Bigas Luna

Existen en el universo cinematográfico de Bigas Luna varios temas recurrentes que se pueden rastrear a lo largo de toda su filmografía. Uno de ellos, quizás el más evidente y persistente, es el del erotismo y su singular maridaje con la gastronomía. Desde luego no ha sido el único cineasta que ha plasmado en el celuloide esta deliciosa combinación, pero sí que la convirtió en una de las constantes más repetidas y lúcidas de toda su obra. Este artículo busca sintetizar qué pensaba el cineasta sobre la relación del sexo, los alimentos y el cine, un pensamiento que fue depurando y transformando a lo largo del tiempo, y en segundo lugar, ver como este pensamiento se concretó en una serie de evocadoras metáforas, de corte surrealista, que salpicaron casi todas sus películas.

La novela erótica no ha deparado buenos resultados en su traslado al cine, y el ejemplo de un realizador que habitualmente se ha interesado por los recovecos de lo sexual, Juan José Bigas Luna, muestra cómo son las ideas propias y los guiones originales los que generan relatos más sugerentes y convincentes, en tanto que dos de sus adaptaciones de textos con alto contenido erótico, Las edades de Lulú y Son de mar, resultan desafortunadas.

This introduction gives an account of the Spanish texts studied: three essayists (Umbral, Savater, Cardín); three filmmakers (Erice, Bigas Luna, Medem); and three 'crosscut' themes embracing many media (replay, city, gypsy). It also sketches the mainly French theoretical approaches used in the book (Bourdieu, Lefebvre, Certeau).

Bigas Luna fue, sin duda, uno de los cineastas más carismáticos, originales y brillantes del cine contemporáneo español. A lo largo de casi cuatro décadas de intenso trabajo creativo donde compaginó su pasión por la pintura con los diversos proyectos fílmicos, el cineasta construyó un universo cinematográfico donde fueron es posible distinguir algunos temas recurrentes. Uno de los más obvios y conocidos es su insistencia, casi obsesiva, en relacionar erotismo y gastronomía en muchas de sus películas. Sin embargo, se ha prestado menos atención al hecho de que en ese maridaje de sexo y comida existía un tercer concepto, mucho menos estudiado, que es el de identidad nacional. De esta forma, después de vivir cuatro años en EE.UU., Bigas Luna comenzó a elaborar un discurso identitario cuyas bases no eran políticas, sino pura y gozosamente gastronómicas. Lo ibérico, lo mediterráneo, lo español se representaron en sus películas utilizando, como metáforas, algunos de los platos o alimentos ...

"""""This book explores the representation of masculinity and the male body in contemporary film and popular culture. Paying special attention to the case of Spain and its relation to international cultural production during the democratic period, it includes key relevant case studies from North American and Western European film and popular culture that have impacted on popular domestic discourses on masculinities.

The project builds upon existing academic interpretations of contemporary depictions of the body, but it expands them by both exploring some material that has received little academic attention until now, and framing that material within a Spanish theoretical and socio-historical framework. The corpus of case studies has been carefully chosen to facilitate cross-media analysis in order to test rigorously the extent to which contemporary representations of the male body and masculinity can be said to belong to a coherent visual economy. Materials covered include: the films of leading Spanish contemporary directors (Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, Bigas Luna and Ventura Pons); the recently revived Hollywood gladiator films; the so-called ‘costume drama’; iconic live performances, music videos and photographs of Madonna; the adult comic books of German cartoonist Ralf König (all translated into Spanish and very popular amongst the male gay community) and their film adaptations."""

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CUERPOS DE CINE
Masculinidades carnales en el cine y la cultura popular contemporáneos.

