(linking with VIVA Spanish and Latin American Festival, HOME Arts Centre, Manchester)

This conference will explore the diverse ways in which Spanish screen media has responded to the recent economic crisis.  Since 2008, the economic context of precariousness and its aftermath has brought about shifts in Spanish film production and distribution. These material conditions have resulted in a renewal in the aesthetics of Spanish screen media and in increasingly innovative and experimental forms. Moreover, a new social turn in Spanish cinema, television and new media has re-engaged with questions of social exclusion and belonging, thereby providing a crucial intervention into contemporary political discourses.

Papers of twenty minutes are invited on the following topics:

  • New media, image sharing, piracy, creative commons, transmedia practices

  • Political filmmaking

  • Crowdfunding and cooperative work

  • Activism and advocacy

  • Surveillance and subveillance

  • Changing audiences

  • The role of film festivals

  • Questions of affect and ethics

  • Contemporary representations of gender, race, class, disability

  • Emerging modes of production and distribution for cinema

  • Interrogating genre

  • New critical approaches to Spanish film

Please send proposals of 200 words by 22 December 2016 to both Abigail Loxham abigail.loxham@manchester.ac.uk and Tom Whittaker t.whittaker@liverpool.ac.uk

Organised by the Regional Research Network in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Cinemas coordinated by Carmen Herrero, Abigail Loxham, Chris Perriam,  Duncan Wheeler and Tom Whittaker. Supported by the British Academy. Conference fees will be waived for speakers and for a limited number of postgraduate researchers wishing to attend without giving a paper.