Learn from Spanish cinema

Check out films like Historias del Kronen, Todo sobre mi madre and Abre los ojos:
What can you learn?
At Inhispania there is an extensive DVD collection including films such as these for you to peruse and enjoy. Learning Spanish isn’t just about grammar exercises; films are a perfect way to improve your listening skills and vocabulary. You can also learn about Spain’s culture and even discuss with the other students and our native Spanish teachers about interesting topics such as this example of the importance of the body in the films Historias del Kronen, Todo sobre mi madre and Abre los ojos.
The period of history and national identity in which these three films are set in has been described as the product of hugely accelerated development which resulted in uneven results and schizophrenic tendencies in Spanish culture (Fouz-Hernández 2000: 84). It was a period of the 1990s in which the Spanish population were acclimatising to the changes that came as a result of the democratisation of the Spanish government following the death of General Franco in 1975 and the subsequent succession of the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party to power in 1982. These films portray the progression that contemporary Spain underwent from the viewpoint of its increasingly influential youth culture.
Significantly in Abre los ojos, when talking to his psychiatrist, César even defines his life in the very physical terms of “comer, dormir y hacer el amor” which are basic human bodily activities. The human body is a valuable device for film directors as its actions and appearance are obviously very effective vehicles for communicating the director’s message via a visual medium. The body can represent many different ideas and be interpreted in a variety of ways. It is explored in the films as a means of defining gender, as a metaphor for Spain’s healing and reconstruction, and as a representation of the influence of the media and economy.
A film is a cultural artefact. It is a documentation of contemporary culture and therefore it is the responsibility of the director to represent his or her society how he or she sees fit in order to get the desired reaction. In these three films, Armendáriz, Almodóvar and Amenábar all use the body to reflect and affect their culture of Spain in the 1990s in different ways.
Fouz-Hernández, Santiago (2000) ‘¿Generación X? Spanish Urban Youth Culture At the End Of The Century In Mañas’s/Armendáriz’s Historias Del Kronen’. Romance Studies, 18.1, 83-98.
photo via: VideoclubMadison