Description:
- Addresses not just film (already much studied) but also TV series (more popular in Spain but unknown to outsiders)
- Has chapter on self-fashioning of Spain's best known auteur, Pedro Almodóvar, a new approach to an acclaimed director
- Deals with audiovisual works in Catalan as well as Spanish
- Offers an insider view of the film industry, based on access to press screenings inaccessible to other academics
Brief description:
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.
Review Quotes:
"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