Title: Madrid on Film, City in the Shadows
Acceptance of submissions for the Notebook section: from 1st of July to the 10th of Septiember from the 1st to the 30th of November 2022
Date of publication: July 2023
Editors: Luis Deltell, Gema Fernández Hoya y Marta Martín Núñez

Madrid is one of the most oft-filmed cities in Spanish cinema. Its frequent presence on screen is due to various political, social and industrial factors, but also to purely artistic and aesthetic considerations. Ever since the introduction of sound, and especially after the Spanish Civil War and the years of the Franco dictatorship, Madrid has appeared in a huge number of feature films and much of the Spanish film industry is based there.

Unlike many other Spanish or foreign cities, Madrid offers no internationally recognisable iconic images. Apart from a few buildings, its architecture and value as a backdrop is not comparable to other major cities. This may be why most films shot there have focused more on portraying the people and local flavour of the city than the grandeur of its scenery. Films set in Madrid are known more for comic farce, realism or local tradition than for their architectural or urban portraits.

Although some of the most prominent filmmakers who have shot films in Madrid were born there (José Luis Garci and Icíar Bollaín, for example), most of the major directors who have chosen the city as a setting (Luis García Berlanga, José Antonio Nieves Conde, Marco Ferreri, Josefina Molina, Pedro Almodóvar, Alex de la Iglesia, and Alejandro Amenábar) hail from elsewhere. Indeed, one of the key features of Madrid, as illustrated in the novels of Benito Pérez Galdós or Almudena Grandes, is without doubt its character as a meeting point, a landlocked port.

The gaze on Madrid has always been pluralist and open. In this sense, films like Furrows (Surcos, José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1951), Death of a Cyclist (Muerte de un ciclista, Juan Antonio Bardem, 1954), El pisito (Marco Ferreri, 1957), and The Delinquents (Los golfos, Carlos Saura, 1959) coexisted with other pleasanter, more mainstream portraits of the city in the Franco era. In the first years of Spain’s transition to democracy, José Luis Garci’s films contrasted with the comedia madrileña and quinqui genres that characterised that period. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the city gained international attention thanks to a series of successful films by Pedro Almodóvar, who has done almost all his work in Madrid. Today, series like Money Heist (La casa de papel, Álex Pina, Netflix: 2017-2021) have turned certain Madrid locations, such as the Spanish National Research Council headquarters or the Nuevos Ministerios government complex, into veritable tourist attractions.

For this monograph, we are seeking studies that bring film analysis into dialogue with other approaches in order to consider how Madrid is represented in films and audiovisual productions that portray the city. Over the years, Madrid has been the setting for explorations of the diverse issues that have characterised Spain’s different historical periods: the Second Republic in the 1930s, the years of the Franco regime, the transition to democracy and the Movida Madrileña, the 1990s and the contemporary period. Issues intimately connected to the urban space, such as immigration to the capital, housing problems, or lifestyles in the city, have been key themes of numerous films. In this exploration, we are also interested in depictions of Madrid in non-fiction films and contemporary television series, with the aim of constructing a diachronic and multifaceted perspective on how the city has been portrayed.

Lines of research could include:

1. Film representations of Madrid in the silent era.
2. Tradition and modernity in the films of the Spanish Republic.
3. Realism, comic farce and urban dissidence in cinema during the Franco era.
4. Urban space, transgressions and counterculture in the films of the Movida Madrileña.
5. Comedia madrileña and humour in 1990s cinema.
6. Perspectives on immigration, housing and urban development in Madrid.
7. Portraits of Madrilenian lifestyles and the creation of impossible urban cartographies.
8. Analysis of urban icons, visual motifs and tropes.
9. New visions of the city in contemporary television series.
10. Views of Madrid in non-fiction films.
11. Cinema and Tourism: the use of cinema to promote Madrid as a tourist destination.

References

Berthier, N. et al. (2021). Filmar la ciudad. Guadalajara: Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara.

Barrado-Timón, D., Sáez-Cala, A. (2020). Cinema and Tourism in Large Cities: The Case of Madrid, Estudios Turísticos, Turismo, cine y otras producciones audiovisuales, 220, 2S, 115-132.

Camarero Gómez, G. (2019). Madrid en el cine de Pedro Almodóvar. Madrid: Akal / Cine.

Castro de Paz, J. L., Cerdán, J. (2011). Del sainete al esperpento: relecturas del cine español de los años 50. Madrid: Cátedra, Signo e imagen.

Deltell Escolar, L. (2005). Madrid en el cine de la década de los cincuenta. Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid, Área de Gobierno de las Artes.

Fernández-Hoya, G., Deltell Escolar, L. (2021). La expresión dramática en Frente de Madrid: Conchita Montes, el primer arquetipo femenino de la Guerra Civil Española. L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinemato­gráficos, 32, 35-50.

Gamir, A., Manuel Valdés, C. (2007). Cine y geografía: espacio geográfico, paisaje y territorio en las producciones cinematográficas. Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, 45, 157-190.

García Fernández, E. C. (2015). Marca e identidad del cine español: proyección nacional e internacional. Madrid: Fragua.

Heredero, C. F. (1993). Las huellas del tiempo. Cine español 1951-1961. Valencia: Ediciones Documentos 5. Filmoteca Generalitat Valenciana.

Larson, S. (2021). Architecture and the Urban in Spanish Film. Bristol: Intellect.

Perez, L. (2016). Paseo por una guerra antigua (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1948-49): una contramemoria de la Guerra Civil. Área Abierta, 16(2), 41-53.

Ríos Carratalá, J. A. (1997). Lo sainetesco en el cine español. Alicante: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante.

Torreiro Gómez, C. (2016). Continuidades y rupturas: Edgar Neville, entre República y primer franquismo (1931-1945). Tesis Doctoral. Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona.

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