Cuerpos de cine es una reflexión sobre masculinidades y cuerpos masculinos en el cine y la cultura popular contemporáneos a través del estudio de casos especialmente representativos en la producción cultural de Europa y Norteamérica, pero de alcance e impacto globales. El estudio se desarrolla a lo largo de ocho capítulos que se fijan en el cine de importantes directores de la península ibérica como Almodóvar, Amenábar, Bigas Luna o Ventura Pons; las películas de gladiadores hollywoodienses (desde las clásicas como Espartaco a las más recientes como Gladiator, Troy o 300); las adaptaciones cinematográficas de obras clásicas de la literatura inglesa (Una habitación con vistas, Maurice); los vídeos musicales y la gira MDNA de Madonna (estudiada bajo el prisma de la masculinidad femenina), o los famosos cómics del alemán Ralf König.  Con un amplio marco teórico que va del psicoanálisis, al feminismo o a las varias ramas del pensamiento queer, el libro se enmarca en el campo de los estudios de género y sexualidad, así como a los estudios culturales y de cinematografía.

Santiago Fouz Hernández es filólogo (Univ. Santiago de Compostela, 1994) y máster y doctor en estudios cinematográficos por la universidad de Newcastle upon Tyne (1997 y 2002). Ejerce como profesor titular en la universidad de Durham, en el Reino Unido, desde 1999, con paréntesis para estancias docentes y de investigación en varias universidades europeas, norteamericanas y en la universidad de Queensland en Australia. Ha publicado numerosos artículos y contribuciones a libros sobre género, sexualidad y cine (sobre todo, pero no exclusivamente, en el contexto español). Es autor, con Alfredo Martínez Expósito, del libro Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (2007), compilador de dos colecciones de ensayos sobre las masculinidades en el cine, incluyendo Mysterious Skin: Male Bodies in Contemporary Cinema (2009), además de co-editor de las colecciones de ensayos académicos Madonna’s Drowned Worlds (2004) y Rethinking 'Identities': Cultural Articulations of Alterity and Resistance in the New Millennium (2014).
Cuerpos de cine es su primer trabajo publicado en castellano. En la actualidad trabaja en un proyecto patrocinado por la British Academy sobre el erotismo en el cine español de la etapa democrática, prestando especial atención al trabajo de Bigas Luna y Ventura Pons.""

These two chapters are taken from my book The Moderns: Time, Space and Subjectivity in Contemporary Spanish Culture (Oxford UP, 2000). They give a close reading of one film each by a Catalan and Basque auteur and place that filmic practice in the context of nationalist politics and the response to it in their respective autonomías.

The first book to examine in detail every feature film released by Bigas Luna from TATUAJE (1976) to DIDI HOLLYWOOD (2010) and including his posthumous films SEGON ORIGEN (2015) and BIGASxBIGAS (2016). The book is a collection of essays, each focused on one film (or three in the case of the famous 'Iberian Portraits' Trilogy) written by internationally renowned specialists in Bigas Luna.

This 5-day event in Newcastle upon Tyne continues the series of tributes to the late Bigas Luna organised by his daughter Betty Bigas and Santiago Fouz Hernández. The tributes started in San Francisco in March 2015 and will continue in Barcelona in December 2016. The Newcastle homage is part of the ¡Vamos! Hispanic and Lusophone festival (8-12 June 2016) and are a collaboration between Durham University, The Tyneside Cinema, Vane gallery and ¡Vamos!
Vane will exhibit the five-piece video art 'Comedias Bárbaras' inspired by Valle-Inclán and related to the 'Iberian Portraits' film trilogy, which will be screened at Tyneside Cinema over the weekend. The screenings will be introduced by Dr Santiago Fouz Hernández (Durham University) and followed by Q&A sessions with Betty Bigas and Consol Tura, casting director of all Bigas Luna's films. As well as the famous trilogy (which includes Jamón, jamón (1992), Golden Balls (1993) and The Tit and The Moon(1994)), Bigas Luna's final film, DiDi Hollywood (2011), starring Elsa Pataky and Peter Coyote, will be also screened. The Tyneside Cinema's Bar Café will serve a Spanish menu all weekend (inspired by the films) and will also host the after-party on Friday 10th. ¡Vamos! social will host the Saturday late-night mardi-grass party. The exhibition preview is on Friday 10th from 5.30 PM at Vane, just across the road from the Tyneside cinema.

