenological experience of the world.

At its most fundamental level, as Marks acknowledges, corporeal materiality brings us

‘towards a shared physical existence’ (2002: xii), a rooting of identity in the material experience of the world, and not merely in the ideal of a constructed national or racial identity, such as that conceived of during the slave trade era. As such, when researchers confirm later in the film that the bones are believed to have belonged to an individual from sub-Saharan Africa, the viewer has already been interpellated to reflect upon their shared human existence in a way that transcends preconceived notions of racial or territorial differences.

Both África 815 and La fabulosa Casablanca reveal the influence of memory and the subjective past on the protagonists’ construction of their identities. In particular, África

815 adopts the ‘focus on generational perspectives, silences or ruptures in family heritage’ that scholars have identified in many cultural products emerging from Spain in the twenty-first century (de Menezes 2014: 59). The centrality of the subjectivity of

Manuel and his memoirs encourages the reader to interpret the film as a personal narrative. However, Manuel’s personal experience is shown to impact his daughter’s understanding of her own origins. Pilar’s direction of the film demonstrates that she has essentially had her received or ‘postmemory’, to borrow the term from Hirsch (1997), revised by her father’s revelation that he had numerous homosexual relationships outside his perfunctory marriage to her mother. This dynamic exposes the impact that

181 unearthing the lived experiences of individuals has on nuancing notions of collective identity. As such, the film opens up as an allegory for the politicisation of the wider memory debates circulating in Spain, and the ongoing negotiation of the impact that uncovering individual memories has on collective experience.

Crucially, the tension between Pilar and her father’s attitudes to recovering memories elucidates the complexity inherent in the reconciliation with the past advocated by

Spanish political powers since the introduction of the law known as the Ley de Memoria

Histórica [Law of Historical Memory] in 2007. Manuel’s extensive, candid memoirs provoke a confrontation with his past, perhaps serving as an effort of self-reconciliation.

Conversely, through Pilar’s gaze, the viewer is confronted with the tension that she

(and, by extension, the post-Franco generation in Spain) experiences, as she is challenged to revise her childhood memories of her experiences with her parents. The clash of perspectives between the pair trace the line between collective and personal memory, in that, while perhaps representative of others of their generations, the viewer simultaneously intuits the relationship between the pair and their attitudes to the past as intrinsically personal. The film’s premise thus functions as an allegory for the Spanish memory debates, whereby upon delving deeper into the national past, the post-Franco generation uncovers some uncomfortable truths that may challenge them to revise their understanding of their families. Beyond the recuperation of her father’s hidden memories, Pilar now faces the challenge of appropriating this new knowledge into her own sense of self. In a similar way, in La fabulosa Casablanca, the conflict between the testimonies of individuals who lived under the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco and the plea to an acceptance of the changes under way in the Moroccan territory echo the

‘posiciones antagónicas e irreconciliables’ [‘antagonistic and irreconcilable positions’]

182 unearthed among Spanish society in the debates surrounding the passing of the Ley de

Memoria Histórica (Becerra 2013: 153).

These films’ use of archives as a resource through which to reassess collective histories engage with the ‘textual and archival turn’ of recent memory debates in Spain (de

Menezes 2014: 145). The motifs of textual archives and the disinterment of human remains reflect tropes that have commonly recurred in Spanish cinema in the years following the introduction of the Ley de Memoria Histórica. As this section has shown, these contemporary Andalusian films have engaged with material archives as a means of recovering and rethinking the community’s collective past and as a resource with which to negotiate future configurations of Andalusian identity, a narrative strategy which recurred in other films exhibited alongside them at the film festivals in this study.32 The next section observes how other films shown at these events contemplate the role of music as a repository of collective Andalusian identity.

3.2. Songs of memory: Music as archive in Alalá (Remedios Malvárez, 2016) and Gurumbé. Canciones de tu memoria negra (Miguel Ángel Rosales, 2016)

As the introduction to this chapter indicated, film has often connected Andalusia and characters from the region with musical ability. In varying degrees, the films analysed here treat music as a historical source that can be used to trace connections with communities both outside and within Andalusia. Remedios Malvárez’ 2016 documentary, Alalá (a word from the caló language associated with the gitano community, translated into Spanish as ‘alegría’, or ‘happiness’), provides a rich text for

32 Most notably, Jesús Armesto’s Las llaves de la memoria [The Keys of Memory] (2016), screened at the same edition of SEFF as Gurumbé, documents a researcher exploring the archives in Andalusia and emphasises a need to question the origins of an Andalusian identity. 183 the analysis of the position that music, specifically flamenco, occupies in the production of identity. While Malvárez’ film was exhibited at the 2016 Huelva Festival de Cine

Iberoamericano, it merits investigation in this study as a result of the director subsequently being awarded the ASECAN Premio Dirección Novel in 2017; the film thus presents a valuable opportunity to observe the works considered outstanding by the

Andalusian awarding body. Filmed in a marginalised district of Seville, known as the

Tres Mil Viviendas [Three Thousand Homes], the film presents the gitano [gypsy] residents’ relationship with flamenco as integral to their understanding of their own cultural identity and heritage, yet leaves space to question this relationship as simultaneously defending the sense of an identity that is reproduced and inherited. This tension is observable through the film’s coupling of music and place, and subsequently place and identity; the debates encircling a cultural identity as something innate, versus something inculcated; and the persistent use of labels to describe and delineate certain communities. Examples of the professionalisation of flamenco leave space to further interrogate the performativity of identity within a global community where Otherness in the form of links with a gitano identity is frequently exoticised.

Meanwhile, as the previous section outlined, Gurumbé queries the specificity of flamenco music to Andalusian places and identity, by drawing upon archival evidence to suggest that Andalusia’s historical and cultural links with the African continent have been excluded from its contemporary musical canons. The cinematographic effects that invite readings of music and cultural heritage as embodied are used to build a narrative which appeals to a rediscovery of the ‘lost’ origins of flamenco. In both films, the body becomes an archive of cultural traditions, testifying through song, dance and musicality.

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Previous scholarship has recognised flamenco as ‘one of the most prominent symbols of regional identity in Andalusia’ (Machin-Autenrieth 2015: 4), owing in particular to its deployment by Blas Infante as a symbol of a unique Andalusian regional heritage and, in recent years, its inclusion in the revised Andalusian Statute of Autonomy in 2007 (ibid., pp. 11-13). As discussed by William Washabaugh (2012), cinema has had a profound impact upon generating new understandings of flamenco style. In recent years, a number of documentaries have attempted to capture the flamenco traditions of marginalised communities of predominantly gitano families living on the periphery of

Andalusian cities. An area that has received substantial attention in these films is an urban housing project to the south of Seville known as Polígono Sur, which also encompasses the Tres Mil Viviendas in which Alalá was filmed (see, for example,

Dominique Abel’s 2001 film, Polígono Sur: El arte de Las Tres Mil [Seville, Southside];

Isabel de Ocampo’s 2013 documentary, Piratas y libélulas [Pirates and Dragonflies]; and

Triana pura y pura [Triana Through and Through], a 2013 rerelease of Ricardo Pachón’s

1984 television series, El Ángel, all of which are discussed by Carlos van Tongeren

(2017)). These films have tended to attract institutional recognition; Abel’s film was nominated for the Goya for Best Documentary in 2004. The same focus on ‘embodied experiences and moments of musical transmission’ identified in Polígono Sur (van

Tongeren 2017: 177) emerges in both Gurumbé and Alalá, but these transmissions are depicted as emerging from diverse sources.

One way in which music functions as an archive in these films is by treating musical tropes as a form of testimony, evincing the influence of the cultures that created them upon subsequent musical forms. Gurumbé has plenty to say about the privileged positioning of music in constructed Andalusian identity. As previously discussed, the

185 subtitle of the film, Canciones de tu memoria negra, immediately suggests the importance that Rosales’ documentary places on music as a form of testimony, and of its relevance to the spectator’s understanding of their own origins. The documentary is punctuated with musical performances throughout, with the locations of Tlacotalpan in

Mexico, Lisbon, Joal-Fadiouth in the Région de Thiès in Senegal and a number of settings in Andalusia itself underscoring the film’s message of the diverse roots of the musical forms now associated with Andalusia. The role of music as a type of historical source is illustrated as being twofold: Gurumbé suggests that music functions in terms of its form revealing traces of widespread influences, while lyrics also play an instrumental role in bearing witness to experiences and narrating stories. The film addresses these two modes of analysis in order to demonstrate a connection among wide-ranging origins, implying that Andalusian music, in particular flamenco, is far less heterogeneous than the contemporary canon would suggest.

Gurumbé sets out to demonstrate that flamenco music, recognised as a foundational element of contemporary Andalusian identity, has been subject to a rigorously controlled selection process, which has resulted in the majority of its musical origins being diluted into a restrictive and reductive canon. The film constructs this thesis by documenting a number of different musical forms that it connects through editing in order to demonstrate their relationship to each other. The narrative enlists the opinions of a number of ethnomusicologists, who reveal the connections they have found between, in particular, forms of music of African origin and music prevalent in Spain in the centuries during and after slavery. An interview with Raúl Rodríguez, a musician and cultural ethnographer, is particulary assertive of this musico-cultural connection.

Rodríguez performs a song inspired by his research on the negros curros (former slaves

186 who travelled from Seville to Cuba after being emancipated). His lyrics reinforce the concept of music as a historical archive that has been employed to achieve certain ideological ends, as he sings (from the perspective of a negro curro): ‘Yo no tengo la gloria que otros flamencos tuvieron / se me debe una canción que no compusieron’ [‘I have not been glorified as other flamenco artists have / they owe me a song that they never wrote for me’]. Indeed, his performance mirrors the hybrid identity that he advocates: the instrument he plays is a tres flamenco, intended as a hybrid of the Cuban tres and the flamenco guitar, which uses strings from an oud to recreate the sound of a tres. Rodríguez further connects the forms of African and Andalusian music by suggesting that the 12-beat compás for which flamenco is so well known was influenced by the arrival of African slaves, which he associates with the ‘hampa sevillana’ [‘Sevillian underworld’] of the Golden Age. It is conceivable that forging this connection between

African slaves and flamenco, reattributing the musical genre’s origins in large part to a group other than the gitano community, may well appear controversial to those in favour of the flamenco canon that is later described by Alberto del Campo. Reinscribing what has been held up as such an iconic symbol of Andalusian culture in this way points to a desire to reassess the limits of what can and cannot be considered Andalusian.

Embodied heritage: Music as an expression of individual and collective identity

In Gurumbé, the relationship between music and corporeality is also emphasised in order to challenge the dominant model of Andalusian collective identity. Dance is featured extensively in the film as a means of individual expression, and even the movements associated with flamenco are argued to be connected to forms of dance originating among African communities. This link is most clearly made in the sequence which juxtaposes a Senegalese festival with a flamenco tablao in Seville. Alberto del 187

Campo introduces the argument, proposing that the supposedly ‘typically Andalusian’ traits of ‘lo licencioso, lo hedonista, lo burlesco’ [‘all that is debauched, hedonistic, and burlesque’] were originally characteristics identified with the black community by non- blacks of the seventeenth century. Del Campo argues that these expressive traits are the inheritance of the Andalusian community from their African predecessors. Rodríguez confirms this assertion, suggesting that the staging of Andalusian dances and ‘fiesta callejera’ [‘street festivals’] contain traces of these previous influences. As if to demonstrate this link, the following scene transplants the viewer to Joal-Fadiouth in

Senegal, where dancers stamp the sand to the rhythm of drums as the audience looks on, forming a circular performance area. Rodríguez later draws parallels between the percussive elements of the Senegalese performance and the flamenco tradition, expounding his theory that in flamenco the skins of the drums are substituted for the palms and feet. As if to reinforce this connection, the following scene cuts to a close-up of the shoes of bailaora Yinka Graves in the La Carbonería tablao in Seville; indeed, a very similar shot appears in Alalá, with a cut to the dance teacher’s feet as she demonstrates zapateo [footwork] to the class.

Figure 10: Both Gurumbé (above left) and Alalá (above right) focus on flamenco dancers’ feet, creating a visual connection between the sounds and the bodies that make them

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Particularly in Alalá, the presentation of flamenco as a part of the daily life and education of the residents foregrounds its authenticity, an increasingly common means of representing flamenco in Andalusian cinema over recent decades (Heffner Hayes

2009: 127). As William Washabaugh has noted, watching dance on film creates an immersive communion between the viewer and the embodied subject, leading the viewer to ‘feel the movement as much as they see or hear it’ (2012: 111). Like the bones at the beginning of Gurumbé, the dancers’ bodies invoke a phenomenological identification in the viewer, foregrounding the commonalities in human experience.

As an art form, flamenco has been particularly strongly attached to an ethnicity: that of the gitano community (Machin-Autenrieth 2015: 10). In Alalá, the way of life of the inhabitants of the Tres Mil Viviendas is predominantly linked to gitano traditions.

Throughout the documentary, individuals frequently refer to their being gitano or gitana, often as a means of explaining their own character traits. In one scene, two women sit together in the street, discussing their lives and family history. When one mentions that she is related to the famous Amaya family of flamenco artists, the other replies that she had noticed a resemblance. The first speaker responds, ‘hombre, ¡me parezco porque soy gitana! Soy gitana, y me tengo que parecer ya a la familia’ [‘Of course—I resemble her because I’m a gypsy! I’m a gypsy, and of course I look like my family’]. Reflecting a fierce pride in her stock, she continues, ‘Y yo sé bailar, y yo sé cantar’ [‘And I know how to dance, and sing’]. The speaker thus creates a strong connection between her familial lineage and her cultural identity, implying that her talent for flamenco singing and dancing correlates directly with her ethnic identification as gitana.

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This sense of gitano/a identity being hereditary is echoed by various protagonists of the film, often through statements that indicate a belief that an innate aptitude for flamenco is common to members of the gitano community. In another scene, a family leave home early in the morning to trade at a local market (an occupation so commonly associated with the gypsy community that, as the mother remarks, other residents of Seville now refer to shopping at the market as visiting ‘los gitanos’). During the journey, the couple discuss their young son’s progress at the Escuela de Arte, where he is learning to play flamenco guitar. As the father describes the predominantly gitano community in Tres

Mil Viviendas and the number of prolific musical artists that it has produced, his wife offers to sum up his sentiments with the phrase, ‘el gitano lo lleva dentro’ [‘a gypsy carries it deep within him’]. Her statement discloses the view that many members of

Tres Mil Viviendas’ gitano community seem to espouse: that ‘lo gitano’ is passed on through families by birth, an innate conception of who one is and an aptitude to follow in gitano traditions; indeed, this belief has been reported amongst members of the gitano community for several decades (Machin-Autenrieth 2015: 11). What is perhaps even more telling is her husband’s response to her statement: ‘No es que lo lleves dentro, dentro…porque no…eso es, que lo que escuchamos es flamenco, lo que hacemos es flamenco, y claro…pues, lo que se mama es lo que se cría, no? Es así’ [‘It’s not that you carry it inside you…because…well, what we hear is flamenco, what we do is flamenco, and so of course…well, you reap what you sow, don’t you? That’s how it is’]. He therefore demonstrates a critical reflection on the fierce sense of gitano identity being a group into which one is born, not socialised.

