Title: Spanish and Hispanic American Exile Films

Acceptance of submissions for the Notebook section: from 1 May to 31 May 2024

Date of publication: January 2025

Editors: Matei Chihaia, Andrea Luquin Calvo y Carmen Guiralt

 

The wars and conflicts that took place during the 20th century in Spain and Latin America, such as the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Franco dictatorship, or the civilian and military coups d'état that occurred in various Latin American countries and the authoritarian governments that followed them, forced many filmmakers, directors, scriptwriters and other film industry professionals into exile to escape repression and political persecution. In the film industries of the countries that welcomed them, these creators found a chance to continue their artistic work, as well as the opportunity to experiment with forms of expression that could convey the exile experience. In addition, they were able not only to vest that experience with an aesthetic dimension, but also to establish a political stance that involved claiming the place of exile for collective history, as well as understanding and denouncing the political events that had forced them from their homelands.

The aim of the upcoming monographic issue of L’Atalante, “Spanish and Hispanic American Exile Films”, is to investigate the filmic forms adopted in these productions. This conception of “exile films” includes not only films that focus on the fact of exile and the events that gave rise to it, but also those which, in addition to dealing with this subject, were made by exiles. Through the language of either fiction or documentary film, artists who have suffered exile construct aesthetic forms that allow them to convey the exile experience and to interpret the political, historical and social contexts in which it occurs. Films such as En el balcón vacío (Jomí García Ascot, 1962), Diálogos de exiliados (Raúl Ruiz, 1975), Llueve sobre Santiago (Helvio Soto, 1975), Esta voz entre muchas (Humberto Ríos, 1979), Gracias a la vida (o la pequeña historia de una mujer maltratada) (Angelina Vásquez, 1980), Presencia lejana (Angelina Vásquez, 1982) and Las veredas de saturno (Hugo Santiago, 1986) are proof of this. In this sense, this category of films also includes work by exile filmmakers who sought to establish a dialogue with the society of the country they had to leave behind or with their host countries, as a way of understanding their integration, their possible return, or the factors that drove them into exile or kept them there, such as Los olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950), Eran unos que venían de Chile (Claudio Sapiaín, 1986), Un lugar en el mundo (Adolfo Aristarain, 1992), Roma (Adolfo Aristarain, 2004), Generation Exile (Rodrigo Dorfman, 2009) and Partidos, voces de exilio (Silvia Di Florio, 2022). 

Also of interest are submissions dealing with the stories, signs and signifiers placed by Spanish and Hispanic American exiled scriptwriters in their work, which explore the theme of exile and/or the political event that led to it either directly or indirectly, such as the scripts of María Teresa León and Rafael Alberti, Luis Alcoriza, Jorge Semprún and Antonio Skármeta. This also includes research considering the reflections of exiled authors such as Paulino Masip, Max Aub, Silvia Mistral, José de la Colina and Emilio García Riera, who analyse different films or film movements using theory or criticism as a visible context through which to interpret exile and/or to take a political stance.

With the above in mind, the following topics are suggested for submissions:

Films made by directors, producers and/or scriptwriters, as well as other Spanish and Spanish American exiled film industry professionals, which:

1. Deal with the theme of the exile experience itself or the historical event that gave rise to it.

2. Deal with their return or possible return to their country of origin.

3. Establish a dialogue with the country of origin showing the situation of repression or the vision, from the perspective of exile, of the societies they had to leave behind.

4. Establish a dialogue with the host country that allows them to reinterpret and embrace the new culture in which they find themselves.

5. Contain underlying suggestions of the filmmakers’ political stance and/or reflection on the exile condition, even if exile is not a central theme of the film.

Other possible lines of research include:

6. Criticism of films, directors or film movements made by Spanish or Hispanic American exiles that reveal their political and historical stance on exile.

7. Film theory produced by Spanish or Hispanic American exiles that expresses their exile condition or their political and historical stance on their exile in their interpretation of film language.

8. Acting performances by Spanish or Hispanic American exiles that express their relationship with exile.

9. Censorship of films by exiles suffered in the countries of their origin.

10. The depiction of exile and its causes in films made in the country of origin, as a way of understanding it, such as La casa de los conejos (Valeria Selinger, 2020) or Las cartas perdidas (La cárcel y el exilio de las mujeres republicanas) (Amparo Climent, 2022).

11. The depiction of exiles in films made in the host country, as a way of understanding their integration or the factors that led to their exile, such as Refugiados en Madrid (Alejandro Galindo, 1938) or Volver a empezar (José Luis Garci, 1981).

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aguilar, G. (2015). Más allá del pueblo. Imágenes, indicios y políticas del cine. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Amado, A. (2009). La imagen justa. Cine argentino y política (1980-2007). Buenos Aires: Colihue.

Barril, C. (2013). Las imágenes que no me olvidan: cine documental autobiográfico y (pos)memorias de la dictadura militar chilena. Santiago de Chile: Cuarto Propio.

