Monday, October 27, 2008
3:15 pm
Main Building, Jade Parlor
"Hay que cambiar de cara:" class and democracy in the early transition. Catherine Simpson, University of Richmond.Simpson will discuss "El Puente" (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1977), a radical reinterpretation of Spain's politically conservative tourism comedies of the 1960s and early 1970s that eschews the tourism comedies that preceded it and re-situates the Spanish male subject as a figure in deep personal crisis, using a style evocative the gritty realism of 1970s American cinema. El Puente indicts Transition-era Spanish society for ignoring economic injustice and trampling the individual at the very moment in which real political change begins to seem possible. The film reminds us that Spanish modernity and democracy are enjoyed only in proportion to one's own power and prosperity.
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