In February 2020 the Centre for Visual Cultures welcomed Professor Steven Marsh (University of Illinois at Chicago) who gave a fascinating lecture entitled ‘Spanish Cinema Against Itself’. 

He traced how the works of understudied and non-canonical Spanish filmmakers, producers, and film collectives have opened up alternate, more cosmopolitan and philosophical spaces for film discussion. Mapping Spanish surrealist and politically committed cinematic traditions from their origins in the 1930s through to the contemporary period, he also interrogated conventional historiographical discourse, the concept of 'national cinema', and questions of form in cinematic practice. 

Steven Marsh is Professor of Spanish film at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Popular Spanish Film Under Franco: Comedy and the Weakening of the State (Palgrave 2006) and co-editor of Gender and Spanish Cinema (Berg 2004). His new book Spanish Cinema Against Itself: Cosmopolitanism, Experimentation and Militancyis forthcoming (March 2020) from Indiana University Press. He is currently working on a new book provisionally titled The Rule of Law in an Age of Crisis: Judicial Politics, the Left, and the Case for Radical Justice in Contemporary Spain (under contract with Punctum Books) as well as a monograph on Portuguese, Spanish, and Latin American film.

Still from Finisterrae, directed by Sergio Caballero (2010)