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Payos, gitanos, y ‘otros’: integration and segregation

The idea that one is born gitano/a would appear to present obstacles to payos (those who are not gitano by birth) integrating with the community. One resident, who announces that she is paya and her husband gitano, does not appear to consider the different groups incapable of coexisting; she explains that her family has never experienced any problems as a result of their mixed heritage, and declares that in the barrio, ‘somos todos iguales, y no tienen diferencias unos de otros’ [‘we are all the same, and there are no differences between one or the other’]. While her statement suggests a conviviality between the groups for which the barrio has been much lauded in more recent media coverage, her use of the labels payo and gitano indicates that these groups are still delineated by their differences from each other. This immiscibility of the two sections of the community is made even more apparent when she declares that, as a result of her being paya, her five children are not considered gitano. By including this discussion, Alalá exposes the strong sense of biological pedigree attached to a gitano identity, and the at times conflicting cultural mores attached to it.

The challenge to this sense of an ethnically determined gitano character is apparent both in Alalá’s central focus and in the commentary of other individuals. In aiming to represent the activities of the Escuela de Arte and the Fundación Alalá that helps to coordinate its outreach programmes, the film documents the initiatives designed to pass on flamenco as an art form to the youth of the Tres Mil Viviendas, a process that in itself indicates the pedagogical deployment of flamenco as an element of a culture that is

‘produced and reproduced’ (Calhoun 2002: 157). Yet those involved in the process of teaching flamenco believe in the genetic propensity of these children to be gifted at it.

Even as she teaches them, the dance teacher declares that ‘ellos vienen con esos genes

191 de vivir el flamenco dentro de su sangre, de su corazón’ [‘they come with their genes to experience flamenco in their blood, in their heart’]. Emilio Caracafé, a guitar teacher and the central protagonist in the film, declares earlier in the film that his principal objective in teaching the children flamenco is not to give them a career path to follow, but to introduce them to an inherent identity that they already possess: ‘pero primero, que ellos se sientan con tal y como són: gitanos’ [‘but first of all, they need to feel at ease with who they are: gitanos’].

Soundscapes of belonging: Music, place and identity

Further to the connections between place and identity outlined in section 3.1, the link between music and the formation of identities in relation to place is widely acknowledged by ethnomusicologists (Machin-Autenrieth 2015: 6). Indeed, the relationship between music and place may be described as symbiotic: music creates the identity of a place, and the musical landscape of a place is created and shaped by its residents. The connection between music and the Tres Mil Viviendas as place is firmly underscored throughout Alalá by way of editing techniques. The establishing sequence, set in a nondescript bar where people gather to smoke, drink coffee and play dominoes, immediately introduces music as a central protagonist with a close-up on a guitar case.

From this point on, the guitar essentially drives the narrative, as its owner retrieves the case and walks through the suburban streets, watched by the camera, to a non-diegetic score of flamenco guitar. The guitar soundtrack recurs throughout the film, tracing flamenco music onto the locations of the diegesis. For the viewer, the Tres Mil Viviendas thus become synonymous with flamenco music, both inhabited by it and providing a backdrop for its starring role.

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Figure 11: The guitar fills the screen in an early scene from Alalá

The indelible marks of flamenco made on the barrio are also observed through the actions of the other protagonists, such as Caracafé, who plays a key role in the local

Escuela de Arte [School of Art] at the Centro Cívico El Esqueleto [‘The Skeleton’ Civic

Centre] and is repeatedly seen making music throughout the film. The children’s singing and drumming classes frequently take place in the street, and high-profile performers such as Raimundo and Arcángel play guitar and sing alongside pupils of the art school, seated outside bars or on walls in squares. Flamenco music is thus presented as a part of daily life, a lived experience that accompanies whatever other activities local residents may be taking part in.33 Indeed, Caracafé summarises his view of the role of flamenco in the fabric of the quotidian experience in Tres Mil Viviendas:

La Escuela verdaderamente se vive en la calle, en el barrio. Vas caminando y

lo ves en las puertas; lo ves a las vecinas, a la abuela haciendo de comer el

puchero, y está cantando por soleá. O ves al abuelo con la garrota haciendo

compás.

33 Scholars have noted that this role of flamenco in daily life in the barrio is also presented in Polígono Sur (van Tongeren 2017: 186). 193

[The School is really lived in the street, in the neighbourhood. You go for a

walk and you see it in the doorways; you see the local women, a grandmother

making a stew, and she’s singing soleá. Or you’ll see a grandfather tapping

compás with his stick.]

Flamenco is therefore depicted as the soundtrack to life in the barrio. It is notable that

Caracafé’s description refers to the elder generation of residents; the familial connection of abuelo and abuela implies that these individuals have younger family members to whom they pass on their knowledge of flamenco. As has been noted of Polígono Sur (van

Tongeren 2017: 177), it is this importance of transmitted traditions upon which the film hinges, and which enables further probing of the identities made available in the film. In

Caracafé’s example, the notion of the importance of flamenco to the community appears both somewhat romanticised and more pertinent to the older generations of inhabitants.

This observation enables the interrogation of whether flamenco truly is an aspect of cultural identity inherited by birth, or by being the subject of its continuous reproduction as cultural heritage.

Underscoring the connection between place, flamenco and identity, Caracafé’s identification of the barrio as a place where the children are educated in appropriate civic behaviours is also evidenced in the materiality of the place itself. Among the many murals and colourful graffiti shown in the film, one slogan reads: ‘el barrio es tu escuela’

[‘the barrio is your school’].

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Figure 12: ‘El barrio es tu escuela’: The decorated walls of the Tres Mil Viviendas underscore its role in creating citizenship and cultural identity

The connection between music and place conjured by Caracafé’s description is one that suggests several aspects of the nature of identity as experienced by the community of the Tres Mil Viviendas. Notably, it introduces the idea that flamenco is an intrinsic part of the identity of the residents; it is something that they live daily, and cannot help but reflect in their actions.

Inasmuch as in Alalá, place is intimately connected to flamenco music, the spaces of the

Tres Mil Viviendas district are shown to be crucial to the formation and understanding of the young peoples’ identity. The school in which they receive their flamenco education is a central focus of the socialisation that they receive in the way of life of the gitano community. As Caracafé describes, ‘La Escuela de Arte es un espacio donde los niños, a través del arte, consiguen convivencia, respeto, disciplina…un espacio donde se crea ilusión’ [‘the School of Art is a space where, through art, the children learn social harmony, respect, discipline…a space where dreams are created’]. Flamenco thus plays a role in the civic education of the young people, particularly in their belonging to gitano culture.

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Alalá certainly gravitates towards a positive inscription of the spaces of the Tres Mil

Viviendas; indeed, the film narrative can be deemed an attempt to reinscribe it. The district has previously received negative media attention; in 2013, a news report by national broadcaster RTVE labelled it ‘un barrio sin ley’ [‘a lawless neighbourhood’], following gang violence that culminated in the death of a 7-year-old girl (España Directo

2013). The Tres Mil Viviendas have been referred to as ‘invisible’, on account of their location in Polígono Sur, a district surrounded by railway tracks, ring roads and motorways that effectively demarcate a border between its inhabitants and other suburbs of Seville (Pensando el Territorio 2013). A wall was even erected, ostensibly to separate the regional and national train lines, but which ultimately led to a further sense of segregation of the communities of Polígono Sur from other urban areas. A residents’ association from a neighbouring part of Polígono Sur responded to the ‘muro de la vergüenza’ [‘wall of shame’] by working with young people from the Tres Mil Viviendas to reclaim the structure, hosting a graffiti workshop to decorate it with their own designs (Montero 2015). In response to these prior representations, therefore, Alalá can be viewed as an effort to make visible not only the place, but also its marginalised inhabitants and their way of life.

The depictions of the origins and transmissions of flamenco traditions in these films contribute to ongoing debates surrounding the roots of an authentic flamenco. When flamenco is understood in terms of its historical importance for the construction of a unifying Andalusian identity, these films feed into continuing explorations of the cultural patrimony of Andalusia and the communities that have been marginalised during the course of its changing dominant articulations. Both films exemplify the ambivalence that recurs behind the desire to examine Andalusia’s historical Others: the

196 simultaneous recognition of the cultural influences (in these cases, of slaves trafficked from Africa and gitano traditions) and the uncertainty around how to welcome these strangers into the community.

This chapter has analysed the themes emerging from a number of Andalusian festival films, reading their treatment as a means of navigating contemporary conceptions of

Andalusian identity. The analysis has shown that these films engage with personal and collective representations of communities that have undergone complex trajectories of partial identification with, but also Othering and marginalisation, in relation to dominant constructions of Andalusian identity, in particular North Africans and

Andalusia’s gitano community. These treatments have shed light on the attempts to reconfigure attitudes to these communities, although the positioning of these attempts from within a privileged viewing position of Andalusianness complicates their assimilation into a more nuanced understanding of Andalusian identity.

In line with their exhibition at a more locally focused event, the films shown in the

Panorama Andaluz at Alcances, África 815 and La fabulosa Casablanca, approach personal archives in a way that demonstrates the insufficiency of collective narratives to account for subject positions that prevail in contemporary Andalusian society. Their recourse to memory emphasises the weight of the past on the present, and the complexity of the task of reappropriation of postmemory facing the post-Franco generation, tying in with wider national efforts towards the recuperation of historical memory. Gurumbé undertakes similar work, but concentrates on the collective history of Andalusia and its hidden participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, provoking revised understandings of the constructions of dominant Andalusian identity through an interrogation of archives that demands identification with ethnicities previously

197 constructed as Other to Andalusianness, using music as an archival source. The success of Remedios Malvárez’ Alalá at the Premios ASECAN indicates the recognition that remunerates the ongoing reassessment of communities that are marginalised within

Andalusia, in particular documenting the lives of the often ‘invisible’ gitano community of the Tres Mil Viviendas. However, once again, this community is depicted as on the outskirts of Andalusian society, at once welcomed into (through the film director’s credentials) and rejected by the institutional vision of Andalusian cultural heritage. The film itself can be viewed as a means of consuming the Other from a safe distance.

The final chapter of this thesis embarks from the same research questions that this chapter has addressed, examining festival films from Catalonia and their treatment of themes that can be read in order to understand negotiations of contemporary identities in Catalonia.

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Chapter 4. Constructing identity in Catalan films post-2007

This chapter outlines and discusses the themes arising in a number of Catalan films showcased at festivals in both Andalusia and Catalonia on the 2016-17 circuit. The films were selected for their directors’ engagement with the concept of a Catalan national identity, whether by exemplifying a contemporary Catalan model of filmmaking in mobilising new industrial channels to exhibit work on the festival circuit; through an examination of Catalonia’s places, like the polysemic metropolis of Barcelona or the coastal village of Cadaqués; or by displaying the dialogue between Catalonia and other nations, such as Spain, Morocco, or China. In essence, the ways in which these films engage with components that have been constructed as fundamental determinants of

Catalan identity—such as the Catalan language, or the codification of spaces as Catalan by the performance of Catalan traditions within them—reveal the complexity of negotiating Catalan identities. Their narrative decisions shed light on the tensions between the dominant discourse of what it means to be Catalan and how Catalan identity operates and is mobilised by filmmakers, all in light of the complex conditions of filmmaking in Catalonia.

In a similar model to the analysis conducted of Andalusian films on the festival circuit, the films are read in the context of their exhibition at these festivals, with a view to understanding what these works indicate about the intended images of Catalonia at home and abroad. The awards that these films have won are also taken into consideration, in light of the award capital that they bestow and their reflection of the priorities of the awarding bodies in question. On a broader level, this chapter contributes to the overall argument of the thesis by building upon the industrial

199 structural detail outlined in Chapter Two and mobilising this groundwork as a context for in-depth analysis. In doing so, it posits directions taken by the contemporary Catalan cinema industry since the introduction of the Ley del Cine in 2007, and, together with the industrial background, will be used to conclude which views on Catalan identity are being propelled, perpetuated, or indeed discarded, in cinema in the festival circuit in light of the changes to Spanish and Catalan legislation governing the film industry in the past ten years.

The first section will examine a case study of a Catalan short film that has been exhibited on the film festival circuit both within and outside Catalonia, as well as beyond Spain. With an eye to international audiences, Juanjo Giménez‘ 2016 short film,

Timecode, employs techniques such as the use of minimal dialogue, musical score and dance compositions, combined with narrative themes that are universally appealing, in order to captivate diverse viewerships. The unprecedented success of Timecode marks it out as a particularly relevant object of study within the analytical framework of this thesis. Mimicking the elegance of its characters’ movements, Timecode, I will argue, deftly walks the tightrope between universal appreciability and local specificity, showcasing Catalan performance artists in a setting seemingly coded as Spanish by the dialogue, but which nonetheless bears the marks of its Catalanness through the language inscribed on its spaces. In these festival films, Catalan identity is negotiated through a balancing act with Spanishness, in search of an international recognition that still often comes within the parameters of hegemonic Spanish culture.

The second section of this chapter addresses the interrogation of Catalan places in two recent festival films made in Catalonia: La substància [The Substance] (Lluís Galter,

2016) and Bictor Ugo, a Catalonia-Mexico coproduction (Josep María Bendicho and

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Carlos Clausell, 2015). In opting to film in Cadaqués, Lluís Galter draws the viewer’s eye away from Barcelona’s dominion as supreme Catalan cinematic space. Drawing upon a recurring trope identified in recent Catalan documentary—that of manipulating the tools of cinematography and editing to create a dislocated, hyperreal space (Picornell

2017; Loxham 2014)—Galter applies this strategy to the peripheral location, prompting an inquiry into how a cultural identity becomes superimposed onto, or even fused with, place. Galter’s film offers an intriguing opportunity to juxtapose the local spaces of

Catalonia with the global, as he focuses on the construction of a modern development modelled on Cadaqués in coastal China. Alternatively, Bictor Ugo returns to Barcelona, but denies the city the starring role; important as the location is, we observe the existence of Bictor Ugo, a street performer, as he lives an alienated, intoxicated life in the shadows of the city. Following in the footsteps of Catalan works like Ventura Pons’

Ocaña, retrat intermitent [Ocaña, an Intermittent Portrait] (1978) and Barcelona (un mapa) [Barcelona (A Map)] (2007), the film implies a rupture between its characters’ identities and the city that has become abstracted from its residents’ existence

(Fernàndez 2012: 125).

The final section of this chapter deals with how Catalan identity is constructed in relation to other (national) spaces through contemporary films. As has been observed of

Andalusian film in the previous chapter, a number of Catalan documentaries have recently dissected the Spanish past (and, ultimately, present) through its connections to the African continent. Through the denigration of Spanish colonial and neocolonial activity in North Africa, these Catalan films implicitly reflect the contemporary relationship between Catalonia and Spain. In adopting a critical gaze upon the attitudes of Spain towards the arrival of people from sub-Saharan Africa on the border shared by

201 the Spanish territory of Ceuta and Morocco, the directors of Tarajal: desmontando la impunidad de la frontera sur [Tarajal: Dismantling the Impunity of the Southern Border]

(Xavier Artigas, Xapo Ortega and Marc Serra, 2015) suggest a favourable stance on the

Catalan understanding of convivència, in which other cultures coexist and are not subject to absolute separation regimes such as national borders. The films in this section critique the Spanish colonial attitude, exposing not only its negative impact on those treated as colonial subjects, as in María Ruido’s L’oeil impératif/El ojo imperativo

[The Imperative Eye] (2015), but also on Spanish citizens. In positioning the Catalan gaze as oppositional to the actions of the Spanish authorities, these films offer a reading of Catalan identities that conceptualise themselves as distinct from perceived constructions of Spanishness.

