Sarah Wright (RHUL): Francoist Cinema
The Child in the Francoist cine religioso of 1950s Spain
Location: Old Library Building, Research Beehive, room 2.20
Time/Date: 20th October 2011, 16:00 - 17:00
The child attained sacred status during the Franco regime and films of the cine religioso of the 1950s did much to bolster and sustain this view. This paper aims to examine key films of the cine religioso featuring child protagonists. It will ask by what formal means (image – the close-up and sound – voz en off) the cinema of this genre achieved its effects. It will also speculate as to how possible it is to conceive of an embodied spectatorship for cinema of the cine religioso. It will make reference to films such as the hugely popular Marcelino, pan y vino (Ladislao Vajda, 1955), Un traje blanco (Rafael Gil, 1956) and Cerca de la ciudad (Luis Lucia, 1952). It will also explore the relationship between childhood and consumerism, childhood and innocence and childhood and affect.
Dr. Sarah Wright is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London and the author of The Trickster-Function in the Theatre of García Lorca (London: Támesis, 2000), Tales of Seduction: The Figure of Don Juan in Spanish Culture (London: I B Tauris, 2007). She is currently working on a book on the figure of the child in Spanish cinema.
Published: 24th September 2010