Homoerotic Desire in Contemporary Spanish Cinema: from Pedro Almodóvar to Ventura Pons

This talk will examine the evolution of the gay male character and the homoerotic gaze in contemporary Spanish cinema, with special focus on the work of Catalan filmmaker Ventura Pons.

Part I will briefly discuss some of the ‘milestones’, including ground-breaking representation in the early films of Pedro Almodóvar and Eloy de la Iglesia, increased visibility in mainstream comedies of the 1990s and integration/assimilation of LBBTQ+ characters and narratives in the 21^st century. 

Part II will focus work of Catalan filmmaker Ventura Pons, whose work became internationally associated with queerness after the release of his very first film, the documentary Ocaña, retrat intermitent (1978) and has continued to explore queer subjectivity through to his latest film to date, the English-language musical Be Happy! (2019). The talk will pay special attention to the role of aural memory in Ocaña, (written) legacy in Amic/Amat (1998), music and ‘gay’ sensitivity in Food of Love (2001), and the body in the 2013 documentary film Ignasi M, which is arguably an update of Ocaña thirty years later.

Santiago Fouz Hernández is Professor in Hispanic Studies and Film Studies at Durham University, where he has been based since 1999. He is the author of Cuerpos de cine (Bellaterra, 2013), co-author (with Alfredo Martínez-Expósito) of Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (I. B. Tauris, 2007) and editor of five books including El legado cinematográfico de Bigas Luna (Tirant lo Blanch, 2020), Spanish Erotic Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and Mysterious Skin (I. B. Tauris, 2009).