Before embarking upon the analysis of these films, some key components of the dominant construction of Catalan identity merit reflection. The Catalan language is repeatedly evoked as evidence of Catalonia’s existence as a separate cultural force from that of Spain (Pujol 2011, cited in Crameri 2014: 1). Groups such as the Plataforma per la Llengua (Platform for the Language), founded in 1993, indicate concerted efforts to support the Catalan language, with particular emphasis on encouraging those who migrate to Catalanophone territories to adopt the language (Crameri 2014: 31). In the dominant discourse within the vocal pro-independence camp, Catalan is painted as a unifying force that generates a sense of belonging among those who share knowledge of it. This use of the Catalan language as a mechanism for integration necessitates an understanding of language (or, at least, the Catalan language) as detached from a person’s origins: that one can identify with a culture linked to the language of acquisition, rather than merely with the language of one’s native territory.

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While the strategies of the Plataforma per la Llengua cast Catalan as ‘a language of social integration’ (ibid.), however, Catalan has also played a role in marginalising groups in

Catalan society. Critics have argued that the civil and political pro-independence movements alike are led by middle-class Catalan speakers, who do not represent the views of those citizens of Catalonia from working-class, Castilian backgrounds. Survey data published in 2010 and 2012 found that over 70% of politicians in the Generalitat spoke Catalan as their mother tongue, in comparison with 13% who declared that their native language was Castilian, when over 50% of the voting public surveyed in Catalonia claimed Castilian as their mother tongue (Miley 2014: 311–13). Geoff Cowling considers that the dominance of the Catalan language in the Catalan education system has effectively relegated Spanish to the same status as English: that of a ‘foreign language’

(2014: xii).

Attempts to position Catalan as the dominant language in Catalan society have met with resistance. Since it was established in 1998, the civil organisation Convivencia Cívica

Catalana (Catalan Civil Coexistence, or CCC) has rallied against Catalan linguistic immersion in the education system, arguing that Catalan citizens have the legal right to use both Catalan and Spanish equally (Convivencia Cívica Catalana [n.d.]). Disputes such as these over legislative control of language use evidences the significant value attached to the Catalan language for the purposes of creating and maintaining a dominant

Catalan national identity.

Convivència and Catalan identity

Judicious use of the Catalan language as a mediating, ostensibly unifying force that facilitates integration into Catalan culture underpins the concept of convivència that

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Catalan authorities have adopted when faced with the challenge of bringing about social cohesion.34 Within the context of Catalonia, scholars refer to convivència as ‘a vernacular interculturalist project’ (Erickson 2011: 114) that ‘goes beyond mere “coexistence” and is characterised by peace, mutual tolerance, and an apparent lack of conflict’, while entailing, significantly, an encounter with difference (Lundsteen 2016: 6).

The concept of convivència has increasingly appeared in Catalan political discourse; in

2009, the Generalitat launched a political campaign entitled ‘Som Catalunya. País de convivència’ [‘We are Catalonia. Country of convivència’] (Generalitat de Catalunya

2009), with a view to cementing the notion of convivència and the ‘fet migratori’ [‘fact of migration’] as integral aspects of catalanitat (ibid.). The campaign aimed to remind

Catalans that Catalonia has a history of welcoming migrants from across Spain that stretches back to the Francoist dictatorship, when large numbers of people hailing from rural Spanish communities relocated to the territory (Erickson 2011: 116). It has been proposed that these ‘fugitives of fascism’ (Candel and Cuenca 2001: 14) were attracted by the prospect of employment in the industrialised centre, but also by the democratic ethos and resistance to the central Spanish state espoused by many Catalans (Llobera

2004: 149–57).

As the aforementioned slogan indicates, convivència is invoked in hegemonic political discourse as an essential component of Catalan identity. Its ethos has been enacted in such arenas as urban planning, as in the Ajuntament de Barcelona’s creation of superilles [superblocks] in districts of the Catalan capital, intended not only to reduce traffic circulation and increase pedestrian areas, but, by creating additional public space, to improve ‘la convivencia y la cohesión social’ (Ajuntament de Barcelona [n.d.]).

34 The word exists both in Castilian Spanish (convivencia) and in Catalan (convivència), but their definitions are often treated as interchangeable (Hall 2001: 13). 204

Through its authentication by Catalan governing bodies, the discourse of convivència has in one instance been equated to ‘a language of virtuous aspirations that serves as a resource to Catalans and Muslim immigrants for the mutual accommodation of difference’ (Erickson 2011: 116).

Such can be the range of social issues to which convivència is applied, and so great the extent to which convivència is sought, that, rather ironically, social challenges perceived to threaten it—such as immigration—are viewed as having the potential to destabilise

Catalan society itself (Lundsteen 2016: 7–9). The means employed by Catalan authorities to enforce the harmony implied by convivència has on occasion contributed to divisions between their targets and those charged with keeping the peace (Erickson

2011: 114). Specifically, critics have commented upon the somewhat problematic focus that the broad concept of conviviality has tended to direct towards relations between host societies and minority groups that are typically non-European, non-white and/or hailing from former colonies (Rzepnikowska 2015: 13). Challenging this tendency is of particular relevance in the context of this thesis, in light of the heated debates surrounding the Catalan independence referendum and the tensions that have surfaced, ostensibly between the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ voters, but also between the more granular strata of Catalan society, such as Spanish migrants to Catalonia or their descendents, who have expressed support for, rejection of, or ambivalence towards the argument for secession in varying degrees.35 As films in this chapter engage with issues of migration and intercultural contact, it is relevant to contextualise the position of these issues within the Catalan sociocultural imaginary.

35 For instance, the campaign group Súmate advocates support for Catalan independence from the perspective of citizens not born in Catalonia, or from families who settled there; see www.sumate.cat for more information. 205

Place and Catalan identity

The theme of place as addressed in these films has implications at both local and global levels. This double vision has emerged as a common trope of contemporary Catalan cinema: a local commentary that speaks to wider, perhaps even universal issues (Martí-

Olivella 2011: 203). A number of the Catalan films submitted to the film festivals in this study appeared designed to appeal to international audiences, specifically within the film festival environment; this fact was mostly evident through the overall lack of verbal dialogue in some films, their desire to tackle seemingly universal themes such as human relationships and connections between people and place, and narratives driven by humour or innovative forms of animation. Timecode, screened at Filmets, is exemplary of these traits: the minimal dialogue is compensated by the increasingly elaborate dances through which the characters interact. The pleasure of watching their bodies

‘communicate’ speaks to the universally relatable corporeality of the audience, and the closing scene makes judicial use of a snippet of dialogue to close the film on a humorous note. Given this formula, it is perhaps no wonder that the film has garnered so much praise at film festivals, and most notably achieved international acclaim in the form of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar nomination. This chapter therefore shows how the filmmakers mentioned previously have addressed these themes, and what the films can in turn suggest about the visions and perspectives on

Catalan identities emerging through film.

As in the previous chapter, this section of the thesis analyses themes from a corpus of films by Catalan directors selected from festivals around Andalusia and Catalonia. La substància and Bictor Ugo query relationships with place and call into question the nature of their integral role in cultural identity. La substància (Lluís Galter, 2016), which

206 premiered in the ‘Resistencias’ section at SEFF in 2016, documents a new residential development in China, designed to replicate the Catalan seaside resort town of

Cadaqués. Galter exposes place as an imaginary onto which beliefs about history are superimposed, conflating the Chinese and Catalan versions of Cadaqués by exploiting the filmic medium to interweave temporalities. This manipulation of form ultimately fabricates what Jean Baudrillard has referred to as a ‘hyperreal’ realm that inscribes both places as constructs (1994: 1)—a narrative strategy that has been identified in other recent Catalan documentaries, such as Mercedes Álvarez’ Mercado de futuros

[Futures Market] (Picornell 2017). Meanwhile, Bictor Ugo (Josep María Bendicho and

Carlos Clausell, 2015) follows the eponymous street performer as he wanders through the streets of Barcelona, transforming the tourist playground into a seedy underworld, enforcing the notion that the meanings of place are dependent on the individual and are inflected by their experiences and memories. The concepts of place offered by all of these films have wider implications for how Catalan national identity can be understood in relation to the territory of Catalonia, and can help to shed light on how nationalisms and territories intersect with contemporary film cultures worldwide.

Like some of the Andalusian films analysed in Chapter Three, several of the films showcased at these film festivals focused on the vestiges of the colonial relationship between Spain and Africa; however, the films made by these Catalan directors evince very different motivations and narrative trajectories, both among themselves and in comparison to the Andalusian-made texts. While at first glance, and partly due to the geographical distance between them, Africa may seem completely disconnected from

Catalonia, and thus from a study of Catalan identities, the prominence of North African settings and debates in a number of recent Catalan-made films nonetheless suggests

207 that these texts have something to reveal about contemporary debates surrounding

Catalan national identity.

A number of factors reinforce the relevance of Africa to Catalan identity. Firstly, as discussed in the previous chapter, the groups constructed as Other to a national identity can expose the mechanisms that form national identities themselves. In the words of

Prasenjit Duara:

As a relationship among constituents, the national “self” is defined at any

point in time by the Other. Depending on the nature and scale of the

oppositional term, the national self contains various smaller “Others”—

historical Others that have effected an often uneasy reconciliation among

themselves and potential Others that are beginning to form their

differences. And it is these potential Others that are most deserving of our

attention because they reveal the performative principle that create [sic]

nations—the willing into existence of a nation which will choose to

privilege its difference and obscure all of the cultural bonds that had tied it

to its sociological kin (1996: 163).

As other scholars have noted, the construction of Others has played a critical role in establishing a Spanish national identity (Santaolalla 2005; Flesler 2008), especially the figure of the ‘Moor’ in light of the conquest of much of the Iberian peninsula. If we consider that the dominant incarnation of Catalan pro-independence national identity aims to assert its distinction from Spain and ‘Spanishness’, then it becomes useful to observe how Catalan cultural production engages with those groups whom Spanish nationalist discourses have constructed as Other. In Duara’s words, to what extent does

Catalonia ‘privilege its difference’ from Spain in terms of how it regards Africa (1996:

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163)? The position that Africa holds in the Spanish imaginary is thus central to its value for detecting markers of Catalan national identity. Secondly, individuals originating from Morocco, especially the area of the Rif, formerly controlled by the Spanish

Protectorate, constituted one of the largest groups of migrants to Catalonia in the twentieth century (Candel and Cuenca 2001: 12). If a central tenet of the dominant understanding of Catalan identity is that of convivència, and the desire to welcome others to consider themselves Catalan, regardless of their country of origin, then the treatment of North African citizens in Catalan films potentially has much to reveal about how Catalan attitudes play out in the portrayal of these communities.

4.1. Looking out: Catalan festival films with the international in mind

During the debate in which he was pronounced Carles Puigdemont’s successor to the

Catalan premiership on the 14th of May 2018, Quim Torra declared that ‘[a] Catalan republic means looking towards Europe‘ (Hunter and Urra 2018). This outward gaze to

Europe and beyond is apparent in many contemporary Catalan films, and, as Chapter

Two has shown, is particularly evidenced by many institutions preparing filmmakers to set their sights upon international film festivals for recognition. So prevalent is this pattern that scholars have identified a schism in Catalan cinema, dividing the nation’s film output into ‘auteur’ texts, aimed at the international festival circuit, and ‘industrial’ projects with box-office profits in mind (Quintana 2014: 12). Àngel Quintana notes that the success experienced by several films in the first category does not often translate to large attendance at domestic screenings (2014: 13); nevertheless, it does result in a larger viewership globally. By examining these films that target (and, at times, succeed

209 in reaching) distribution across the globe, this analysis intends to shed light on the workings of the global identity that Catalan festival films are projecting.

A model that produces results: Timecode (Juanjo Giménez, 2016) and the question of catalanitat

One means of constructing an international profile for Catalan cultural products, and for the representations of Catalan identity that they endorse, is creating the conditions to promote and distribute them abroad. A milestone for Catalan cinema (and, incidentally, any film made in Spain) occurred in 2016, when director Juanjo Giménez was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his short film, Timecode. Its screening at

Filmets in the same year represented the early stages of an incredible run on the festival circuit; in an interview in 2017, Giménez declared that the film had been selected for screening at over 150 festivals around the world and had won over 60 awards

(Betancourt 2017), figures which have only continued to increase. Although it did not ultimately win the accolade, Timecode was also nominated for the Oscar for Best

Foreign Language Film in 2017—the first Catalan short film to receive a nomination, and the seventh film made in Spain to do so (Serra 2017).

The widespread success that Timecode has enjoyed indicates a resonance with film festival audiences and juries across the Western world. In this instance, the historic win represented a double coup for Catalan creativity, the film representing as it did the work of Barcelona-born Juanjo Giménez and the artistry of Catalan professional dancers

Lali Ayguadé and Nicolás Ricchini. The production arrangements are also concomitant with the Catalan tradition of working with film students outlined previously; Giménez worked on the film with students from the Escola de Cinema de Reus as part of the

Masters in Cinematographic Creation and Direction. The narrative of the profound and,

210 significantly, almost wordless, human connection between the two protagonists as they carry out an isolated, mundane security job in an underground car park has succeeded in appealing to dozens of audiences at festival screenings. Nonetheless, while the narrative drive appears centred in an appeal to a universal desire for connection, the film is also redolent of its basis in a Catalan context, as this analysis will show.

Timecode represents a case study of particular interest, as it elucidates the tensions between the contemporary Spanish and Catalan film industries. The film was awarded both the Spanish Academy’s Goya for Mejor cortometraje de ficción [Best Short Fiction

Film] and the Catalan Academy’s 2017 Premi Gaudí for Millor curtmetratge [Best Short

Film], a prize reserved for Catalan productions. As such, scrutinising the industrial concerns that gave rise to these accolades can shed light on the characterisation of a dominant Catalan identity from an institutional perspective. In order to demonstrate the modes of representation of Catalan identities by both the filmmaker and the dominant bodies in the Catalan film industry, key themes of the text—identified as time, corporeality, and language—are analysed in light of patterns in contemporary Catalan cinema.

Timecode centres upon the developing relationship between two car park security guards, Luna and Diego, as they alternate their shift work. Following Luna down the ramp from a sunny, deserted urban side street to her concrete underground workplace, the camera observes her changing into her loose uniform, punching in, and entering the cabin where she monitors the security cameras. Aside from the rare occasion when the parking meter breaks down, her only face-to-face human interaction is with Diego, her colleague, with whom she exchanges pleasantries before they swap shifts. One day, while at work, she receives a phone call from her boss, requesting that she check a

211 specific time on the cameras as a car has been damaged. Entering the timecode, she watches Diego practising dance moves as he patrols the parking bays, accidentally striking a car with an ill-judged kick. Responding that she has seen nothing, she hangs up the receiver and proceeds to search the cameras, watching Diego dance. The CCTV camera follows her as she seeks out the spot where Diego kicked the car. At the end of

Luna’s shift, Diego finds a shard of broken brakelight on the desk, accompanied by a note with a timecode. Now it is Luna’s turn to be observed, as the footage to which

Diego is directed records her tentatively dancing in front of the security system. The pair’s exchange continues wordlessly over an unknown number of days, unacknowledged verbally but evidenced by their notes, until one day Luna arrives and does not find the anticipated note on the computer screen. As Diego leaves, she instead sees a note stuck on the outside of the cabin window. A white fade-out returns to the two monitors, and the voice of the boss explains the terms of the job to a newly- recruited young man. While demonstrating how to look up a time on the system, he comes across both Luna and Diego on the cameras. Explaining that they were former employees, he exclaims in Spanish, ‘¿qué coño?’ [‘what the hell?’] as the pair begin to dance. A sequence of elaborate choreography unfolds for over two minutes, the CCTV cameras capturing the dancers from various angles around the carpark. The shot eventually reverses to the pair of men watching. When the boss throws him a quizzical look, the young man responds awkwardly, ‘Yo…yo, es que no sé bailar’ [‘I…the thing is, I don’t know how to dance’].

