Skip to Main Content

Film Studies: National Cinemas

This guide highlights selected resources for various national cinemas.

Introduction to Spanish cinema

The first Spanish fiction film is claimed to be Riña en un café/Brawl in a Café (Fructuós Gelabert, 1897). Film production was initially located in Barcelona, with the films of Segundo de Chomón considered particularly distinctive in their use of state-of-the-art special effects and fantastical imagery (see early cinema; trick film). From the 1920s film studios in Madrid became a centre of film production, specializing in theatrical and literary adaptation, zarzuelas (popular operettas), and history films, often revelling in the folkloric españolada tradition. In Paris in 1929, Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, one of the founders of Surrealism, showed the French-financed short film Un chien Andalou/An Andalusian Dog, made in collaboration with the artist Salvador Dalí; an iconoclast, contrarian, and provocateur, Buñuel castigated tradition and satirized the bourgeoisie in this and many of his later films.  ...

Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Spain, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 3 Jun. 2021

Searching the online catalog

This page shows resources for cinema of Spain. You can use the subject headings below to find resources in the online catalog. The call number ranges are also included. You can do the same subject search for other Spanish speaking countries around the world using the same format, "motion pictures [country]." Please note: these are not the only call numbers, but they have the majority of items.

Introductory reading(s)

Selected book title(s)

Finding scholarly journal articles & titles

Articles and other writings about Spanish language films can be found in many publications. Our collection includes several journals which look exclusively at the cinema of Spain and Spanish language films. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.

Selected movie title(s)

Internet resource(s)

Keeping up with the journal literature

Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.

You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.