Ann Davies – författare

Daniel Calparsoro, a director who has made a crucial contribution to contemporary Spanish and Basque cinema, has provoked strong reactions from the critics. Reductively dismissed as works of crude violence by those lamenting a 'lost golden age' of Spanish filmmaking, Calparsoro’s films in fact reveal a more complex interaction with trends and traditions in both Spanish and Hollywood cinema. This book is the first full-length study of the director’s work, from his early social-realist films set in the Basque Country to his later forays into the genres of the war and horror. It offers an in-depth film-by-film analysis while simultaneously exploring the director’s position in the contemporary Spanish context, the tension between directors and critics and the question of national cinema in an area – the Basque Country – of heightened national and regional sensitivities.

With the success of novels such as The Shadow of the Wind and films like The Others, contemporary Spanish culture has contributed a great deal to the imagery and experience of the Gothic, although such contributions are not always recognised as being specifically Spanish in origin. Contemporary Spanish Gothic is the first book to study how the Gothic mode intersects with cultural production in Spain today, considering some of the ways in which such production feeds off and simultaneously feeds into Gothic production more widely. Examining the works of writers and filmmakers like Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro Amenábar, as well as the further reaches of Spanish Gothic influence in the Twilight film series, the book considers images and themes like the mad surgeon and the vulnerable body, the role of the haunted house, and the heritage biopics of Francisco de Goya.

Examines Spain's contribution to international interest in Gothic culture, film and literatureWith the success of novels such as 'The Shadow of the Wind' and films like 'The Others', contemporary Spanish culture has contributed a great deal to the imagery and experience of the Gothic, although such contributions are not always recognised as being specifically Spanish in origin. 'Contemporary Spanish Gothic' is the first book to study how the Gothic mode intersects with cultural production in Spain today, considering some of the ways in which such production feeds off and simultaneously feeds into Gothic production more widely. Examining the works of writers and filmmakers like Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar, as well as the further reaches of Spanish Gothic influence in the 'Twilight' film series, the book considers images and themes like the mad surgeon and the vulnerable body, the role of the haunted house, and the heritage biopics of Francisco de Goya.

From haunted houses to sandy beaches, The Nightmares of Presence explores the role of setting in inspiring fear and wonder through audiovisual media. With an emphasis on horror and the Gothic, this book takes case studies from Spain to propose new approaches to the spaces and places of fear and fantasy.With the primary aim of marrying the spatial turn in cultural and film studies with genre study of horror and Gothic film, Professor Ann Davies explores how different landscapes, spaces and places enable the subject to interact with the terrors they encounter and confront. Case studies include internationally renowned films, lesser known films which have not received distribution beyond Spain, and films made both in Spanish and English, including The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro), [.REC ](Jaume Balagueró), Insensibles (Painless, Juan Carlos Medina), ¿Quién puede matar a un niño? (Who Can Kill A Child?, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador), Los cronocrímenes (Time Crimes, Nacho Vigalondo), and El día de la bestia (The Day of the Beast), among others.

Daniel Calparsoro, a director who has made a crucial contribution to contemporary Spanish and Basque cinema, has provoked strong reactions from the critics. Reductively dismissed as works of crude violence by those lamenting a 'lost golden age' of Spanish filmmaking, Calparsoro’s films in fact reveal a more complex interaction with trends and traditions in both Spanish and Hollywood cinema. This book is the first full-length study of the director’s work, from his early social-realist films set in the Basque Country to his later forays into the genres of the war and horror. It offers an in-depth film-by-film analysis while simultaneously exploring the director’s position in the contemporary Spanish context, the tension between directors and critics and the question of national cinema in an area – the Basque Country – of heightened national and regional sensitivities.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.Spanish Spaces is a pioneering study that marries contemporary cultural geography with contemporary Spanish culture. The field of cultural geography has grown both extensively and rapidly, as has the field of cultural analysis and debate on Spanish cultural texts; yet despite a convergence in study between cultural geography (and cultural studies more widely) and cultural texts themselves, this has made little impact to date within the area of contemporary Spanish cultural studies. Yet Spain’s varied terrain, with complex negotiations between rural, urban and coastal (negotiations that have on occasion spilled over into political and violent conflict), and perhaps its very lack of a contemporary landscape tradition familiar to British and German cultural studies, offer the opportunity for fresh insights into questions of landscape, space and place. Drawing on case studies from contemporary Spanish film and literature, Davies explores the themes of memory and forgetting, nationalism and terrorism, crime and detection, gender, tourism and immigration, investigating what it means to think of space and places in specifically Spanish terms.