Corporeality and Catalan identity

As Dominic Keown asserts, corporeality maintains a long tradition as an integral aspect of the Catalan national psyche (2008: 162). For Keown, Catalan cultural mores such as

212 the scatological humour of the enduringly popular Christmas caganer decorations demonstrate this (ibid., p. 170). The cultural significance of corporeality to collective identity in Catalonia is most markedly evidenced by the tradition of forming castells

[human castles] at events held across the territory, recognised by UNESCO in 2010 as intangible cultural heritage (UNESCO [n.d.]). In these impressive human structures, castellers work together to build vertiginous towers. In a poetic metaphor for communal strength, older members form the foundation upon which younger generations climb to reach the summit. The base of the structure, known as the pinya, can be made up of dozens of participants, and has given rise to the Catalan expression ‘fem pinya’, used as an invocation to work as a close-knit team. In the epitome of the spirit of convivència, participants who pack themselves in to form the pinya, arm in arm, are welcomed from all walks of life (ibid.). Scholars have proposed that the centrality of embodied experience to this ritual constructs the Catalan community as a ‘sensory public’

(Erickson 2008: 1). The importance of embodiment to a Catalan cultural tradition is evident in contemporary Catalan cinema, as scholars have observed in the films of prominent directors such as Bigas Luna (Keown 2008; Loxham 2014).

Corporeality and Timecode

Timecode represents the intrusion of the body upon the metronomic constraints of time.

The title insinuates the automated, prescriptive nature of technology, made visible by the world in which Luna and Diego work: they are obliged to replace their clothes with a beige, one-size-fits-all uniform; their sedentary role consists of verifying what the closed-circuit surveillance system records within the monochromatic concrete carpark.

In this arena, the characters’ humanity is effaced, reducing them to all but automatons.

Their means of escaping this sentence is effected through their bodies, through taking

213 ownership of the space in which they move and inscribing it with their creative expression. Luna finds freedom through her exploration of her body’s movement; as the film progresses, the repetitive montage of her routine of donning her uniform expands to include close-ups of her stretching her bruised, bare feet, and a long shot observes her using the clock-in station to stretch her hamstrings, appropriating the space in service to her body. By the time she and Diego finish their post at the car park, they have both surpassed the confines of technological control. Their extended routine sees them exceed the camera’s gaze as they skip from frame to frame; the CCTV system must flit through cameras to keep up with their movements. Their departure from the car park suggests that they have finally broken free of the prison-like monotonous strictures of their work.

The means in which the camerawork captures the dancers’ bodies on screen further serves to interpellate the viewer’s own corporeality as an embodied subject. As Vivian

Sobchack reminds us in The Address of the Eye, the role of spectator is tantamount to

‘vision embodied - a material activity that not only sees but can be seen, that makes vision itself visible’ (1992: 93). Just as Luna and Diego watch each other on the security footage and then enact their own performances to be recorded, this interpellation reflects the gaze of the cameras back onto the viewer, affirming their position as subject and as self-conscious object. As an embodied subject, the viewer is called upon to identify with the somatic experience of the dancers. The protagonists’ movements call the viewer to engage in a celebration of the most fundamental aspect of human experience—that of corporeality—that is at once projected as eminently universal and coded within a Catalan somatic tradition.

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Language and linguistic tensions in Timecode

The function of language in Timecode can be seen as exemplary of the tensions surrounding linguistic strategies in Catalan cinema. Scholars have described the linguistic identity of Catalan film as ‘schizophrenic’, in that even the Premis Gaudí—the premier awarding body in Catalan cinema—has had to create two categories to accommodate films made in Catalan and productions in Spanish (Quintana 2014: 11).

Other film industry nomination processes have exposed similar instability surrounding categorisations of Catalan cinema. A case in point occurred in September 2017, when

Carla Simón’s Estiu 1993 [Summer 1993], a film shot entirely in the Catalan language, was selected by the Spanish Academia to represent Spain in the running for Best

Foreign Language Film at the 2018 US Academy awards—a particularly polemical decision, as the announcement coincided with tensions in the run-up to the referendum on Catalan independence from Spain the following month. Although it is not the first time that a Catalan-language feature film has been selected for the Oscars—that claim belongs to Agustí Villaronga’s Pa negre [Black Bread], in 2012—it does raise the consideration of how language and nationality are negotiated in transnational cinematic spaces, a debate that is particularly relevant to Timecode.

While Timecode’s communicative strategies are chiefly corporeal, as discussed previously, the film also features a mélange of languages. The question which arises first and foremost is that of its English title, which suggests its strategy of appealing to an international festival audience. The significance of this accessibility is brought to light in an account by the director, who remarked when discussing his experience at the Oscars award ceremony that he had had to record his name so that the host could imitate his pronunciation, but that ‘“Timecode”, sin embargo, lo ha pronunciado bastante bien sin

215 necesidad de MP3’ [‘however, she pronounced “Timecode” quite well without the need for an MP3’] (Giménez 2017). English also appears within the film, where it is coded as a universalised language of technology, as the software on which the surveillance system operates is labelled in English. The director does not mention a reason for the decision to record the film’s minimal dialogue in Spanish; the lack of conversation—which has the effect of directing the narrative focus to non-verbal communication—also has the impact that the few utterances that feature do serve to code the film as Spanish- speaking, at least. Nonetheless, the spaces of Timecode are inscribed, albeit tacitly, as polyglossic, with signage in both Spanish and Catalan appearing in the security guards’ booth and in the car park—in fact, this linguistic trace is one of the few clues that reveal the car park to be in Barcelona, aside from the attribution of the location in the closing credits. The mise-en-scène thus contests the monolingual soundscape of the film, indicating that the linguistic identity of Barcelona is more complex than international audiences may appreciate.

Figure 13: Polyglossic spaces: The car park in Timecode

The media and institutional treatment of the hybrid identity implied by the film’s languages, along with the backgrounds of its crew, encapsulates the complexity of

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Catalan identity and the insufficiency of the many structures within the cinema industry at local and international levels—which often rely upon and reinforce the supremacy of the nation-state apparatus—to reflect its intricacy. The consequence of these reductive mechanisms has been that journalistic websites have made conflicting decisions as to which demonym to bestow upon Timecode. By the standards established by ICAA, the film is Spanish, yet the film is recognised as Catalan by the Acadèmia del Cinema Català

(Acadèmia del Cinema Català 2017), and many Catalan news outlets have rejoiced in its international success as a victory for Catalan film, particularly as Giménez is from

Barcelona (Nerín 2017). A report on the 2016 edition of Cannes by the Spanish- speaking Huffington Post hailed Giménez’ work as part of ‘la representación patria’

[‘representing the country’] in its article ‘Cannes habla español’ [‘Cannes speaks

Spanish’], equating language and nation at the time of determining the nationality of a film, yet the author of the article opted to describe Giménez as ‘un director catalán’ [‘a

Catalan director’] (Porcel 2016). While perhaps Giménez made the decision to film in

Spanish as a strategic means of opening up the awards for which the film was eligible, what is most revealing about this choice is the response that it has provoked from both the Catalan and Spanish film institutions, as both attempt to appropriate the film in order to lay claim to its success. In any case, it is notable that the decision undermines the Catalan government’s protectionist linguistic policies outlined in the Llei del

Cinema, suggesting an unwillingness to engage with the agenda promoted by the policy.

Moreover, the decision to award Giménez the Premi d’honor at Filmets 2016 suggests the desire of the festival organisers to align the event with the success of the film and its crew as exemplifying the calibre of an internationally recognised Catalan film industry.

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4.2. ‘Almas errantes’: New Catalan perspectives on urban landscapes

‘Cadaqués es un món a part de tot. Cadaqués, per a mí, es un món, es un univers

concentrat en un poble.’

– Joan Manuel Tajadura, La substància

The previous section of this chapter addressed the context of Timecode, a Catalan-made film that has been exhibited at international film festivals, analysing the themes present in the film that contributed to its positive reception, and the industrial mechanisms behind its creation that served to secure awards, depicting a particular Catalan identity both at home and abroad. This section moves on to address the theme of landscapes in recent Catalan films. It is argued that La substància [The Substance] (Lluís Galter, 2016) and Bictor Ugo (Josep María Bendicho and Carlos Clausell, 2015) rework depictions of very different Catalan places in a manner that challenges an understanding of the constituent parts of identity, whether that be the identifying traits that people draw from the place where they live, the cultures and customs imbricated in the sense of that place, or the language used there. This reworked understanding of the definition of identity reinscribes it as more fluid and complex than merely the sum of these constituent parts.

‘Un cos sense ànima no és res, no?’: Deconstructing place and identity in La substància (Lluís Galter, 2016)

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, film historians have identified a proclivity among directors for instrumentalising documentary to blur the lines between the reality that the cinematic mode often draws upon as ‘a basis for belief’ (Nichols

2001: 3) and fiction. This tendency has been observed both within and outside

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Catalonia (Català and Cerdán [n.d.]; Riambau 2010b; Català 2010). Films within this cadre, or film-essays, have been described as ‘no […] tanto documentales de la superficie de la realidad, como del significado de la misma’ [‘not so much documentaries on the surface of reality as they are about the meaning of it’] (Català 2010: 53). For

Josep Maria Català, these productions exceed the parameters of what Bill Nichols termed the ‘reflexive mode’ of documentary (2001: 125), in which the filmmaker disrupts the text’s privileged claim to veracity by exposing the artifice of the cinematic gaze; instead, they opt to conflate fictional sequences with scenes that observe ‘real’ locations. Of this kind of cinema, Losilla (2016: 35) says that the doubt engendered by these techniques extends to troubling the fixity of identity itself, establishing ‘una permanent cultura de la sospita, traient a la llum símptomes de la seva possible inexistència més enllà de mites i relats collectius divulgats des del poder’ [‘a permanent culture of suspicion, bringing to light symptoms of its possible inexistence beyond myths and collective stories disseminated from positions of power’]. Catalan directors whose contemporary work has been observed as exemplifying this tendency include, among others, José Luis Guerín (Loxham 2014: 136) and Mercedes Álvarez (Picornell

2017: 179). To fabricate these texts that trouble the boundaries between reality and fiction, many of these works select Barcelona as their canvas, observing the changes and tensions in the urban landscape (ibid., p. 181). In particular, Álvarez’ 2011 documentary, Mercado de futuros, draws upon diverse sites across the Catalan capital to evoke and query the relationship between space and memory (ibid., p. 179).

For his documentary La substància (2016), Lluís Galter takes as his subject matter the

Catalan seaside resort of Cadaqués, and interweaves a narrative around the construction of a replica development on the Chinese coast, known as Kadakaisi.

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Choosing to film in Cadaqués appears a markedly peripheral location in contrast with

Barcelona; however, the town is of substantial cultural significance in Catalonia. On its tourist website, the Generalitat advertises Cadaqués as ‘the village with which Dalí fell in love’ (Generalitat de Catalunya [n.d.-a]). Although the controversial Surrealist spent over half a century living in the neighbouring bay of Portlligat (ibid.), Cadaqués now bears a statue of Dalí in the centre of its promenade. Besides its contemporary recognition as a landmark on the ‘Dalí Triangle’ tourist trail, during the twentieth century Cadaqués was associated with a number of Catalonia’s most recognised creative names, such as Eugeni d’Ors, Santiago Rusiñol and Joan Miró, as well as representing a locus of cultural exchange with other prominent figures in the European avant-garde arts scene from within Spain and abroad, such as Pablo Picasso, Federico García Lorca, and Marc Chagall (ibid.).36 Indeed, the Empordà region in which the village is located derives its name from the Greco-Latin term ‘emporium’, emphasising this history of international trade and cosmopolitan encounters (Keown 2008: 166). These links that

Cadaqués had cultivated with internationally renowned artists within the contemporary art world endured towards the end of the dictatorship, when the town hosted a posthumous exhibition of the French-American Dadaist Marcel Duchamp’s work in

1973 (Buffery and Caulfield 2012: 22). Indeed, the town’s iconoclastic creative pedigree extends to cinema; in 1929, Luis Buñuel shot the short film Menjant garotes [Eating Sea

Urchins] in the town, in which he records Salvador Dalí performing the eponymous act

36 Other Catalan films screened on the 2016/17 festival circuit also drew inspiration from Spanish artists exiled during the Civil War, emphasising their transnational position and their link to the patrimonio cultural. This is the case of La folie [Madness] (Ricard López, 2016), the aforementioned film that imagines the creative process of Pablo Picasso when composing Guernica while in exile in Paris. The film is highly self-reflexive, as its stop-motion medium draws attention to the artistry of the director himself; López created a ‘Making Of’ video to accompany the film, revealing his own creative process. La folie was awarded a Venus de Badalona at the Filmets festival, along with a €1.000 prize for the best production from Badalona (Festival Filmets 2016). 220

(Thurlow and Thurlow 2013: xii). The port’s connections with the artists of the

Surrealist and avant-garde movements are echoed in Galter’s film, in which the same spiked sea urchins of Buñuel’s work appear. As we shall see, allusions to the techniques used by figures of the Surrealist movement will play a role in (de)constructing the places that Galter films.

La substància follows Tingting, who has purchased one of the new apartments, as she finds solace in the coastal resort from her life as a bar owner in urban China. Meanwhile,

Galter introduces other characters in the ‘original’ Catalan Cadaqués, such as local historian Joan Manuel Tajadura, who recounts his memories of the place and its historical significance. Judicious editing and positioning of his protagonists allows

Galter to begin to merge the two locations, conflating the two places to the extent that it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish the ‘original’ Cadaqués from the imitation.

This technique ultimately brings the viewer face to face with the impulse to determine an ‘original’, and thus to challenge beliefs in the role of history and culture in the formation of an identity.

From the establishing scene of La substància, Galter conflates simulated images of

Cadaqués and its Chinese replica to such a degree that it becomes impossible to discern an original. Indeed, he denies the viewer access to the referent (the ‘original’ Cadaqués), initially presenting virtual approximations of the village so that a direct visual comparison cannot be drawn. In the opening sequence of the film, over a black screen pocked with blurred flecks of light, the words of a male Catalan voice announce that

‘[m]algret el que pugui semblar, aquesta no és l’imatge recurrent de turistes visitant

Cadaqués’ [‘despite what it may seem, this is not the recurring image of tourists visiting

Cadaqués’], indicating to the viewer the untrustworthiness of their own eyes. The

221 disjunction between sound and image continues in the following sequence, which shows a high-definition computer-generated simulation of the Chinese development, paired with a recording of the inveterate Catalan male group Port-Bo performing ‘Cadaqués t’estimi’ [‘Cadaqués, I love you’]. As the romantic lyrics describe the mountains and sea that surround the village, the camera travels through the digitally rendered vision of the new development, offering views of squares adorned with fountains and flowers, whitewashed houses, and vacant waterside terraces.

