Workshop: Reading Contemporary Spain On the Big Screen

The workshop aims to provide the necessary tools for understanding and linking together a series of historical and socio-cultural phenomena that have marked the evolution of contemporary Spain from the end of the dictatorship to the present day. To do so, the teacher will highlight and comment special issues that will be useful to guide the students in their independent viewing of some films shot from the 1980s to the present day that, afterwards, will be discussed in class. In addition, each film will be placed in relation with a contemporary literary work or one with a similar theme in order to stimulate interdisciplinarity and foster the development of participants' critical thinking skills. In this way, it will be possible to practice, in a transversal manner, linguistic, cultural and literary skills related to the field of peninsular Spanish language and culture.

At the end of the workshop, the students will be familiar with some of the most significant phenomena that have marked contemporary Spain and will understand their repercussions in Spanish society through concrete examples, both cinematographic and literary. They will also be able to speak about them in Castilian with propriety, to highlight their connections and to identify and discuss their main dynamics. This last aspect will be encouraged above all through the comparison of filmic and literary works which will be evaluated, by means of an oral exam, once the lectures have ended.