RT Book,_Section
T1 It Could Happen to You: Empathy and Empowerment in Iberian Austerity Cinema
A1 Villarmea Álvarez, Iván
A2 Austin, Thomas
A2 Koutsourakis, Angelos
K1 Film Studies
K1 European Cinemas
K1 Great Recession
K1 Cinema and Crisis
K1 Iberian Austeriry Cinema
AB Crisis has come to stay in the Iberian Peninsula. Austerity policies applied in Spain and Portugal in the early 2010s have led to a sudden deterioration in the quality of life of their respective citizens, many of whom have lost their jobs, have been evicted from their homes or have been pushed to emigrate by the lack of prospects, among many other personal misfortunes. Such situations have been depicted in a new cycle of films that I call Iberian Austerity Cinema, in which the effects and consequences of the Great Recession are recurrently addressed at a thematic, formal and even allegorical level. Most of these films focus on individual stories of resignation and resistance in which ordinary people react to adversity in unexpected ways, entering a downward spiral that sometimes leads them to marginality and crime: thus, the young couple in 'Beautiful Youth' (Hermosa Juventud, Jaime Rosales, 2014), the father and daughter in 'Magical Girl' (Carlos Vermut, 2014), the five crazy pandas in 'Dying Beyond Their Means' (Murieron por encima de sus posibilidades, Isaki Lacuesta, 2014) and the boxer in 'Saint George' (São Jorge, Marco Martins, 2016) embody different social types, easily recognizable by the audience, that allow filmmakers to deal with thorny issues related to the recession, such as unemployment, emigration, corruption or indebtedness. The use of internal focalization reinforces the subjective dimension of these films, in which characters become the places of enunciation from which filmmakers discuss the outcome of austerity policies. Recession is therefore depicted through the characters’ experiences, and especially through their gaze. Theanalysis of the formal and narrative strategies of these works will help us to understand their politics of representation and, what is more important, their contribution to the recent transformations in the self-image of Iberian societies.
PB Edinburgh University Press
SN 978-1-4744-4850-5
YR 2020
FD 2020-05
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10347/45987
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10347/45987
LA eng
NO Villarmea Álvarez, I. 2020. It Could Happen to You: Empathy and Empowerment in Iberian Austerity Cinema. In Austin, T. & Koutsourakis, A. (eds.), Cinema of Crisis. Film and Contemporary Europe (pp. 150 - 163). Edinburgh University Press,
NO Este capítulo, produto do proxecto de investigación posdoutoral 'As Paisaxes da Crise. Representacións da Gran Recesión no Cinema Español e Portugués (2008-2018)' financiado pola Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, e mais do proxecto de investigación estatal 'Cine y crisis: cambio social y representación cinematográfica en el nuevo siglo' financiado polo Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad do Gobierno de España, está incluido nun volume colectivo publicado pola editorial Edinburgh University Press, que ocupaba a posición 48 do ranking xeral de editoriais estranxeiras do SPI cunha valoración ICEE de 30 puntos. O volume, ademais, tivo tres reseñas en publicacións científicas: en 'Studies in European Cinema' (Vol. 20, Issue 3, 2023, pp. 224-226), asinada por Mariana Liz; en 'Studies in Eastern European Cinema' (Vol. 12, Issue 1, 2021, pp. 101-104), asinada por Zsolt Gyenge; e en 'Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television' (Vol. 41, Issue 2, 2021, pp. 437–439), asinada por Claudia Kotte. Por último, segundo cifras de Google Scholar en 2026, foi citado cando menos noutros 6 textos académicos.
DS Minerva
RD 27 may 2026