In juxtaposing Catalan culture with the virtual substitute for Cadaqués, the sequence recalls the assessment made by Mercè Picornell (2017: 185) of a similar effect in

Mercado de futuros (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011), which, she argues, proposes a dichotomy

‘entre el espacio real—entendido no en términos ontológicos sino como lugar antropológico: habitado, transitado, vivido—y su simulación, esto es, la creación de una representación sin referente que pretende sustituir la realidad por una imagen convincente’ [‘between real space—understood not in ontological terms, but as an anthropological place: inhabited, traversed, lived—and its simulation; that is, the creation of a representation without a referent that claims to substitute reality for a convincing image’]. From the outset, La substància resists satisfying the question of whether a space understood as the ‘real’ Cadaqués exists at all.

Galter repeatedly mounts the challenge to the reality of place via the imposition of the aural upon the visual. Audio bridges serve to conflate the Chinese development with

Catalonia. Early in the film, footage of workers maintaining the grounds at the resort is accompanied by piped piano music; it is unclear whether this soundtrack is diegetic or not, although the muffled quality suggests that it is being played through speakers within the grounds. Around thirty minutes later in the narrative, the music plays again,

222 this time alongside shots of men performing other maintenance tasks, including tending to olive groves, sanding a sailboat, and sweeping the streets. Especially when overlaid with the same soundtrack, the images could easily be mistaken as representing the same place; only small details hint that they do not: road signs that read in Catalan, or the complexions of the workers (although, as this analysis will later show, both linguistic and physical markers as suggestions of identity are undermined elsewhere in the film). The conflation of the two conurbations serves to position both places as illusions, combining to form a hyperreal space in which no ‘real’ Cadaqués is truly possible.

Beyond the use of audio bridges, other elements of the soundtrack, such as songs, encourage an understanding of place as disconnected from identity. In a particularly dreamlike sequence, Zhan, the concierge, finds himself in a barren, deserted landscape, loosely marked as within Chinese territory by the communications in Chinese that he receives on his walkie-talkie, and the fact that he has previously been filmed working at

Kadakaisi. Traversing the almost extraterrestrial landscape, a Chinese song dedicated to merchant workers plays, initially over his radio. In a mirroring of the establishing sequence of the film, the footage that accompanies the now extra-diegetic sound is an archival recording of fishermen in Cadaqués. The fact that they harvest sea urchins, which Tingting was shown collecting on the Chinese coast in an earlier scene, further disorientates the viewer. The songs performed by protagonists also reflect their sense of dislocation from place. At the bar she owns with David in Xiamen, Tingting watches a musician, whose lyrics underscore this reading: ‘No me preguntes de donde vengo / mi patria está en un lugar muy lejano. Soy un alma errante, errante hacia el fin del mundo’

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[‘Don’t ask me where I come from / my country is in a very faraway place / I’m a wandering soul, wandering to the end of the world’].

The development of the narrative is testament to the deterritorialised identities that these songs advocate. Whereas at the start of the film, it was possible to discern that

Tingting, David, Mumu and Zhan Sixiang were based in China, while Joan Manuel

Tajadura was in Catalonia, the mounting conflation of the two places and movement of the protagonists confuses this certainty. A scene towards the end of the film exemplifies this, when the narrative returns to a small beach hut where Joan Manuel Tajadura had been filmed previously, leading the viewer to believe that this is in Cadaqués (in a subsequent scene, Mumu and Zhan Sixiang are seen inside the hut). Tingting and David approach the beach, and find the hut, this time deserted and empty, raising questions as to whether it is indeed the same hut or merely a similar one. However, it is at this point that Tajadura comes into shot on the beach, still within range to hear Tingting and

David talking in the background. The camera then cuts to inside the hut, once again lit by candlelight and full of Tajadura’s collections. As he talks to his interviewer, the camera cuts briefly to show daylight outside the hut. It transpires that the interviewer, conversing with him in Spanish and still wearing his Stetson, is none other than Zhan.

Rather than, as Picornell argues of Mercado de futuros, proposing a dichotomy between real space and its simulation, La substància seems to question the attachments between people and place, and how their identity is often viewed as determined strongly by the places they inhabit. This certainly seems to be true of Joan Manuel Tajadura, who explains how he was called to become a local historian of Cadaqués in a dream. The places he inhabits are populated with his collections of items found while beachcombing on the Costa Brava, and he describes his belief that the ‘soul’ of a place is imbued in its

224 soil, its stones and its water. The importance that Tajadura places upon this affective connection with place is made clear in his question, ‘un cos sense ànima no és res, no?’

[‘a body without a soul is nothing, is it?’]. However, the imbrication of the Cadaqués on the Costa Brava and the Chinese coast serves to render them both as simulations, as places that have been constructed via a series of representations and that ultimately do not exist in reality. The footage at the end of the film, where recordings of holidaymakers filling the streets of Cadaqués are run alongside an advertisement for another replica Cadaqués resort in the Caribbean, continues to abstract the idea of an original from a simulacrum, until the only place that remains is a hyperreal Cadaqués, an assemblage of images conjured in the mind of the viewer.

Borderlands in Barcelona in Bictor Ugo (Josep María Bendicho and Carlos Clausell, 2015)

In contrast with La substància, Bictor Ugo takes as its backdrop an alternative icon of the

Catalan landscape: Barcelona. The works set in Barcelona made within Catalonia, Spain and beyond are extensive in number, and range from depicting the city as a tourist paradise to the scene of a family melodrama, or a pastiche of political struggles and social upheaval.37 Bendicho and Clausell’s fiction film follows the anti-hero, the eponymous Bictor Ugo, as he takes a flâneur’s journey around the streets of the Catalan capital, performing street entertainment to wide-eyed visitors and sleeping in dives in the crevices of the city blocks. His perspective serves to subvert the depiction of

Barcelona as a tourist paradise, centring instead on a seedy underworld that comprises

37 Among the more contemporary Barcelona-based films most discussed in the literature are Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), for Woody Allen’s picturesque view of the city; Todo sobre mi madre [All About My Mother] (1999), for an iconic Almodóvarian exploration; or En construcción (2001) for José Luís Guerín’s documentary, an examination of the layers of Barcelona’s troubled past and uncertain future. 225 the behind-the-scenes of Barcelona’s polished image. His stomping-ground is the Raval neighbourhood, infamous among Barcelona residents and others with knowledge of the city as a historically working-class district where some of the more insalubrious activities of the metropolis, such as prostitution and drug dealing, took place (Deleyto and López 2012: 158). Perhaps Ugo’s view of the city would constitute the ‘real’

Barcelona expounded by many, as opposed to the tourist-friendly vistas conjured by

Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). In this sense, Bendicho and Clausell also enter into the discursive treatment of Catalan places as multifaceted, prismatic and enigmatic in their blurring of the real and the imaginary.

Through its play on cinematic effects that blur the locations around the city, Bictor Ugo constitutes a disavowal of the image of Barcelona as a polished attraction for tourist consumption. In the opening sequence, a series of swift cuts observe Ugo in a lift as he travels upwards to the street level of the iconic Rambla by night. The reflections on the glass doors registered by the camera, coupled with the fast cross-cutting between shots of the lift from different angles, creates a disorientating effect, like that of a hall of mirrors. As the camera follows Ugo around the Rambla, the bokeh produced by the out- of-focus capture of streetlights both remind the viewer of the artificiality of the image they receive and refuse sharply-rendered access to the contours of the famous

Barcelona street of a thousand postcards. A further outcome of this technique is that the viewer’s attention is concentrated on Ugo’s actions, as he interacts with passers-by and tourists who relax on the restaurant terraces. It is clear that Ugo’s inebriated gaze will be the perspective that the viewer is granted, not those of the visitors who seek out

Barcelona’s glamour and exoticism. Barcelona becomes illegible through its dominant

226 semiotic code; it must be understood from the liminal, obfuscated position that Ugo’s gaze permits.

Ugo’s trajectory gravitates towards the backstreet bar culture of the city, yet the camerawork places less emphasis on documenting the places than of mediating his experience within them. As he enters a bar, the camera pans around with very shallow depth-of-field, working simultaneously to recreate his drunken observations and reduce the legibility of his surroundings. The handheld camera compounds this effect, contributing further to the idea of Ugo’s subjective experience of the city. A shot then observes Ugo from behind the bar, with the reflections of the staff in the glass counter superimposed on his own image, alluding again to the illegibility of the space and the polysemy of his subjectivity.

Within the film, it is notable that the spaces of Barcelona of which the viewer is permitted to make sense are its interstices. Ugo’s tiny apartment, which fits in the frame of a single static long shot, is filmed dispassionately and with generous depth-of-field, allowing the viewer to absorb its details. In the first shot inside the apartment, Ugo is filmed reading on the toilet at the back of the small studio, inciting the eye to scan the room in its travel towards the protagonist. Observing this intimate activity recalls the references to scatological humour characteristic of contemporary Catalan culture mentioned previously: it is clear that the film does not aspire to portray Barcelona with the customary elegance of more commercial productions. This decision constructs the public face of Barcelona as beguiling and deceptive; here it is the hidden private spaces that nuance its identity. Indeed, compounding the intended authenticity of this sequence, the directors divulged in an interview that this is the apartment where Hugo

Hermo, who plays Ugo, truly lives (‘“Bictor Ugo”, una oda a la vida callejera en España’

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2015). The idea of the film as an imitation of life is consistent with a later sequence in which Ugo washes himself from a bucket on the roof terrace; Hermo himself confirmed that for three years, the shower in his apartment was broken and he had to perform the same routine as Ugo (ibid.).

In Bictor Ugo, Barcelona is coded as a plurilingual city in which languages possess varying levels of social—and economic—currency. Ugo himself codeswitches complacently between Spanish, Catalan and English, all within the first five minutes of the film, establishing the strategy as a part of the city’s soundscape. It is unclear at whom his initial diatribe in Spanish is directed, as he looks outside the frame while rummaging in his backpack at the foot of the Rambla, but that seems precisely the point: his belief is that Spanish will be accessible to anyone who will listen. As his rant acquires an audience, he converts to Catalan, and the camera swivels to show two older women smiling nervously at him. He holds a brief exchange with them in Catalan, before one curses him as a ‘puerco’ [‘pig’—in Spanish] and they continue on their way. For Ugo, as for many workers in the Catalan capital, using English is his chance for financial gain; the following sequence sees him using the language to perform a magic trick to a table of international tourists (the twist is that not one member of his audience makes good on his wry suggestion that they make a donation). Echoed by the English tattoo reading

‘Once upon a time’ that his barmaid friend sports on her arm, it seems that the fairytale

Barcelona marketed to tourists—and from whom its citizens supposedly stand to profit—does not benefit all of its residents. In these circumstances, Ugo’s codeswitching represents a survival strategy in a city that is constantly in flux.

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Figure 14: Hidden spaces of Barcelona: Bictor Ugo’s apartment

The polyglossic linguistic landscape of the Barcelona in Bictor Ugo is complemented by the allusions to a maelstrom of cultural identities present in the film. As Ugo wanders the streets, he passes a butcher’s shopfront displaying signage in both Arabic and

Spanish. Singers in the street perform a flamenco song accompanied by guitar, immediately followed by a shot of a balcony bedecked with a Catalan senyera flag, which in turn contrasts with an earlier view of the Spanish and European Union flags hanging from another building. Viewed in this way, Barcelona passes from illegible to excessively legible: a multitude of signifiers hinting at a plurality of identities that coexist in a single, infinite city.

The numerous cultures represented in these scenes suggest Barcelona’s capacity to accommodate and accept all manner of cultural identities, a trait that seems entirely consistent with the Catalan understanding of convivència. Yet Ugo himself, for all his skills at adapting to this intractable city, is positioned on the margins, surviving nocturnally and drifting through the streets by day. His voiced distrust of the authorities, such as banks and the police security that he wryly mocks in the opening

229 scene, position him as outside of the dominant structures that govern the city. The glass lift in which he arrives on the scene, itself presumably designed to facilitate surveillance, bears stickers indicating that CCTV invigilates the area. The camerawork itself often mimics this notion that Ugo is being tracked, following his movements via panning shots and filming behind him as he walks. He finds small, unobtrusive spaces to occupy that go unnoticed, reflected in his studio accommodation and his roof terrace where he is able to wash himself and grow cannabis plants undisturbed by the law enforcement that beleaguers him (yet he is, of course, still watched by the camera).

While Ugo does not struggle to inhabit the city with a variety of cultures, it is as if the city itself rejects him.

Like the illusions that Ugo and his friends perform, Bictor Ugo presents Barcelona as a prismatic hall of mirrors, with the idea that it can be seen and experienced from a million different angles. The film inverts the power dynamic of Barcelona’s contemporary institutionally-approved city image, shattering its commercial, glamourised personality, and thus engendering an identity crisis of the city. The film suggests that, in its doomed attempt to ostensibly welcome all people, Barcelona ends up being nothing at all.

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‘Borders and barriers, which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory, can also

become prisons and are often defended beyond reason or necessity.’

- Edward Said (2000: 185)

This section examines Catalan-made films that question the meanings of places and their intersection with each other—in this case, dissecting the relationship between

Spain and Africa. Both L’oeil impératif/El ojo imperativo [The Imperative Eye] (María

Ruido, 2015)38 and Tarajal: desmontando la impunidad en la frontera sur [Tarajal:

Dismantling the Impunity of the Southern Border] (Xavier Artigas, Xapo Ortega and Marc

Serra, 2015) offer criticisms of Spanish interactions with Morocco, drawing attention to their colonial shared history and the ongoing neocolonial dynamic between the two states. Yet the dissection of the Catalan imagination of Africa is nowhere near as straightforward as a diametric opposition to how Spanish national identity has been constructed in relation to the continent. Rather than having positioned Africa as entirely

Other, Catalonia has been described as having an ‘ambiguous relationship’ with Africa

(Bosch 1996: 20). While Catalonia condemned Spanish expansionism under Franco, the region (and, specifically, Barcelona) did benefit from trade links with the Spanish

Protectorate in Morocco (ibid.), thus complicating the Catalan claim to unilateral denunciation of the Spanish colonial venture. Indeed, Africa remains central to

38 Sources commonly refer to Ruido’s film first and foremost using its French title, L’oeil impératif, followed by its equivalent in Spanish and English, yet only the Spanish title was used in the Alcances programme. The French form of the title will be used henceforth. 231 mediating the contemporary relationship between Spain and Catalonia, as Spanish state immigration policy obliges the Spanish and Catalan governments to play divergent roles in the process of receiving migrants, the number of whom arriving from Africa has remained at over 25% of the foreign-born immigrant population over the past ten years

(Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya 2018). The state holds the power to admit entry to

Spanish territory, but, like the governments of other autonomous communities, the

Generalitat is then responsible for migrants’ welfare upon their arrival in Catalonia

(Crameri 2004: 147). This tension between state and regional policies has led to the

Catalan government adopting measures to assert its difference where possible, hence the observation that ‘in Catalonia […] regional immigration policies have been constructed in opposition to those of the central state’ (Conversi and Jeram 2017: 53).

The ideals of convivència promoted as integral to catalanitat in recent years (Bosch

1996; Crameri 2014) through a discourse of ‘profoundly inclusive’ nationalism (Crameri

2014: 9) initially seem intended to assert Catalonia’s distance from the ‘gatekeeping’ attempts of Spanish state immigration policy.

