SPANISH 122 - Spanish Film from Buñuel to Almodóvar

Semester: Spring

Year offered: 2026

This course will examine a wide range of core Spanish films from directors such as Almodóvar, Amenábar, Berlanga, Bollaín, Buñuel, Coixet, Erice, and León de Aranoa, among others. It will include analyses of prominent genres (drama, comedy, terror, fantasy, meta-cinema, sci-fi, noir) and will pay particular attention to key historical and cultural moments (the Spanish Civil War, film under dictatorship and democracy, censorship, “La movida,” the economic crisis, the rise of immigration, etc.) from the 1940s to the present. Films with subtitles.

Course conducted in Spanish.

Instructor

Raquel Vega-Durán

rvegaduran@fas.harvard.edu

Faculty Chair of Ethnicity, Migration & Rights

Senior Lecturer in Peninsular and Transatlantic Film and Literature

Formerly Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Claremont McKenna College

Research Interests: Migration and Border Studies; Transatlantic Cultural History and Literature; Peninsular Spanish Cultural Studies; Film and Media Studies; Mediterranean Crossings; Gender Studies; Digital Humanities; Narratives of Identity, Memory...