Belén Vidal
My research looks at the historical film genres, with a focus on adaptation, intermediality and the figural; the costume drama, the heritage film and the biopic.
FIGURING THE PAST. PERIOD FILM AND THE MANNERIST AESTHETIC (Amsterdam University Press, 2012) examines the period film as an expression of the relentless cultural need to adapt, cite and reinvent existing cultural objects. Engaging with the thinking of Jean-François Lyotard, and in particular his little-discussed work DISCOURSE, FIGURE (published in translation by Minnesota University Press, 2011) this book interrogates the relation between writing and the visual that underpins the figures of the period film, as a symptom of a mannerist impulse in contemporary culture.
This work links with my long-term interest in the biographical film or 'biopic' and in the debates around the so-called 'heritage film' in British and European cinema.
HERITAGE FILM. NATION, GENRE AND REPRESENTATION (Wallflower Press/CUP, Short Cuts series, 2012) looks at the place of heritage cinema in contemporary film culture, and in particular its fluid position in relation to the middlebrow as well as issues of national and European identity.
THE BIOPIC IN CONTEMPORARY FILM CULTURE (co-edited with Tom Brown) (Routledge 2014) is a collection of essays that examines this film genre in international contexts.
I am working on a project provisionally entitled CINEPHILIA IN SPANISH CINEMA, in which I consider temporal approaches to cinephilia - in particular, belatedness - in relation to historiographical questions in Spanish cinema.
FIGURING THE PAST. PERIOD FILM AND THE MANNERIST AESTHETIC (Amsterdam University Press, 2012) examines the period film as an expression of the relentless cultural need to adapt, cite and reinvent existing cultural objects. Engaging with the thinking of Jean-François Lyotard, and in particular his little-discussed work DISCOURSE, FIGURE (published in translation by Minnesota University Press, 2011) this book interrogates the relation between writing and the visual that underpins the figures of the period film, as a symptom of a mannerist impulse in contemporary culture.
This work links with my long-term interest in the biographical film or 'biopic' and in the debates around the so-called 'heritage film' in British and European cinema.
HERITAGE FILM. NATION, GENRE AND REPRESENTATION (Wallflower Press/CUP, Short Cuts series, 2012) looks at the place of heritage cinema in contemporary film culture, and in particular its fluid position in relation to the middlebrow as well as issues of national and European identity.
THE BIOPIC IN CONTEMPORARY FILM CULTURE (co-edited with Tom Brown) (Routledge 2014) is a collection of essays that examines this film genre in international contexts.
I am working on a project provisionally entitled CINEPHILIA IN SPANISH CINEMA, in which I consider temporal approaches to cinephilia - in particular, belatedness - in relation to historiographical questions in Spanish cinema.
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From Marie Antoinette to The Social Network, the pieces in this volume critically examine the place of the biopic within ongoing debates about how cinema can and should represent history and "real lives." Contributors discuss the biopic’s grounding in the conventions of the historical film, and explore the genre’s defining traits as well as its potential for innovation. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture expands the critical boundaries of this evolving, versatile genre."
This paper takes Pride (2014) as a focal point for a discussion of a popular European cinema that looks back on key moments in the twentieth-century political past(s) through the re-enactment of queer scenarios of activism and resistance. My contention is that, as significant as identity politics is the notion of movement itself. Pride’s intersectional retro-politics injects queer moves into heritage cinema, literally including musical moments of (camp) dance and song that dislodge characters from constraining social spaces and sedimented subjectivities. I look at Pride alongside other examples of new heritage filmmaking through their use of the movement-image (Deleuze) to retrieve the memory of political moments in history through queer moves. Encounters set to music underscore the road trip of a Swiss feminist journalist and her team of radio broadcasters adrift in the Portuguese Carnation Revolution in Les Grandes Ondes (à l’ouest)/Longwave (2013); out-of-step punk musical performances punctuate a queer coming-of-age girl narrative set in the 1980s in El Calentito (2005); dance scenes of queer female eroticism derail heteronormative trajectories of marriage and family in Anni felici/Those Happy Years (2013) and La Belle saison/Summertime (2015), two stories that intersect with the international women’s liberation movement in the 1970s. These films suggest a European heritage cinema as interzone (Randall Halle, 2014). I explore the ways in which these films eschew nostalgia via the stress on movement, queer performativity and the possibility of (not yet formed) communities. By retrieving Pride in (and for) a broader European cinematic context, this paper makes a move towards a reading of the film’s intersectional politics as a timely response to the incompleteness of the European social project of integration.