Africa constitutes a further marker of the distinction between Catalan and Spanish national identities in Catalan discourses surrounding Spanish (and broader European) colonial history. Scholars have implied that the lack of Catalan engagement in colonial activity endows the nation with a detached position from which to comment upon intercontinental relations. Discussing the work of the Centre d’Estudis Africans [Centre for African Studies] in Barcelona, Alfred Bosch remarked that ‘the ideological distance from the Spanish colonial adventure gives a viewpoint free of neo-colonial interests and intentions, something which is not at all obvious in Paris, London, Lisbon or Madrid’

(1996: 21). More than explaining the dynamic between Catalonia and Africa, this

232 statement indicates how Africa becomes caught up in the Catalan nationalist struggle to avow its difference, not only from Spain, but also from other European post-imperial nation-states.

Beyond this detachment from a colonial past, Bosch’s writing on the Centre d’Estudis

Africans is also emblematic of a tenet of hegemonic Catalan nationalism: that Catalonia holds a ‘unique view on questions of identity or ethnicity’ (ibid.). Bosch’s distinction of the stance that the Catalan research centre adopts on ethnicity as ‘a component of plural realities, as an element needing to be understood, rather than condemned’ (ibid.) speaks more broadly to the contemporary Catalan political strategy of an ‘intercultural nationalism’, in which immigrants are encouraged to identify with Catalan values and culture while retaining a connection with their own cultural identity (Conversi and

Jeram 2017: 53). Given that the adoption of intercultural policies in Catalonia is considered both a rejection of the immigration measures adopted by the central Spanish state and an assertion of Catalan society as open (ibid.), the way in which Catalonia constructs Africa can shed light on how state institutions and filmmakers in Catalonia view and articulate national identity.

For instance, the Catalan films in question scrutinise Spanish attitudes towards those demographics considered Other to Spain, particularly focusing upon North and sub-

Saharan African communities involved in the complex issues concerning immigration to the peninsula. The directors of Tarajal: desmontando la impunidad de la frontera sur and

L’oeil impératif compose texts that condemn Spanish international relations with

Morocco. Adopting an exposé-style approach and structuring the film into titled sections, Tarajal refers to an incident where men migrating from sub-Saharan Africa were allegedly shot in the water with rubber bullets off the coast of Tarajal in the

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Spanish territory of Ceuta, near the Moroccan border, denouncing a relationship in which the Spanish Guardia Civil instruct the Moroccan border police to enact questionable policing of the frontier.39 In L’oeil impératif, Spanish corporations are revealed to exploit the neocolonial relationship with Morocco to manufacture goods overseas for the benefit of the Spanish and wider European markets. Described in the festival programme as ‘un ensayo visual sobre el colonialismo (y el neo-colonialismo) español en Marruecos’ [‘a visual essay on Spanish colonialism (and neo-colonialism) in

Morocco’] (Alcances Festival de Cine Documental 2016: 7), the film’s inclusion alongside

Tarajal in the Alcances official selection of feature films renders visible the ongoing production of cine de denuncia [loosely translated as human rights or social protest cinema] in Catalonia. Moreover, the inclusion of these two films in the official selection also results in affirming Alcances’ self-image as a film festival that engages with social protest.

In foregrounding the Spanish relationship with Morocco, these two films interrogate the notion of place in identity formation. In Tarajal, the shared land border between the

Spanish territory of Ceuta and neighbouring Morocco is represented as the source of tension, evasion of justice and a relationship of dominance and subordination. The camerawork draws repeated attention to the border fence itself, appearing in several instances to point to the absurdity of attempting to enforce differing legislation and ideologies upon a singular land mass separated by a mere fence. In this way, the border suggests a physical illustration of Homi Bhabha’s concept of ‘contiguity’, where two realms or ontologies collide. The border comes to be absurd in its attempt to define and separate two distinct worlds, when in fact what occurs is the creation of what Bhabha

39 Directors Xapo Ortega and Xavier Artigas are known for their ‘politically engaged documentary cinema’ (Revert and others 2016: 106)—their previous film, Ciutat morta [Dead City] (2014), enjoyed success at a number of film festivals (ibid.). 234 dubbed a ‘Third Space’; as Parvati Nair observes, ‘the border space—ironically—refuses delimitation’ (2012: 18). This ‘mediating space’ of the borderland (Pomar-Amer 2014:

34) often results in the creation of new identities. In L’oeil impératif, conversely, the locations filmed in Morocco are inflected by the colonial languages imprinted upon them; lingering shots capture signs in French and Spanish, and even the title of the film appears in four different languages. In a similar way to the means in which languages mediate spaces in La fabulosa Casablanca, this linguistic contiguity creates internal, invisible borderlands, separating inhabitants by language and recalling the striations of the Moroccan colonial past. Identity construction in these places is thus inscribed as relational to the pasts that have characterised them, as well as to the presents that continue to shape them.

In the films that interrogate the relationship between Spain and Africa, language is portrayed as a structure that reinforces power hierarchies and enables them to remain unchallenged, as classic theories on postcolonial discourse have postulated (Ashcroft and others 1995). More recently, critics have nuanced this debate, asserting that

‘[l]anguage does remain an area of struggle, but principally in the battle for cultural power. Meanwhile, the language of economic and political power has remained resolutely colonial’ (Seed 2013: 102). In Tarajal, the directors focus on the significance of using certain terminology in debates surrounding migration. Terms like ‘survivor’, which implies the occurrence of an atrocity, are used from the outset as Ron, one person involved in the incident, testifies, and are contrasted with the vocabulary selected by the

Spanish authorities. Men holding positions of state authority in Spain are shown to use language to reframe events: the Director General of the Guardia Civil, Arsenio

Fernández de Mesa, pronounces that the Guardia Civil’s actions constituted a ‘rechazo’

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[‘rejection’] of people attempting to enter Spanish territory, not a ‘devolución’ [‘return’] across the border to Morocco, which would have been illegal. In this instance, the narrative emphasis on language inscribes it as a powerful tool by which to evade culpability, employed to particular effect by the Guardia Civil and its defensors, the

Spanish government. Editing and post-production techniques are used to hold the speakers to account, enshrining the chosen terms in black text that fills the screen as they speak, with the double effect of encouraging the viewer to scrutinise the representatives’ language and committing their statement to textual form as an indelible record of their alibi.

The importance of written language as suggested by these editing techniques is addressed directly in a segment of Tarajal entitled ‘Archivo’, in which lawyer Laia Serra highlights in Catalan the repeated use of the Castilian term ‘inmigrante’ [‘immigrant’] in the Spanish judicial statement archiving the case. Explaining that this term is loaded with connotations—as scholars attest (Rzepnikowska 2015: 56)—Serra suggests that use of this word may indicate distance and a lack of empathy for the humans involved in the incident. Serra’s own declaration that ‘el llenguatge no és neutre’ [‘(the) language is not neutral’] is all the more poignant for having been uttered in Catalan, contrasting with her citation of the Spanish word ‘inmigrante’. The presence of multiple languages in the film becomes all the more topical when considered in light of the legislation promoting the use of Catalan in films made in the region, described in Chapter Two. In fact, Tarajal features interviews shown in a number of different languages, including

English, French, Spanish and Catalan, which all contribute to inscribing the film firmly as polyglossic, and which endows the film with an international sensibility.

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Perhaps the most significant of all of the languages in Tarajal, though, is the French spoken in the very first scene by Ron, one of the survivors mentioned previously. His appeal to international authorities foregrounds what Artigas, Ortega and Serra’s film aims to do, and what, for whatever reason, many Spanish films have not done: to include the voices of the people who undertake these journeys to Europe. Giving a voice to the voiceless both draws a line between the Catalan and Spanish approaches to what has been termed ‘migrant cinema’ (Ponzanesi and Berger 2016: 111) and makes a profound statement about vocalising the testimonies of those outside of dominant discourse. This aim has particular relevance to the current sociopolitical reality of Catalonia, at a time when the voices of both those whose demands for secession were unheeded and those who subsequently felt ostracised by the pro-independence movements have now become more visible in the public sphere.

Similarly, written and spoken forms of language also play a role in exposing structures of power in L’oeil impératif. The film opens with the reading of the English translation of a quote from Frantz Fanon’s 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth, which claims that the act of settling in a country constitutes an element of writing the history of the nation of origin. The film’s title then flashes up on screen, in Arabic, French, Spanish, and

English. The juxtaposition of the excerpt from Fanon’s writing with these titles encourages the reading of the diverse languages as a deliberate pronouncement of the colonial history of Morocco, serving as persistent marks of other nations’ and cultures’ power within the country. Ruido intensifies this narrative with shots of buildings in

Moroccan cities; cinemas bear names such as ‘Cinema Rif’ and ‘Cine Alcázar’ above

Arabic script, and the Gran Teatro Cervantes, with its date of inauguration inscribed as

1913, serves as a reminder of the enduring Spanish presence in the city. The sequences

237 recall the awkward mapping of language and place which arises in La fabulosa

Casablanca, yet the opening sequence of L’oeil impératif, and the film’s title itself, make clear that Ruido aims to address the colonial (and neocolonial) dynamics between Spain and Morocco without any nostalgia for Spain’s colonial dominance.

Crucially, Ruido also draws attention to the importance of language acts by creating space in the soundtrack for their absence. In L’oeil impératif, several sequences occur in which no voices are heard at all; the most notable of these is a scene in a factory that produces denim jeans. Directly before this scene, Ruido includes another montage illustrating the persistent presence of the Spanish and French languages: a police car bears script in Arabic, French and Spanish; street names are written in Arabic and

Spanish; a café banner reads ‘Buen Gusto Café Tanger’ above its Arabic counterpart.

This clamour of linguistic inscriptions is then countered with the first scene inside the denim factory, where men and headscarved women sort jeans into piles in silence.

Although they do not speak to each other, Spanish can be heard in the background, as if occupying the space left by their unheard voices. A subsequent scene brings an onslaught of noise from the factory machinery, as the workers use power tools to distress the denim. The dust masks and ear defenders worn by the women constitute a symbolic rendering of their censorship; their work—creating clothing for Spanish- owned multinational companies, it transpires—obliges them into silence and absence from view.

The denial of the Moroccan workers’ right to speak resonates with the footage from

Marruecos en la paz [Morocco at Peace], a 1951 film by Rafael López Rienda whose segments punctuate the opening scenes of L’oeil impératif. The film documents official visits of the Spanish colonists to the territories in Morocco, and is silent apart from a

238 male voice that comments on the scenes in Spanish. Many scenes depict Moroccan citizens receiving the Spaniards in traditional dress and performing dances for them.

The disavowal of the indigenous population’s voice is most emphasised through the

Spanish vocabulary used to describe the local people, indeed effacing the fact that they are individuals and indicating that their presence is offered up for the visual consumption of their exoticism: ‘los Regulares de Melilla, tienen en Nador un pintoresco poblado indígena’ [‘the officials of Melilla have in Nador a picturesque indigenous village’]. The ‘bellezas rifeñas del poblado’ [‘Riffian beauties from the village’] are pictured but are denied the right to comment for themselves, framed instead by the objectifying commentary of the Spanish voiceover.

If in isolation the significance of including López Rienda’s film might have appeared in any way ambiguous, Ruido makes clear that she intends for the film to constitute a critical reading of this text from the colonial era—and the subsequent post- independence footage from public interest films made by the Noticiario Español—by later including a sequence filmed in an art gallery in Catalonia, where text on the gallery wall explains, in Catalan, Spanish, and English, the concept of Orientalism and its appeal to the European imaginary. Zooming the camera in and out of focus on the text draws attention to the concept of ‘visual sovereignties’ to which Ruido refers in her description of the film (2015). Taking into consideration that this ‘visual essay’ was made to be screened at the Arts Santa Mònica centre in Barcelona (ibid.), by referencing the gaze that the audience brings to their understanding of the film, this sequence unequivocally lays bare Ruido’s belief in the role of power relations in the depiction of different communities and the agendas behind these representations—an understanding that precisely underscores the motivations for this thesis.

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While language is shown to be instrumental in maintaining hierarchies of power, it is also revealed as a tool that has the ability to hold power to account. Both Tarajal and

L’oeil impératif feature an array of languages that reflect and respond to colonial and neocolonial mechanisms, and it is revealed that it is precisely these different languages that are able to overturn the existing power structures. Tarajal features interviews shown in a number of different languages, including English, French, Spanish and

Catalan, with commentators from a variety of countries, which all contribute to endowing the film with an international character and challenging the hegemony of the

Spanish perspective on the situation. The most significant of all of these language acts, though, is the French spoken in the very first scene by Ron, which contests the official statements of the Spanish authorities. Representing the voice of the individuals undertaking the journey to Europe from sub-Saharan Africa—the voice of the ‘migrant’ figure—his testimony offers a perspective beyond that which commonly features in dominant Spanish discourse, and which viewers of Spanish films surrounding migration may be unaccustomed to being granted (Ponzanesi and Berger 2016: 114). Throughout

Tarajal, the incident in 2014—and migration challenges on the whole—are framed as an international humanitarian issue, and not one for which the Spanish government can expect to evade accountability for its response. When Ron calls upon international organisations to investigate the case, it appears that his patience with, and faith in,

Spanish authorities to bring those at fault to justice has run out; from subsequent events focused on in the film, such as the changing explanations given by Jorge Fernández Díaz, the Minister for the Interior, it is easy to see why. Ron’s attitude in this respect points to a perspective of viewing Spain as part of a larger collective—the European Union, first and foremost, but also the global community at large—and asserts the idea that the country is subject to international laws and treaties on human rights, not merely its own

240 legislation, which the footage in Tarajal suggests the authorities are prepared to sidestep.40

While in L’oeil impératif, the silence of the Moroccans in the face of Spanish (and internationalised) domination precludes them from speaking out against the neocolonial power structures in place, the presence of other languages in the film does serve to condemn the situation that maintains the conditions of subordination at work in postcolonial Morocco. The quotations from Frantz Fanon’s work that punctuate the documentary are read by a voice with an American English accent, adding two dimensions to the film: firstly, it positions the film text as to be viewed by an

Anglophone, and thus perhaps international, audience; and secondly, it prevents a reading of the text from being limited to the Spanish or Catalan perspective. In line with

Artigas’ and Ortega’s narrative, then, Ruido implies that the conditions which persist between Spain and Morocco are subject to scrutiny on a global level, and that these local issues and their consequences extend beyond the national borders of Spain and those of its neighbours.

Scrutiny of international relations between Spain and the rest of the globe (not merely its former colonies) features prominently in these films. In Tarajal, Spain’s relationship with other nations is primarily challenged on two levels. Firstly, its standing in relation to other Western (and particularly European) nations is thrown into question. Crucially, this challenge is mounted principally by way of querying Spanish democracy as a result of the Spanish Guardia Civil’s actions in Ceuta. Interviewee Gonzalo Boyé voices the view that, ‘en cualquier país democrático’ [‘in any democratic country’], the Minister for the Interior would be the first political victim and the person held responsible for

40 These accusations are all the more topical in light of media coverage of the Spanish police violence during the Catalan 2017 referendum on independence. 241 events such as the deaths that occurred at Tarajal. The fact that this was not the case, as the film’s narrative alleges, implicitly accuses the Spanish system of being undemocratic. Another interviewee, Paula Domingo, reminds the viewer of the rights that migrants entering a country have under international conventions that Spain has signed up to, as does Kalir Barak of the University of Amsterdam, who says that what happened contravenes national as well as international law. This disdain for the Spanish enactment of democracy is a reminder of the controversy surrounding the democratising process in twentieth-century Spain; while it was hailed by many as exemplary of how to successfully transform dictatorial regimes into democratic states

(Resina 2000: 5), the Spanish model is considered anomalous for failing to address the atrocities committed under Franco (Encarnación 2008: 2). It is these unresolved violations of internationally recognised human rights that the events described in

Tarajal recall: a subject that has appeared in the work of domestic and international filmmakers considering the Spanish approach to the national past.41 The effect of

‘hablando de algo que no es democracia’ [‘talking about something that is not democracy’], as social scientist Helena Maleno describes the Spanish government’s actions outlined in Tarajal, is to destabilise the claim of Spain to being a democratic nation, and thus disputing its international position and reputation as such. The speakers who contend this point come from within and outside Spain, but it must be said that the objections from those born or living in Spain are levelled primarily at the incumbent government of the Partido Popular.