Resumen: En 2001 el director español Bigas Luna dirige el drama Son de mar, transposición cinematográfica de la novela epónima del autor valenciano Manuel Vicent (1999). A través de unas variaciones hipertextuales sobre la Odisea de Homero y la Eneida de Virgilio, propone una reflexión sobre el motivo del viaje, entendido en una doble dimensión geográfica y conceptual. Esta ponencia se propone explorar las declinaciones del traslado a la luz del diálogo que se instaura entre el texto fílmico, vertebrado por la dialéctica salida/regreso, y los referentes épicos subyacentes.
De la odisea iniciática del protagonista, significativamente llamado Ulises, al viaje sin retorno de los esposos condenados a la muerte, pasando por las múltiples idas y vueltas de los personajes por el espacio diegético, se analizarán las distintas ocurrencias del desplazamiento cuyas expresiones literales y metafóricas contribuyen a forjar una verdadera poética de la itinerancia. Las representaciones del movimiento y la inestabilidad, asociadas con la isotopía marítima, entran en conflicto con las imágenes de la inmovilidad, asimiladas con la inmutabilidad de la tierra, en un relato fílmico binario donde el director remodela el sustrato mítico: la recuperación de los materiales épicos supone no sólo su traslación a otro circuito de significado sino también una metamorfosis que implica la reinterpretación de los hipotextos movilizados, en clave cinematográfica y contemporánea. Al actualizar dichas fuentes antiguas, al entrecruzar las redes visuales y semánticas, Bigas Luna plasma así una mitología del viaje sui generis, profundamente anclada en el ambiente mediterráneo del Levante español.


Abstract: In 2001, the Spanish director Bigas Lunas directed the drama Son de mar, a cinematic transposition of the eponymous novel from the Valenciano writer Manuel Vincent (1999). Using hypertextual variations on the Odyssey by Homer as well as Aeneid by Virgil, the movie explores the theme of the journey, in both its geographical and conceptual dimensions. Through the dialogue that operates between the cinematographic text centered around the dialectic exit/return and the underlying epic references, we would like to explore the various ways in which « transfer » is explored in Son de mar.
From the initiatory odyssey of the protagonist, significantly named Ulises, to the multiple comings and goings of the characters in the diegetic space to the journey from which there is no return of the spouses doomed to die, we will analyze the different occurrences of displacement whose literal expressions and metaphors contribute to forge a true poetics of roaming. The representations of movement and instability associated with a maritime isotope conflict with the images of stillness which are assimilated to the land’s immutability in a binary filmic tale in which the director restructures the mythical substratum. The recuperation of the epic materials implies not only their translation to another level of meaning but also a metamorphosis that implies a reinterpretation of the mobilized hypotexts to adapt them to a cinematographic and contemporary language. Thus, by updating those antic sources and by interweaving the visual and semantic networks, Bigas Luna gives expression to a mythology of the journey sui generis, deeply anchored in the Mediterranean environment of the Spanish Levante.

The 4th Bigas Luna Tribute even will open at the Cineteca Nacional in CDMX on August 8th 2017 at 7.30PM. It will continue at three different venues until August 13th. The other two venues are the Sala Julio Bracho in the Centro Cultural Universitario (UNAM) and Cinepolis Diana. The films chosen for this retrospective include Jamón, jamón (1992), Huevos de oro (1993), La teta y la luna (1994), Son de mar (2001), Yo soy la Juani (2006), and Bigas x Bigas (2016). More info: www.bigaslunatribute.wordpress.com

This article focuses on the theme of reconstituted sight in Spanish films made at the end of the Franco dictatorship and under the subsequent democratic period as they echo the famous opening scene in Un chien andalou (1929) where Luis Buñuel sliced the eye of a woman with a razor. It revisits The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena, Erice, 1973) and Raise Ravens (Cría cuervos, Saura, 1976) through the eyes of its two main characters named Ana and how they process the trauma of the violence removed from their sight through imagination and playacting. The Ana's imagined relationship to violence in both films will be extrapolated to horror films from the democratic period that deal with the defiance of sight in a direct way, Bigas Luna's Anguish (1987) and Alejandro Amenábar's Thesis (Tesis, 1996). What we could not see in the first two films (both a circumvention of and commentary on Francoist censorship) becomes hypervisible in these films, signaling a resistance to looking away and a determination to confront and vanquish the trauma of Spain's brutal past.