Barroso Peña, G. (2017). La dictadura de Pinochet a través del cine documental. 1973-2014. Doctoral Thesis. Madrid: UNED. Retrieved from http://e-spacio.uned.es/fez/view/tesisuned:ED-Pg-HHAT-Gbarroso

Blair Vasquez, L. S. (2013). El lente circular del exilio: (re)fundar la identidad chilena por el medio fílmico. Aisthesis, 54, 223-236. Retrieved from https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/RAIT/article/view/2866/2802

Campo, J. (2017). Revolución y democracia: el cine documental argentino del exilio (1976-1984). Buenos Aires: Ciccus.

Castro de Paz, J. L. (2017). Cine y exilio: formas(s) de la ausencia. Santander: Shangrila.

Del Amo García, A. (ed.) (1996). Catálogo general del cine de la Guerra Civil. Madrid: Cátedra/Filmoteca Española.

Estrada, O. (ed.) (2015). Senderos de violencia. Latinoamérica y sus narrativas armadas. Valencia: Albatros.

Gubern, R. (1976). Cine Español en el exilio 1936-1939. Barcelona: Lumen.

Heredero, C. F., Rodríguez Merchán, E. (coords.) (2011). Diccionario del cine iberoamericano. España, Portugal y América, 4 vols. Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE).

Paranaguá, P. A. (ed.) (2003). Cine documental en América Latina. Madrid: Cátedra.

Pick, Z. (1984). Cronología del cine chileno en el exilio 1973 / 1983. Literatura chilena, creación y crítica, 10(27), 15-21. Retrieved from http://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-77947.html

Rodríguez Pérez, M. P. (ed.) (2012). Exilio y cine. Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto.

Sánchez-Biosca, V. (2006). Cine de historia, cine de memoria. La representación y sus límites. Madrid: Cátedra.

Various Authors (1982). El exilio español en México, 1939-1982. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica/Salvat.

 

L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos accepts submissions of unpublished essays on topics related to film theory and/or praxis that stand out for their innovative nature. Articles should focus on approaches to the cinematographic fact made preferably from the perspectives of historiography or audiovisual analysis. Those texts that approach novel objects of study with rigorous and well-evidenced methodologies will be appreciated. Articles that take as their main reference the processes of signification through the analysis of the audiovisual form and/or the narratological elements specific to our field, focusing on methodologies specifically related to the treatment of the image will be favoured in the selection process. Although we accept works with other methodologies that approach the filmic fact from transversal perspectives (Cultural Studies, philological approaches, etc.) we consider that the main interest of the journal is located on the studies that take the specifically cinematographic expressive tools as the main elements of discourse. Likewise, texts that are not limited to describing, enumerating or summarizing details of the plot, but that rigorously apply a specific and well-evidenced analysis methodology, reaching particular and novel results, will be given priority.

Below are a few aspects to keep in mind:

• Submissions must be original and must conform to the submission guidelines of the journal and to the standards and scientific rigour expected of an academic publication.
• Submissions will be evaluated for the originality of the topic explored, especially if it relates to an issue not previously addressed in the publication. Submissions dealing with topics previously addressed in the journal may be rejected. The content of the issues published to date can be consulted on the journal's website.
• All submissions will undergo an external peer review process that will respect the anonymity of both authors and reviewers (double blind peer review) in an effort to prevent any possibility of bias. In the event of a very high number of submissions, the Editorial Board will make a prior selection of the articles to be peer reviewed, choosing the articles deemed the most appropriate for the issue. Failure to observe the submission guidelines and/or standards of originality and academic rigour will result in rejection of the submission by the Editorial Board without external review.
• The acceptance of the manuscripts will be notified to the authors within a maximum period of six months.
• Articles (which should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words including all sections) must be submitted via the website of the journal as .odt or .docx files, using the template provided for this purpose. A blind version of the article will be provided. A complete version of the article and any images (.jpg, .png) must be uploaded to the website as complementary files. A detailed version of the submission guidelines can be found at the following link. Any articles that fail to meet these requirements will be rejected automatically.
• The selected articles will be published in a bilingual edition (Spanish and English). The authors of the texts accepted for publication must pay the costs that result from the translation or revision - in the case of providing, along with the original, a translated version - of their article.
• If the original manuscript is in English, the authors of the accepted papers must provide a professional translation to Spanish. The Executive Editorial Board may also require a revision by the translator recommended by the journal for Non-English speaking authors.
• If the original manuscript is in Spanish, the authors of the accepted papers for publication must pay the costs that result from the translation to English or revision—in the case of providing, along with the original, a translated version—of their article. In all cases, and in order to guarantee the quality of the translations and the unity of linguistic criteria, the text must be translated or proofread by the translator recommended by the journal, a freelance professional specialised in Film Studies. His work will be paid in advance and via credit card, bank transfer or Paypal by the authors.
• L'Atalante does not offer any compensation for published articles. For more information: info@revistaatalante.com