Architecture and the Urban in Spanish Film

Book excerpt: The first edited collection in English on urban space and architecture in Spanish film from 1896 to the present. Building on existing film and urban histories, this collection examines Spanish film through contemporary interdisciplinary theories of urban space, the built environment, visuality, and mass culture from the industrial age to the digital present. Architecture and Urbanism in Spanish Film brings together innovative scholarship from an international and interdisciplinary group of film, architecture, and urban studies scholars as they explore the reciprocal relationship between the seventh art and the built environment. The contributors explore a wide range of topics, including the role of film in the shifting relationship between private and public; the ways cinema as a new technology reshaped how cities and buildings are built and inhabited; the question of the mobile gaze; film and everyday life; monumentality and the construction of historical memory for a variety of viewing publics; and the effects of the digital and the virtual on filmmaking and spectatorship. This engaging collection will interest anyone researching, teaching, and studying Spanish film, international film studies, urban, and cultural studies.