Despite his mainstream success and prolific production, in all his films Bigas Luna demonstrates a preference for the peripheral and the marginal – in terms of the subjects he depicts as well as through his representational practices. In this article I investigate the new peripheral subjects in his 2006 film Yo soy la Juani/My Name is Juani: young women on the cusp of adulthood, at the margins of Spain (Tarragona) and the edges of mainstream culture. I argue that Bigas Luna’s resistance to hegemonic power structures and his marginal politics face a new challenge in the twenty-first century as the mediatized and pervasive culture of celebrity alters our reading of his female star, Verónica Echegui, and his relationship with her. Bigas attempts in this film to present a specific version of Spanish femininity as a point of resistance to a manufactured female subjectivity yet he also imitates it and shows that these young female characters are in thrall to the culture that he claims to resist. As the film negotiates a tricky path between these media discourses and the images of resistance in the film itself the end result is an ambiguous text that neither resists nor entirely complies with a culture that commodifies the bodies and aspirations of its peripheral female stars.

Recibido: 27 de enero 2020; aceptado: 12 de marzo 2020 Resumen Bigas Luna fue, sin duda, uno de los cineastas más carismáticos, originales y brillantes del cine contemporáneo español. A lo largo de casi cuatro décadas de intenso trabajo creativo donde compaginó su pasión por la pintura con los diversos proyectos fílmicos, el cineasta construyó un universo cinematográfico donde fueron es posible distinguir algunos temas recurrentes. Uno de los más obvios y conocidos es su insistencia, casi obsesiva, en relacionar erotismo y gastronomía en muchas de sus películas. Sin embargo, se ha prestado menos atención al hecho de que en ese maridaje de sexo y comida existía un tercer concepto, mucho menos estudiado, que es el de identidad nacional. De esta forma, después de vivir cuatro años en EE.UU., Bigas Luna comenzó a elaborar un discurso identitario cuyas bases no eran políticas, sino pura y gozosamente gastronómicas. Lo ibérico, lo mediterráneo, lo español se representaron en sus películas utilizando, como metáforas, algunos de los platos o alimentos más típicos de la tradición gastronómica nacional. De este modo, la paella, el jamón, la tortilla, las aceitunas o el chorizo aparecen en su obra como símbolos que explican las raíces de la cultura en la Península Ibérica. Palabras clave: Bigas Luna | Gastronomía | Identidad | Cine Español A country to eat. Identity and gastronomy in Bigas Luna's cinema Abstract Bigas Luna was undoubtedly one of the most charismatic, original and brilliant filmmakers of contemporary Spanish cinema. Over nearly four decades of intense creative work where he combined his passion for painting with various film projects, the filmmaker built a cinematic universe where it was possible to distinguish some recurring themes. One of the most obvious and well-known is his insistence, almost obsessive, on relating eroticism and gastronomy in many of his films. However, less attention has been paid to the fact that there was a third, much less studied concept in this sex and food pairing, which is that of national identity. Thus, after living in the U.S., Bigas Luna began to craft an identity speech whose foundations were not political, but purely and joyfully gastronomic. The Iberian, the Mediterranean, the Spanish were represented in his movies using, as metaphors, some of the most typical dishes or foods of the national gastronomic tradition. In this way, paella, ham, omelette, olives or chorizo appear in his work as symbols that explain the roots of culture in the Iberian Peninsula. Keywords: Bigas Luna | Gastronomy | identity | spanish cinema * gpavores@ull.edu.es "Somos lo que somos por el clima que tenemos y por lo que comemos" Bigas Luna No es tarea sencilla tratar de separar, con la precisión de un fino bisturí, la vida de la obra de cualquier artista. En el caso de Bigas Luna, resulta no sólo una empresa imposible, sino además inconveniente, pues no puede entenderse una cosa sin la otra. Sus vivencias, sus ideas, sus querencias y aversiones salpicaron toda su produc-ción plástica y cinematográfica. Provocador natural, bon vivant, amante de la buena mesa y de las verdades or-gánicas de la vida, presumía de dormirse en el cine (de placer con las buenas películas, de aburrimiento con las malas) y de odiar los falsos intelectualismos. Bigas Luna fue, además, un personaje paradójico, con una doble per-sonalidad creativa que, a veces, presentaba su lado más Bigas y, en otras, era simplemente Luna: Como Bigas, soy una persona muy fría, obsesiva, tortu-rada, especial, con mucha fuerza, con mucha arrogancia. Bigas es un personaje un poco odioso. Y creo que es la parte mía que más me interesa. (…). Como Luna soy una persona pasional, abierta, muy humana, entrañable… Pero esto le pasa a todo el mundo. Lo que ocurre es que yo (…), yo lo fomento mucho. Nunca he luchado contra mis