This paper is part of the Special Collection: Pride Revisited: Cinema, Activism and Re-Activation
Dossier contents:
"Mapping digital practices in Hispanic cinemas. Introduction"
Belén Vidal
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 235–239,
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy025
"The cartographic imagination in Spanish and Latin American documentaries: technological, social and physical mapping across the Hispanic Atlantic"
Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labayen
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 240–248
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy026
"Subveillant narration, digital tools and videoactivism: Ciutat morta (2013)"
Eva Woods Peiró
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 249–257
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy027
"Serving the master text: rethinking digital paratexts in the social issue film Who is Dayani Cristal?"
Deborah Shaw
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 258–265
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy028
"Cinephilic retreats and transient connections in Hispanic cinemas"
Belén Vidal
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 266–275 https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy023
From Marie Antoinette to The Social Network, the pieces in this volume critically examine the place of the biopic within ongoing debates about how cinema can and should represent history and "real lives." Contributors discuss the biopic’s grounding in the conventions of the historical film, and explore the genre’s defining traits as well as its potential for innovation. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture expands the critical boundaries of this evolving, versatile genre."
This paper takes Pride (2014) as a focal point for a discussion of a popular European cinema that looks back on key moments in the twentieth-century political past(s) through the re-enactment of queer scenarios of activism and resistance. My contention is that, as significant as identity politics is the notion of movement itself. Pride’s intersectional retro-politics injects queer moves into heritage cinema, literally including musical moments of (camp) dance and song that dislodge characters from constraining social spaces and sedimented subjectivities. I look at Pride alongside other examples of new heritage filmmaking through their use of the movement-image (Deleuze) to retrieve the memory of political moments in history through queer moves. Encounters set to music underscore the road trip of a Swiss feminist journalist and her team of radio broadcasters adrift in the Portuguese Carnation Revolution in Les Grandes Ondes (à l’ouest)/Longwave (2013); out-of-step punk musical performances punctuate a queer coming-of-age girl narrative set in the 1980s in El Calentito (2005); dance scenes of queer female eroticism derail heteronormative trajectories of marriage and family in Anni felici/Those Happy Years (2013) and La Belle saison/Summertime (2015), two stories that intersect with the international women’s liberation movement in the 1970s. These films suggest a European heritage cinema as interzone (Randall Halle, 2014). I explore the ways in which these films eschew nostalgia via the stress on movement, queer performativity and the possibility of (not yet formed) communities. By retrieving Pride in (and for) a broader European cinematic context, this paper makes a move towards a reading of the film’s intersectional politics as a timely response to the incompleteness of the European social project of integration.
This paper is part of the Special Collection: Pride Revisited: Cinema, Activism and Re-Activation
Dossier contents:
"Mapping digital practices in Hispanic cinemas. Introduction"
Belén Vidal
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 235–239,
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy025
"The cartographic imagination in Spanish and Latin American documentaries: technological, social and physical mapping across the Hispanic Atlantic"
Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labayen
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 240–248
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy026
"Subveillant narration, digital tools and videoactivism: Ciutat morta (2013)"
Eva Woods Peiró
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 249–257
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy027
"Serving the master text: rethinking digital paratexts in the social issue film Who is Dayani Cristal?"
Deborah Shaw
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 258–265
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy028
"Cinephilic retreats and transient connections in Hispanic cinemas"
Belén Vidal
Screen, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 June 2018, Pages 266–275 https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy023