Bringing Spanish and Latin American Cinema to Local Film Festival

The students, along with Dr Natália Pinazza, Dr Enrique del Rey, Professor Sally Faulkner and ML PhD student Rachel Beaney offered introductions to the three films screened.

On a busy afternoon in Week 1, Professor Sally Faulkner, Dr Natália Pinazza and Dr Enrique del Rey
took the students studying the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar on a Field Trip to Chagford Film Festival. Exeter ML colleagues and the 22 students studying MLS3066 (‘Almodóvar’s Spain: Cinema and Society) were accompanied by Rachel Beaney, an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded PhD student who is supervised by Sally for a project on the representation of children and orphanhood in Spanish cinema.

The day of film screenings and discussion was centred around the theme of The Child in Spanish and Latin American Cinema. Exeter Modern Languages staff, in collaboration with the Film Studies Department, presented films for the festival attendees, including locals of Chagford. The screenings of La mala educación (Pedro Almodóvar, 2004) and Estiu 1993 (Carla Simón, 2017) and Linha de Passe (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 2008) were well attended, and an audience of around 100 watched Carla Simón’s Estiu 1993, which features visually stunning shots of the Catalan countryside.

Natália, Sally, Enrique and Rachel offered introductions to the three films screened and chaired Question-and-Answer discussions following the films. Lively discussions ensued about the various cinematic techniques that foregrounded the child’s perspective in each of the films. Topics ranged from Almodóvar’s treatment of the child in Catholic, Franco-era Spain, to Simón’s depiction of the child’s experience of the AIDS crisis in 1990s Spain and Salles and Thomas’ portrayal of class, race and the child’s struggle in São Paulo. Colleagues would like to thank the Institut Ramon Llull and the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (Arts and Humanities Research Council) for supporting and sponsoring the day.