Formal Trends in Spanish Cinema (1990-2011)

Abstract

Without trying to exhaust all possibilities, but to draw a provisional map of the shapes and the most unique stylizations in the Spanish cinema of the past twenty years, our article approaches the trends that structure the two decades, trying to highlight the main generic and semantic options and balance the presence of veteran filmmakers focusing on the young people made known in the early nineties of the twentieth century. Our aim is to get inside the most unique filmographies (Pedro Almodóvar) and bring to light how certain non less important filmmakers (as Alex de la Iglesia) draw out the complex lines of the Spanish creative tradition, without putting aside the hottest reality of the country. We also want to look closely both at those films that -without sacrificing quality- try to fit themselves within the coordinates given by a transnational market and those –directed by Marc Recha or José Luis Guerin– which lie in the blurred but exceptionally fertile territories of extraterritorial, “non-fiction” and essay-film.