Spanish Lessons

Paul Julian Smith is a specialist in film and television in Spain and Mexico. He is Distinguished Professor in the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Program in the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and he was for twenty years Professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of seventeen books.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Film, Television, TransmediaPART I: FILMChapter 1. Spanish Cinema of the 1980sChapter 2. Madrid de Cine: Spanish Film ScreeningsChapter 3. Almodóvar’s Self-fashioning: The Economics and Aesthetics of Post-AuteurismPART II: TELEVISIONChapter 4. Media Migration and Cultural Proximity: A Specimen Season of Television DramaChapter 5. LGBT TV CataloniaChapter 6. Televisual Properties: The Construction Bubble in Three TV SeriesPART III: (RE)TURN TO TRANSMEDIAChapter 7. Towards Transmedia: Past and Present of Cinema and Television in SpainChapter 8. A New Paradigm for the Spanish Audiovisual Sector?: Popular Cinema/Quality TelevisionChapter 9. Crisis Fictions: Novel, Cinema, TVConclusion: The Audiovisual Field in Contemporary SpainBibliographyIndex

“This book, divided into three parts and nine chapters, sets out to explore the issue of ‘transmedia’ in Spanish visual culture (mostly cinema and television) by analysing an impressively wide range of case studies with admirable concision and clarity… Importantly, the book also analyses and engages with academic and journalistic discussions of these texts, industry screenings, blogs, websites, fan media and stars… Spanish Lessons may well mark the (re)connection of academic discourses on Spanish cinema with television and other forms of media.” • Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies“There is no one, to my knowledge, who brings the same level of expertise to the study of contemporary Spanish-language visual culture. This book is an exciting new contribution that effortlessly combines the insights of the industry insider, the journalist and the film reviewer with the scholarly range of the academic.” • Jo Evans, University College London