41 Films such as British director Jill Daniels’ 2009 work, Not Reconciled, address unresolved aspects of the Spanish past. A number of films have appeared at contemporary Spanish film festivals in which directors search for greater understanding of events under the dictatorship, including Entre el dictador y yo [Between the Dictator and I] by Juan Barrero, Raúl Cuevas, Guillem López, Mónica Rovira, Sandra Ruesga, and Elia Urquiza, 2005, screened at Alcances in 2016. 242

Nonetheless, the criticism targeted at Spanish institutions via the narrative is obscured somewhat within a wider critique of the European Union’s handling of migration challenges. Other European countries are also implicated, as Patricia Fernández comments on the responsibility that countries such as France have for their involvement in the war in Mali, which amplified the number of refugees escaping the conflict. When Kalir Barak indicates Spain’s non-compliance with international treaties, he adds that the whole of Europe is engulfed in a ‘deeper mentality’ surrounding issues of migration, suggesting that Spain is not alone in its problematic response to these challenges. When examined in light of the arguments condemning neocolonial practices in Morocco featured in L’oeil impératif, the two films share a common thread in this regard, representing Europe as a fragmented, imperfect whole, with interconnected histories that are inextricably tied to contemporary global affairs.

What is interesting about the two films’ approaches is that both allude to the fetishisation of Europe and the European Union, not merely by those hoping to establish a life there from countries outside the continent, but also by Spain. The symbols of

European unity, democracy and efficiency are presented as fetishised in Tarajal through the juxtaposition of Spanish and European Union symbols, as if Spain were laying claim to European values by attempting to connect its national emblems with Europeanness while failing to comply with the European Union’s human rights legislation. This contradiction of the Spanish case is encapsulated in a particularly poignant shot close to the border between Morocco and Ceuta, where a sign reads ‘ESPAÑA’ inside the

European Union emblem of twelve stars on a blue background, designating the Spanish frontier and the adherence of Spain to European values, metres from where several men died attempting to set foot on Spanish (and thus European) soil. In this context, the

243 directors seem to decry the Spanish belief in the country automatically embodying

European values by the mere virtue of being a land mass possessed by a member state of the European Union. Another element in this scene that exemplifies this critique of the Spanish government’s attitude towards membership of the European Union is the travel agent’s office, positioned next to the border sign. Juxtaposed with the documentation of an incident where people lost their lives to enter another country, this symbol of freedom of movement carries a poignant message about the double standards imposed by the European Union, with regard to the free travel of citizens of member states versus the policed movements of those from countries outside the organisation.

In its desperation to defend and secure the ‘free circulation of the democratic project within the privileged spaces of the West’ (Nair 2012: 16), Spanish democracy is tested to its limits at the border.

Figure 15: In Tarajal, the camera lingers on a sign which designates the Spanish border within the symbol of the European Union

The narrative further condemns the measures adopted by the European Union in the face of migration challenges as heavy-handed and detached through the scene referring to Frontex, the European Union alliance set up to establish conventions on policing

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European borders. In one scene, a tall, white-blond man strides through an office as a voiceover explains that his role is to ‘coordinate forced returns of individuals irregularly staying in the European Union to their countries of origin’. If, as before, language remains significant in the film, his words are jarringly clinical in the face of the reality of his work as exposed earlier in the film: to return people who have undertaken life- threatening journeys to situations where they may endure poverty and violence. The following sequence, which features a close-up of a passport stamped ‘Deported’ at

Dusseldorf airport in Germany, casts an ethical eye over the detached efficiency of border patrols in other European countries, suggesting that the processes in the

European Union may not be as ideal or as aspirational as the Spanish government seems to believe.

Despite this scrutiny of the European Union’s policies on handling the humanitarian project of migration flows, the narrative of Tarajal certainly levels more critique at the

Spanish state itself than at Europe as a whole. One way in which this criticism is mounted is by depicting Spanish nationalism as inherently linked to the military, a connection which has long been recognised as characteristic of right-wing nationalism in the country (Moreno-Luzón and Núñez Seixas 2017: 35–41). A sequence set in Ceuta compiles a montage of shots showing the military symbols scattered throughout the territory: statues and emblems bear the military slogans ‘Todo por la patria’

[‘Everything for the homeland’] and ‘Legionarios a luchar, legionarios a morir’

[‘Legionnaires, to fight; legionnaires, to die’]. In turn, the Partido Popular is connected to this form of militarised nationalism via a number of images in the film; in one instance,

Francisco Antonio González, an MP in Ceuta, ends his press conference by leading the room in a salute of ‘Viva la Guardia Civil! Viva España! Viva el Rey!’ [‘Long live the

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Guardia Civil! Long live Spain! Long live the King!’], lines which are reminiscent of the

‘Himno’ [‘hymn’] of the Guardia Civil. In another instance, Fernández de Mesa is heard on a radio broadcast using language evocative of warfare as he supports the actions of the Guardia Civil, declaring that they were defending Spain from ‘auténticas máfias’

[‘real mafias’], who, ‘si consiguieran ganar esta batalla, pues realmente estarían dándole un palo tremendo a la democracia y al estado de derecho, no?’ [‘if they managed to win this battle, would be dealing a tremendous blow to democracy and to the legal system, wouldn’t they?’]. The consequence of this depiction of Spain as a highly militarised state is to encourage a reading of the course of events as a leap on Spain’s behalf to militarise the situation beyond necessity. Much of the film’s duration is dedicated to discussing the

Guardia Civil’s unnecessary use of rubber bullets to fire at the men swimming in the sea attempting to reach land, a scene which Miguel, a local witness, describes on camera as

‘un territorio de guerra’ [‘a war zone’]. In an explanation evoking the anxiety of invasion discussed in the previous chapter, in her appearance in Tarajal, the academic Judith

Butler supports this idea, proposing that the Spanish viewed the approaching men as

‘coming with their military arsenals and their enormous power’. She goes on to encapsulate what seems to be the view of the directors: that regarding these people as

‘instruments of war’ is to invert the power relations of the scenario; it is Spain that militarises the border and has access to weapons in order to do so.

Signficantly, delivering this criticism of the Spanish reaction to the situation also enables the directors of Tarajal to reiterate the difference between the Spanish and

Catalan approaches. During the in-depth discussion of the use of rubber bullets by the

Guardia Civil, it is determined by the numerous legal and media professionals interviewed that the use of such weapons would be deemed illegal on both national and

246 international levels in this case, as there is no protocol condoning their use on water.

Interviewee Laia Serra observes that these bullets were banned in Catalonia and the

Basque Country following successive life-changing injuries to protestors. Recalling the aforementioned tendency for Catalan nationalism to be defined in opposition to the actions of the Spanish nation-state, drawing attention to the fact that the Guardia Civil continued to use these bullets a year after the ban in the two non-state nations implies that the attitude of the Spanish state is at odds with the decision-making of the autonomous regions when given the ability to legislate for themselves.

A consciousness-raising moment that clarifies the intended message of the film occurs in Tarajal, produced by editing and post-production techniques. Much of the documentary’s footage comprises filmed excerpts of press conferences and congress meetings in which politicians give statements on the events at Tarajal. Later in the film, exploiting the fact that their words are recorded for posterity, the directors then replay the statements over the CCTV footage that they have obtained, drawing the viewer’s attention to elements of the scene by circling or labelling evidence to the contrary of the spokespeople’s testimonies, to avoid any doubt over how the scene should be read. The viewer is thus encouraged to trust the camera footage over the words of the government officials, casting doubt on the credibility of the Spanish institutions. This decisive belief in the power of the archive brings to mind the techniques used in

Gurumbé and Las llaves de la memoria, where archives are employed in order to re- examine historiography in an attempt to uncover hidden truths.

What these films ultimately advocate, in this sense, is the role of an archive in documenting a faithful account of events. This argument ties in with wider debates on historical memory in Spain, recalling the end of the dictatorship, when trials for

247 potential perpetrators of atrocities were never held (Encarnación 2008: 2). These films contribute to expanding an archive of Spanish history as it relates to global issues and other communities, and not merely from the Spanish perspective. Crucially, one of the most emotive scenes from Tarajal is the sequence filmed by one of the survivors of the incident at the border. Using a handheld camera, he records the bodies of his fellow migrants laid out on the beach, surrounded by a group of men who sing and weep over the corpses. The sound of crying from behind the camera unequivocally pronounces the tragedy of the scene, giving the viewer the opportunity to witness the deaths from the perspective of someone within the group. Artigas and Ortega thus add the point of view of the Other to the archive of the case, in contrast with the distancing language and omission of these men’s perspectives that constitute the accounts of the Guardia Civil and the Minister of the Interior. As such, both films foreground and attempt to make visible marginal and liminal identities on film, creating space for more complex, cosmopolitan conceptions of identity within Spain.

This chapter has analysed the complex representations of notions of Catalan identity through Catalan festival films. The deployment of national histories, the festival system, and textual interventions on global issues such as migration and the dynamics of neocolonialism and humanitarianism combine to construct a glocal projection of

Catalan identity that thinks beyond hegemonic projects of nationalism, particularly the protectionist privileging of the Catalan language. Aided by their positioning on the international film festival circuit, Catalan filmmakers’ responses to these transnational issues position catalanitat as globally engaged.

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Conclusion

The main objective of this thesis has been to examine the ways in which contemporary film festivals, and festival films, in Andalusia and Catalonia negotiate their collective identities, in light of the devolution of industrial powers promoted by the Ley del Cine in

2007. Within this central objective, the thesis first set out to understand the legislative and historical contexts that have impacted the film industries of Andalusia and

Catalonia and subsequent representations of their cultural identities. Secondly, the thesis foregrounded existing structures in the two film industries, considering their impact on which films are funded and awarded prizes. Thirdly, the thesis has investigated the role that film festivals assume in the cinematic landscape within these territories and the visions of Andalusian and Catalan cultural identities that their programming, locations and awards articulate, including close readings of a corpus of films screened at selected festivals to understand the articulations of identity made available at these events.

In order to ground the study in historical context, the thesis began by tracking the trajectory of filmmaking in both autonomous communities, drawing upon the work of film historians, demonstrating that their industrial contexts have both been uneven and hampered by the political turmoil of twentieth-century Spain, albeit with different outcomes in terms of their intended self-representations. The research found that, where Catalonia initially possessed fertile soil for the makings of a strong and pioneering industry, the measures enforced under the dictatorship of General Franco suppressed this experimentalism by relocating much of the filmmaking infrastructure to

Madrid. This event did, however, result in some self-exiled filmmakers working abroad,

249 resulting in rich opportunities for cross-cultural collaboration and technical training.

During the Transition, the Catalan film industry reached an accord on the need to better reflect Catalan reality by way of the Congrés de Cultura Catalana in 1976, but this aim concentrated on the role of film in the linguistic normalisation of Catalonia. This priority meant that Catalan films struggled in the 1980s, with lack of funding leading to the production of the more profitable, commercially focused genre films and literary adaptations. The return of filmmakers like Joaquim Jordà would reassert their interrupted influence on the Catalan film industry in the 1990s; the film schools in which they taught would inspire a new generation of filmmakers whose work was oppositional to the ‘institutional’ cinema that the legislation had fostered. The work of this new generation has been described as straddling the void, in the words of Carlos

Losilla, ‘entre un cinema català amb visibilitat i un altre que no la té’ [‘between a Catalan cinema which is visible and another which is not’] (2016: 33). The films of these directors, such as Mercedes Álvarez and Isaki Lacuesta, thus threw into question the definition of a hegemonic ‘Catalan’ cinema and engendered a means of understanding

Catalan cinema as self-reflexively interrogating representations of Catalan identity. This thesis has shown that the stylistic and thematic influences of these directors permeate a number of contemporary Catalan festival films, facilitated by the employment of experienced and celebrated filmmakers at Catalan film schools.

While Andalusia also experienced a lack of control over its own film industry under

Franco (with largely nonexistent infrastructure until the 1950s, when production houses in Seville served the dictatorship), it had not developed the tradition of filmmaking that had previously existed in Catalonia. As a result, Andalusian filmmakers took their first collective steps in self-representation in the Transition, with the signing

250 of the declaration, ‘Por un cine andaluz’, at the Festival de Cine Iberoamericano de

Huelva in 1977. The ability to self-represent in film led to a surge in productions that intended to film ‘la realidad andaluza’; nonetheless, these productions were hotly debated in terms of whether they articulated a ‘cine andaluz’, the definition of which had not been collectively agreed upon, aside from a general understanding that they should contest the imaginary of Andalusia proposed by films made elsewhere under the dictatorship. As the discussion of filmmaker Gonzalo García Pelayo’s statements in

Chapter One demonstrated, the desire to represent ‘la gente de la calle’ did not often fit comfortably with the strong ideological motivations to emblazon films of the early democratic period with symbols of Andalusian cultural difference at every opportunity, or the keenness to label films made in Andalusia as proudly Andalusian. In this sense, therefore, the thesis attests to the parallels between tensions in the Catalan and

Andalusian film industries at this point, emerging from conflicting desires to emphasise and celebrate cultural distinctions or to treat film as a medium of artistic expression, rather than as an ideological-political device.

One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study has been the role of film festivals in connecting filmmakers and thus contributing to the growth of the film industry in Andalusia in particular, especially where oppositional cinemas were concerned. Festivals established under the dictatorship and during the Transition were able to undermine the limitations placed on filmmakers by the censors and scarce funding opportunities, acting as points of encounter where boundaries could be pushed.

Despite their often oppositional stance and the financial hardships that the film industry experienced under the Transition, many of these events have succeeded in enduring until the present day, attesting to the strength of will of the communities that create

251 them, and the ability of these events to respond to and reflect the ongoing negotiations of representing the cultures in which they situate themselves. This fact indicates the ongoing value of these film festivals for supporting and disseminating the less dominant forms of filmmaking, such as documentaries, independent short films, and animations, which constitute their programmes.

The thesis has shown that film festivals adopt multifarious roles in the landscape of the

Andalusian and Catalan film industries. More concretely, the thesis argues that the presence of organisations such as AAMMA and SGAE at film festivals indicates that industrial bodies consider these events of strategic importance for shaping and developing the film industries in Andalusia and Catalonia. The events constitute meeting places for emerging and experienced filmmakers, and enable those present to guide the agenda for filmmaking in the territory. While retaining an element of the

‘laboratory’ condition posited by Fran Benavente (2004), this thesis contends that the prizes awarded and panels held by industrial bodies at these events constitute a strategic intervention in shaping the professionals of the present and future according to their priorities.

One such priority has been demonstrated to be the showcasing of the global reach of the cinemas from these autonomous communities, outside of the big-budget commercial productions, while imbricating it with a local identity. As has been emphasised by de

Valck and Loist (2009, cf. Reichel-Heldt 2007), regional events can use their influence

‘to highlight national and regional works and further the region’s (film) economy’.

