[Commlist] Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays issue 12 published, special issue “Urban Spaces and Cinema. Ibero-American Cities in the Audiovisual Field”

Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays issue 12
Special Issue “Urban Spaces and Cinema. Ibero-American Cities in the 
Audiovisual Field”
Coordinators: Luis Deltell Escolar y Nadia McGowan
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/portada-revista/?lang=en


The exponential development of urban life compared to the rural was 
parallel to the evolution of the cinema spectacle. Cinematic art emerged 
as urban entertainment. Thus, by the end of the 19th century, when the 
companies of Thomas Alva Edison and the Lumière brothers began 
popularizing moving images, European and North American cities 
experienced their fastest growth in history. For decades, cinema was a 
significant event in the realm of modernity. Over the years, certain 
cinematic styles unmistakably became urban: American film noir, 
Hollywood sophisticated comedy, Italian neorealism…

With a delay compared to the European and American context, in the 
Ibero-American sphere, including Portugal and Spain (according to the 
RAE), cinema also developed along with cities, but in a manner different 
from the Anglo-Saxon and French approaches. On one hand, the realities 
of the various countries were completely different. On the other, the 
exponential growth of major cities such as São Paulo, Mexico City, 
Madrid, or Buenos Aires allowed for the emergence of a rapid economy 
that fostered the cinema of those countries. Brazilian, Mexican, 
Spanish, and Argentine cinema undoubtedly benefited from the growth of 
their large cities.

Some fiction filmmakers have succeeded in solidifying their own image of 
the city. This is the case with Pedro Almodóvar’s Madrid, Luis Buñuel’s 
American period in Mexico City, Juan José Campanella’s Buenos Aires, the 
suburbs and the periphery in Lucrecia Martel’s cinema… Sometimes, a 
single film can shape the imagery of an entire city for decades, as 
happened with São Paulo, Sociedade Anônima (Luís Sérgio Person, 1965) or 
Cidade de Deus (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, 2002).

However, not only fiction feature films have presented creative 
representations of these communities’ cities. In non-fiction, the theme 
of the Ibero-American city has often been central, such as in Metal y 
melancolía (Heddy Honigmann, 1993) about Lima, Suite Habana (Fernando 
Pérez, 2003) depicting Havana, Mourir à Madrid (Frédéric Rossif, 1963) 
about Madrid, or La batalla de Chile, la lucha de un pueblo sin armas 
(Patricio Guzmán, 1975) portraying Santiago.

In the dossier “Urban Spaces and Cinema. Ibero-American Cities in the 
Audiovisual Field,” we present various works focusing on some of these 
issues: the city of Madrid and women, the development of existentialist 
cinema in São Paulo, the relationship of the recently deceased Carlos 
Saura with Murcia, the complex relationships of realism(s) portraying 
Madrid during the dictatorship, the study of social problems surrounding 
the mortgage crisis and its portrayal in Spanish media, and the 
representation of the Latin American cities  using artificial 
intelligence tools.



Four individuals in São Paulo
Luis Deltell Escolar (Universidad Complutense de Madrid & ESCINE, Grupo 
Complutense de estudios cinematográficos) – 28:30
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/four-individuals-in-sao-paulo/?lang=en

A-Ten-Thousand-Legs Madrid
Asier Gil Vázquez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) –11:12
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/lunique-maria-casares-1922-2022/?lang=en

Dispossesssion Through Mortgage Debt in Three Acts
Laura Caballero Rabanal (University of Massachusetts Amherst) –  07:27
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/dispossession-through-mortgage-debt-in-three-acts/?lang=en

Realism(s)
Sylvia González Rodríguez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) – 11:38
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/realisms/?lang=en

The Mistery of Creating: Murcia under Carlos Saura’s gaze
Daniel Toledo Saura (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) –  11:25
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/the-mystery-of-creation-murcia-through-the-eyes-of-carlos-saura/?lang=en

Cities of Ibero-America as seen by Artificial Intelligence
Nadia McGowan (Universidad Internacional de La Rioja) – 12:15
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/cities-of-ibero-america-as-seen-by-artificial-intelligence/?lang=en

