Award Information
My project explores the militant film culture developed in Spain between 1967 and 1982. During this time, a considerable number of radical political films were produced, distributed, and exhibited outside of any institutional or industrial structure, defying the censorship and repressive apparatuses of Francoist and post-Franco authorities. My project will address the following research questions: Which strategies of politicization of the cinematic image were put into practice within this militant film culture? In what ways did these militant film practices interweave with the complex political dynamic of the late anti-Franco resistance and popular movements during the Transition? To what extent can these filmic-political practices be understood as part of the international cycle of struggles of 1968 and the emergence of an international circuit of militant filmmaking? Drawing on an interdisciplinary corpus of critical literatures, my project proposes a three-fold theoretical approach to Spanish militant film culture: as a "hybrid cultural-political practice" (keeping in mind that this emerging film culture was inextricably intertwined with new radical political praxes that contested both the late Franco dictatorship and the hegemonic development of the Transition, being in dialogue with the new international mobilizations of the "1968 years"); as a "displacement" (stressing how the political potential of militant cinema relied on its capacity to dislocate filmic production and consumption, moving from specialized artistic or commercial sites towards unexpected social spaces of revolt –urban demonstrations, popular neighborhoods, factories); and as "heretical archive" (recognizing in the Spanish militant film corpus an archive from below tracing those minor, grassroots political subjects whose practices, horizons of social transformation, and imaginaries notably dissented from the dominant historical and political narratives of the period).