Screening films that have gained international success serves to celebrate the industry’s achievements in front of both domestic and visiting audiences. A case in point is

Timecode, screened at Filmets in Badalona; reporting the film’s success at Cannes acts as

252 a stamp of quality of this record-breaking Catalan film, positioning the film and the industry in which its professionals were trained as capable of competing on an international—even global, in the case of Cannes—stage. Filmets’ programming strategy of listing all of the ‘Catalan films’ at the start of the brochure, before agglomerating them alongside films of other nationalities under the ‘International’ title, cements this portrayal of Catalan film as a glocal phenomenon.

The two-part methodological approach and interlocking structure deployed in this thesis has contributed deeper, more nuanced observations about the representative regimes used by the Catalan and Andalusian film industries than if these cases had been studied in isolation. Studying these festivals alongside each other has enabled this thesis to draw out some original observations. First of all, the contrasting use of language and nationality to categorise films at Filmets and D’A sheds light on discrepancies in how these festivals engage discursively with notions of Catalan identity. While the D’A 2017 programme labels films by both Catalan and Spanish directors as from ‘Espanya’— positioning Catalan linguistic identity within Spanish national identity in the process—

Filmets’ programme asserts the Catalan demonym as an alternative to identifying a film as Spanish. As such, Filmets’ programme appears to engage with the ideology of viewing

Catalonia as an independent entity from Spain, whereas D’A positions Catalan linguistic identity as compatible with Spanish nationality.

The physical space that these festivals occupy also contributes to their representations of the identity of these places and of the events themselves, evidencing contrasting strategies in the models of citizenship that they invoke. In the case of D’A, this thesis has explored the staging of a film festival in a number of Barcelona’s cultural institutions, arguing that this decision contributes to the attribution of cultural capital to the festival

253 and, by extension, its audience, promoting critical viewerships on the global stage of

Barcelona. Conversely, Filmets constructs a glocal viewer, connecting a local badalonin identity with a Catalan linguistic and cultural identity that supports globally competitive filmmaking. Significantly, this observation evinces a distinction between the positioning of events in the centre and more peripheral areas of Catalonia, and has implications for more nuanced understandings of Catalan cultural identity.

Bringing together a reading of the legislative and cultural historical contexts of the two film industries and a close reading of films and the festivals at which they were exhibited, the two-part methodological approach has yielded significant findings that nuance the presentations of the cultural identities of the two communities in question.

At Alcances, Andalusian films that foregrounded explorations of personal and collective memory and their impact on the present acted as a mirror for the local community to consider broader understandings of its collective history. At SEFF, the festival’s grounding of its programme in a European identity aligns with the reexamination of enduring hegemonic representations of Andalusian identity promoted by the films in the Panorama Andaluz. As with the event’s own move away from branding itself with costumbrista iconography, films such as Gurumbé, and the celebration of the documentary Alalá, attempt to reassess and complicate symbols commonly associated with Andalusia, such as flamenco, positioning them as sites of negotiation that may give rise to new understandings of Andalusian identity. Taken together, these festivals’ articulations of Andalusianness could be summarised as a search for the roots of an

Andalusian cultural identity, which is at the same time complicated by the question of the weight that roots should bring to bear on the articulation of a contemporary

Andalusian identity.

254

Within the Catalan context, Filmets’ positioning as a sociocultural nucleus for the performance of a local identity that aligns itself with the Catalan language as a marker of cultural identity stands in tension with its programming of such successful films as

Timecode, in which the elision of debates surrounding national identity through film, as discussed in Chapter Two with reference to the Escola de Barcelona, reemerges as an assertion of a transnational legibility rewarded with prestigious awards. Similarly, the circulation of La substància at festivals speaks to the persistence of a tradition within

Catalan filmmaking of constructing a ‘territori del dubte’ [‘territory of doubt’] (Losilla

2016: 36), bursting open a space for identities to be questioned. Like the liminal spaces of Barcelona in Bictor Ugo, these texts argue for the gulf between certain institutional ideals of Catalan identity and the more intricate, ambivalent nature of lived experience conveyed through these films. It is this prismatic reading of legislation, film festivals and films themselves which permits the observation of the conflicted negotiations of these identities.

This thesis has demonstrated that film festivals and their concomitant industrial contexts are rich, multilayered texts from which to read and contemplate the intricate and polymorphous negotiations of cultural identities in these two autonomous communities of Spain. While due to the limitations of this study, it has only been possible to examine a few events here, such an integrated approach encompassing policy, film festivals and textual analysis would be a fruitful methodology with which to investigate the mediating roles and positioning of the numerous other film festivals in

Andalusia and Catalonia, in order to better understand the constellations of cultural meaning that they produce and reproduce across the territories.

255

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Filmography

7 vírgenes [7 Virgins], dir. by Alberto Rodríguez (La Zanfoña Producciones, 2005)

A la sombra de Moret [In the Shadow of Moret], dir. by Antonio Labajo (2015)

África 815, dir. by Pilar Monsell (Proxémica, 2014) [on DVD]

Alalá, dir. by Remedios Malvárez (Producciones Singulares, 2016)

Atún y chocolate [Tuna and Chocolate], dir. by Pablo Carbonell (Maestranza Films, 2004)

Barcelona (un mapa) [Barcelona (A Map)], dir. by Ventura Pons (Els Films de la Rambla, 2007)

Barcelona sud [Barcelona South], dir. by Jordi Cadena (Fígaro Films, 1982)

Belmonte, dir. by Juan Sebastián Bollaín (Maestranza Films, 1995)

Bictor Ugo, dir. by Josep María Bendicho and Carlos Clausell (Carlos Clausell y Asociados, 2015)

Brindis a Manolete [A Toast to Manolete], dir. by Florián Rey (Hércules Films S.A., 1948)

Canelita en rama [Cinnamon Flower], dir. by Eduardo García Maroto (Rafa Films, 1942)

Carmen, dir. by Carlos Saura (C. B. Films S.A., 1983)

Casablanca, dir. by Michael Curtiz (Warner Bros., 1942)

Casas Viejas, dir. by José Luis López del Río (Andalusí-Cine, 1983)

Ciutat morta [Dead City], dir. by Xapo Ortega and Xavier Artigas (Metromuster, 2014)

Contra el viento [Against the Wind], dir. by Francisco Periñán (Maestranza Films, 1990)

El Judas [The Judas], dir. by Ignacio F. Iquino (IFI Producción S.A., 1952)

El largo viaje hacia la ira [The Long Journey to Rage], dir. Llorenç Soler (1969)

El misterio de la Puerta del Sol [The Mystery of the Puerta del Sol], dir. by Francisco Elías (Phonofilm, 1929)

281

El sueño de Tánger [The Dream of Tangier], dir. by Ricardo Franco (Ofelia Films, 1986)

El sur [The South], dir. by Victor Érice (C. B. Films S.A., 1983)

El tambor del Bruch [The Drummer of Bruch], dir. by Ignacio F. Iquino (Emisora Films, 1948)

El último verano [The Last Summer], dir. by Leire Apellániz (2016)

Els nens salvatges [The Wild Ones], dir. by Patricia Ferreira (Áralan Films, 2012)

En construcción [Under Construction], dir. by José Luis Guerín (Ovideo TV, 2001)

Entre el dictador y yo [Between the Dictator and I], dir. by Juan Barrero, Raúl Cuevas, Guillem López, Mónica Rovira, Sandra Ruesga, and Elia Urquiza (2005)

Estiu 1993 [Summer 1993], dir. by Carla Simón (Oscilloscope Laboratories, 2017)

Frente al mar [By the Sea], dir. by Gonzalo García Pelayo (ZaCine, 1979)

Gloria Mairena, dir. by Luis Lucia (CIFESA, 1952)

Grupo 7 [Unit 7], dir. by Alberto Rodríguez (La Zanfoña Producciones, 2012)

Gurumbé. Canciones de tu memoria negra [Gurumbe. Afro-Andalusian Memories], dir. by Miguel Ángel Rosales (Intermedia Producciones, 2016)

Heli, dir. by Amat Escalante (Savor, 2013)

Història de la Generalitat de Catalunya [History of the Generalitat of Catalonia], dir. by Jordi Feliu (1982)

Honor de Cavalleria [Honour of the Knights], dir. by Albert Serra (Andergraun Films, 2006)

Informe general [General Information], dir. by Pere Portabella (Films 59, 1976)

Júlia ist [Julia is], dir. by Elena Martín (Fundación SGAE, 2016)

L’oeil impératif/El ojo imperativo [The Imperative Eye], dir. by María Ruido (Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, 2015)

282

La casa de la Troya [The House of Troy], dir. by Adolfo Aznar and Juan Vilá Vilamala (Andalucía Cinematografía, 1936-1939)

La ciutat cremada [The Burnt City], dir. by Antoni Ribas (In-Cine Distribuidora Cinematográfica, 1976)

La espuela [The Spur], dir. by Roberto Fandiño (Galgo Films, 1976)

La fabulosa Casablanca [The Fabulous Casablanca], dir. by Manuel Horrillo (MLK Producciones, 2016)

La folie [Madness], dir. by Ricard López (2016)

La isla mínima [Marshland], dir. by Alberto Rodríguez (Warner Bros., 2014)

La plaça del diamant [Diamond Square], dir. by Francesc Betriu (1982)

La ruta natural [The Natural Route], dir. by Àlex Pastor (Escándalo Films, 2004)

La senyora [The Woman], dir. by Jordi Cadena (Virgin, 1987)

La sierra de Aracena [The Mountains of Aracena], dir. by Carlos Nazarí (Dalp-Nazarí Producciones, 1928)

La soledad [Solitary Fragments], dir. by Jaime Rosales (Wanda Visión S.A., 2007)

La substància [The Substance], dir. by Lluís Galter (Lastor Media, 2016)

La vieja memoria [Old Memory], dir. by Jaime Camino (Divisa Home Video, 1977)

La voz en lucha [The Voice in Protest], dir. Miguel A. Carmona and Jorge Molino (Promico Imagen and Canal Sur Televisión, 2016)

Las llaves de la memoria [The Keys of Memory], dir. by Jesús Armesto (Almutafilm, 2016)

Las pequeñas cosas [The Little Things], dir. by Carla Simón (London Film School and Inicia Films, 2015)

Les amigues de l’Àgata [Agata’s Friends], dir. by Laia Alabart, Alba Cros, Laura Rius and Marta Verheyen (Avalon, 2014)

Lola la piconera [Lola the Coalgirl], dir. by Luis Lucia (CIFESA, 1952)

283

Lola Montes, dir. by Antonio Roldán (Andalucía Films, 1945)

Los misterios de Tánger [The Mysteries of Tangier], dir. by Carlos Fernández Cuenca (España Films, 1942)

Madre in Japan [Mother in Japan], dir. by Francisco Perales (Caligari Films, 1984)

Manuela, dir. by Gonzalo García Pelayo (Galgo Films S.A., 1975)

Mapa de los sonidos de Tokio [Map of the Sounds of Tokyo], dir. by Isabel Coixet (Alta Films, 2009)

Mar de fons [Swell], dir. by Bruno Aretio and Florencia Luna (ESCAC Films, 2014)

Marcianos de Marte [Martians from Mars], dir. by Fernando Trullols (Bastian Films, 2016)

María, la santa [Maria, the Saint], dir. by Roberto Fandiño (Films Bandera, 1978)

Marruecos en la paz [Morocco at Peace], dir. by Rafael López Rienda (Hermic Films, 1951)

Menjant garotes [Eating Sea Urchins], dir. by Luis Buñuel (1929)

Mercado de futuros [Futures Market], dir. by Mercedes Álvarez (A Peninsula, 2011)

Mi querida España [My Beloved Spain], dir. Mercedes Moncada (La Zanfoña Producciones and Canal Sur Televisión, 2015)

Mission à Tanger [Mission in Tangier], dir. by André Hunebelle (Union Française de Production Cinématographique, 1949)

Misterio en la marisma [Mystery in the Marshes], dir. by Claudio de la Torre (Sur Films, 1943)

Mones com la Becky [Monkeys Like Becky], dir. by Joaquim Jordà (Els Quatre Gats Audiovisuals S.L., 1999)

Nadador [The Swimmer], dir. by Dani de la Orden (Escándalo Films, 2013)

284

Nadie conoce a nadie [Nobody Knows Anyone], dir. by Mateo Gil (Maestranza Films, 1999)

Nanas de espinas [Thorny Lullabies], dir. by Pilar Távora (Carlos Jorge Fraga, 1983)

No estamos solos [We are Not Alone], dir. Pere Joan Ventura (Films 59, 2015)

Not Reconciled, dir. by Jill Daniels (High Ground Films, 2009)

Ocaña, retrat intermitent [Ocaña, an Intermittent Portrait], dir. by Ventura Pons (Producciones Zeta, 1978)

Ocho apellidos catalanes [Spanish Affair 2], dir. by Emilio Martínez-Lázaro (Universal Pictures, 2015)

Ocho apellidos vascos [A Spanish Affair], dir. by Emilio Martínez-Lázaro (Universal Pictures, 2014)

Pa negre [Black Bread], dir. by Agustí Villaronga (Savor, 2012)

Piratas y libélulas [Pirates and Dragonflies], dir. by Isabel de Ocampo (Azhar Media, 2013)

Poetes Catalans [Catalan Poets], dir. by Pere Portabella (Films 59, 1970)

Polígono Sur (El arte de las Tres Mil) [Seville, Southside], dir. by Dominique Abel (Maestranza Films, 2001)

Poniente [West], dir. by Chus Gutiérrez (Divisa Home Video, 2002)

Réquiem andaluz [Andalusian Requiem], dir. by Miguel Alcobendas (Mino Films, 1977)

Retorno a Hansala [Return to Hansala], dir. by Chus Gutiérrez (Maestranza Films, 2008)

Se acabó el petróleo [Out of Gas], dir. by Pancho Bautista (Triana Films and Proanci, 1980)

Será tu tierra [This will be your Land], dir. Llorenç Soler (1966)

Sevillanas, dir. by Alexandre Promio (1897)

Sinatra, dir. by Francesc Betriu (Ideas y Producciones Cinematográficas (IPC), 1988)

285

Solas [Alone], dir. by Benito Zambrano (Nirvana Films S.A., 1999)

Tanger, Legende einer Stadt [Tangier, Legend of a City], dir. by Peter Goedel (Filmwelt, 1996)

Tarajal. Desmontando la impunidad en la frontera sur [Tarajal: Dismantling the Impunity of the Southern Border], dir. by Xavier Artigas, Xapo Ortega and Marc Serra (Metromuster, 2015)

The Living Daylights, dir. by John Glen (United International Pictures, 1987)

Tierra de rastrojos [Fields of Stubble], dir. by Antonio Gonzalo (1980)

Timecode, dir. by Juanjo Giménez (Marvin & Wayne, 2016)

Todo sobre mi madre [All About My Mother], dir. by Pedro Almodóvar (Warner Sogefilms, 1999)

Triana pura y pura [Triana Through and Through], dir. by Ricardo Pachón (La Zanfoña Producciones, 2013)

Tríptico elemental de España [Elemental Triptych of Spain], dir. by José Val del Omar (1953-55)

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, dir. by Woody Allen (Mediapro, 2008)

Viridiana, dir. by Luis Buñuel (Miracle Films, 1962)

Vivir en Sevilla [Living in Seville], dir. by Gonzalo García Pelayo (ZaCine, 1978)

Yerma, dir. by Pilar Távora (Artimagen Producciones, 1998)

286