W4 – Genre and Industry
Alejandro Amenábar
and Tesis (1996)
• Industry and state:
changes and developments
• Looking at Tesis in
context
•Amenábar: a new type of
(genre) auteur
1. Changes in the institutional context
• 1980s: key facts:
• 1982: Landslide victory of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) in the
general elections.
• Pilar Miró (esteemed filmmaker and PSOE member) is appointed
Directora General de la Cinematografía, and director of the Instituto de
Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA), the state office for
the production and promotion of Spanish Cinema.
• Miró also in charge of Fondo de Protección de la Cinematografía : state
aid to film production.
• December 1983: new ‘Ley Miró’: 50% of total film production costs to
be paid in advance to producers/directors from the Fondo de Protección .
• Promotion of a quality cinema:
- reflect the changes in the New Spain after Franco:
- ‘educate’ the audience
- represent a new Spain and a new Spanish cinema in
international markets & film festivals
The so-called cine polivalente or ‘multi-function’ cinema.
Los santos inocentes (Mario
Camus, 1984)
An example of the quality literary
adaptations encouraged by Miró’s
film policy, as based on a novel by
respected novelist Miguel Delibes.
Award to Best Actor shared by
Francisco Rabal & Alfredo Landa
at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival
1990s: Changes in state funding policy and success
of young Spanish cinema
• 1994: Carmen Alborch (new socialist Minister of Culture) dismantles Miró
law and passes new film law:
• producers can apply only for 15% of base costs to be covered by state
funding - further subsidies awarded in proportion to box-office takings
• The ICAA gives out subsidies to new and young filmmakers
• First and second films by young directors raise the profile of Spanish
• Firsts
and
films
cinema
insecond
the box-office:
Alex de la Iglesia (Acción mutante, El día de la bestia)
Juanma Bajo Ulloa (Alas de mariposa, La madre muerta)
Icíar Bollaín (Hola, ¿estás sola?)
Julio Medem (Vacas, La ardilla roja)
1990s: Changes in state funding policy and success
of young Spanish cinema
Jamón Jamón (1992) launches the careers of
Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz
•Established directors work with a new
generation of actors including Javier Bardem,
Penélope Cruz, Ariadna Gil, Maribel Verdú
and others: an emerging national star-system.
• Films closer to genre patterns and with a
stronger iconography: romantic comedies,
family melodramas, thrillers.
• Firsts and second films
2. Tesis: a critique and a
symptom of postmodern
culture
a) New popularity of tv reality shows
in the 1990s. Mediatised experience:
the image as simulacrum, a substitute
for real experience.
b) a de-historicised present; pressure
to leave behind the political legacy of
the past and adopt new ‘modern’
signs of identity, as corresponds to a
established democracy.
c) the individual as subject of
consumption - reality as spectacle,
from which the subject is detached.
(extracted from C. Moreiras Menor,
“Spectacle, trauma and violence in
contemporary Spain” (2000)), 135-136.
In further reading section.
Violence in everyday settings
The spectator’s gaze: cinema voyeurism
Gender dynamics
3. Alejandro Amenábar: a postmodern auteur?
(2009)
5 films to date:
Tesis (1996)
Abre los ojos (1997)
The Others (2001-English)
Mar adentro (2004)
Agora (2009 –English)
Regression (2015 –
English)
The Sea Inside (2004)
Follows up a social-problem film with an epic
historical drama: is Amenábar the ultimate
“auteur of commerce”? (borrowing from
Timothy Corrigan, cited by Maule p.135)
3. Alejandro Amenábar: a postmodern auteur?
Links with tradition: intertextual references to the New Spanish Cinema
of the 1970s; philosophical preoccupation with the themes of death and
transcendence in all his films
Ana Torrent, star of Tesis and
former poster child of the 1970s
New Spanish Cinema (El espíritu
de la colmena, Cría cuervos).
The Others (2001) a combination of
genre filmmaking and quality cinema