There exist in the cinematographic
universe of Bigas Luna several
recurring themes that can be traced
throughout his filmography. One of
them, perhaps the most evident and
persistent, is that of eroticism and its
unique pairing with gastronomy. Of
course he has not been the only
filmmaker who has captured this
delicious combination in the celluloid,
but he has turned it into one of the most
repeated and lucid constants of all his
work. This article seeks to synthesize
what the filmmaker thought about the
relationship of sex, food and cinema, a
thought that was polished and
transformed over time, and secondly, to
see how this thought came to fruition in
a series of evocative metaphors, of
surrealist influence, that they splashed
almost all his films.

Following the success of  Bigas Luna Homage events in San Francisco and Newcastle upon Tyne, this third tribute will include street performances, four screenings and three talks by international experts on Bigas Luna. A restored version of BILBAO will be screened on Wednesday 14th December.  Events are organised by Betty Bigas and Santiago Fouz Hernández.

Bigas Luna’s critique of national stereotypes is by no means confined to his celebrated Iberian Trilogy. His on-screen exploration of such images can be viewed as the result of his earlier investigations on the nature of visual representation and the cinematic image. These investigations culminated in Bigas Luna’s most elaborate proposition on the scopic nature of the cinematic image, the horror film Angustia/Anguish (1987), which he completed during his US sojourn. In the period thriller Volaverunt (1999), against the backdrop of an eighteenth-century political plot involving painter Francisco de Goya, high nobility and members of government, Bigas Luna put forward a broad array of propositions about image formation – from the pictorial to the cinematic and from the iconographic to the symbolic. Joan Ramon Resina’s notion of the ‘after-image’, which invokes the capacity of the visual image to reverberate in the mind after its retinal impact has ceased (hence fostering the creation of mental images, as anticipated by Paul Virilio and Gilles Deleuze), points to a cluster of theoretical possibilities based on the image’s temporal displacement, sequentiality, supersession and engagement. This paper makes use of this notion to explore Bigas Luna’s meditation on the nature of images, and on the creation of complex images of the nation, in Volaverunt.

Despite his mainstream success and prolific production, in all his films Bigas Luna demonstrates a preference for the peripheral and the marginal – in terms of the subjects he depicts as well as through his representational practices. In this article I investigate the new peripheral subjects in his 2006 film Yo soy la Juani/My Name is Juani: young women on the cusp of adulthood, at the margins of Spain (Tarragona) and the edges of mainstream culture. I argue that Bigas Luna’s resistance to hegemonic power structures and his marginal politics face a new challenge in the twenty-first century as the mediatized and pervasive culture of celebrity alters our reading of his female star, Verónica Echegui, and his relationship with her. Bigas attempts in this film to present a specific version of Spanish femininity as a point of resistance to a manufactured female subjectivity yet he also imitates it and shows that these young female characters are in thrall to the culture that he claims to resist. As the film negotiates a tricky path between these media discourses and the images of resistance in the film itself the end result is an ambiguous text that neither resists nor entirely complies with a culture that commodifies the bodies and aspirations of its peripheral female stars.