Videoessays

The audiovisual essays accepted through the open call offer a variety of 
aesthetic and thematic registers as diverse as they are fascinating. 
Firstly, “Women on the Verge of a Financial Crisis” by Tomer Nechushtan 
establishes a series of parallels among four very distinct films: Gold 
Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy, 1933), Bande de Filles (Sciamma, 2014), Hustlers 
(Scafaria, 2019) and Birds of Prey (Yan, 2020). These works are 
connected by the way they portray sisterhood through criminal action in 
a context of socio-economic oppression. Secondly, Joseph M. Johnson 
explores in “Rapuncelia” how Pilar Palomero reconstructs the iconic tale 
in her film Las niñas (2020), offering a transgressive vision. The 
analysis delves into the symbolic and narrative layers the director 
employs to reinterpret this classic. Thirdly, “Power and Gardens” by 
Nico Carpentier is a four-part audiovisual essay investigating the 
intricate relationships between human beings and nature in the gardens 
of European cities such as Paris, Lyon, and Prague. This work delves 
into how gardens symbolize the anthropocentric domestication of nature, 
while simultaneously highlighting the inherent resistance of the natural 
world to any form of regimentation. Finally, in ” “Do you really want to 
have children? Off-screen Motherhood in Spanish Dramedies”, Lorenzo 
Torres, Mariona Visa, and Mª Isabel Menéndez explore the representation 
of motherhood in six contemporary Spanish dramedies produced or 
co-produced by streaming platforms. Among others, they analyze Vida 
perfecta, Cardo, and Valeria. This analysis provides a detailed look at 
how these productions address and challenge conventions related to 
motherhood.

In the section ‘From the Archive,’ Vicente Rodríguez Ortega weaves a 
history of film exhibition in Madrid by exploring the spaces where 
cinemagoing used to take place, spaces that have regrettably faded away. 
On one hand, it delves into the details of the buildings and locations 
where movie theaters once existed; on the other hand, it utilizes sound 
excerpts from a variety of films that may have been projected in these 
venues.

This issue features five new videos from the Screen Stars Dictionary. On 
one hand, four works that have already been added to the showcase on 
Vimeo are highlighted. Specifically, we present videos on Robert de Niro 
(by Daniel O’Brien), Shah Rukh Khan (by Ritika Kaushik), Tony Leung (by 
Jialu Zhu), and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (by Sureshkumar P. Sekar). In 
addition, Evelyn Kreutzer contributes to the dictionary with a 
previously unpublished piece on Leonard Bernstein. With these new five 
videos and others that have been available on Vimeo for some time, our 
project becomes decidedly transnational and expands the boundaries of 
the “sayable” regarding audiovisual stardom.

Finally, in the “Student Showcase”, two projects by students from 
Universidad Complutense are presented. They explore, in very different 
ways, the urban space of Madrid through the films Los tramposos (Pedro 
Lazaga, 1959) and La virgen de agosto (Jonás Trueba, 2019).

Women on the Verge of Financial Crisis
Tomer Nechushtan (Tel Aviv University) –  04:58
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/women-on-the-verge-of-financial-crisis/?lang=en

Rapuncelia
Joseph M. Johnson (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)  – 04:30
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/rapuncelia/?lang=en

Power and Gardens
Nico Carpentier (Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, 
Charles University, República Checa) – 29:47
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/power-and-gardens/?lang=en

“Do you really want to have children?”. Off-screen Motherhood in Spanish 
Dramedies
Lorenzo Torres (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos), Mariona Visa (Universitat 
de Lleida) y Mª Isabel Menéndez (Universidad de Burgos) – 10:24
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/do-you-really-want-to-have-children-off-screen-motherhood-in-spanish-dramedies/?lang=en

Student Showcases

La virgen de diciembre
Gabriela Verdú Bisbal, Anabel Cobo Vázquez y Irene Igeño García
(Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/la-virgen-de-diciembre/?lang=en

Los tramposos
Pablo Manzano Ben
(Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/project/los-tramposos/?lang=en

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------