Events

The Aura of Atrocity: The Spanish Civil War and the Iconography of Affliction

Vicente Sánchez-Biosca

When:
Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 4:30pm - 4:30pm
Description:

Vicente Sánchez-Biosca (professor of Film Studies, University of Valencia) looks at the shift between the iconography of the Spanish Civil War and that of WWII. The Spanish Civil War created genres of war images—columns of refugees, civilians in despair—but audiences would be shocked by similar images from the end of WWII. Despite the violence they contain, the earlier images seem to have a mysterious aura dubbed ‘photogeny.’ What does this word mean when applied to human affliction, and what are the limits of such a representational strategy?

Vicente Sánchez-Biosca is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Valencia and has been a Visiting Professor at New York University, Princeton University, University of Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), University of São Paulo, and University of Montréal, among others. He was the editor of the journal Archivos de la Filmoteca from 1992 to 2012, and is the author of several books in film theory and history, including Sombras de Weimar. Contribucíon a la historia del cine alemán 1918-1933 (1990); Teoría del montaje cinematográfico (1991); NO-DO. El tiempo y la memoria (2006) and El pasado es el destino. Propaganda y cine del bando nacional en la guerra civil (both with R. Tranche, 2011); Cine y vanguardias artisticas. Conflictos, encuentros, fronteras (2004); Cine de historia, cine de memoria: La representacíon y sus límites (2006); and Cine y Guerra civil española (2006). His current research is focused on the production and circulation of images of atrocity in twentieth and twenty-first century cinema, photography, illustrated press, and other media.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.