The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking

Price (paper): $26.95  
Price (cloth): $72.00  
Subtitle: Out from Hollywood's Shadow, 1929-1939
Written by Lisa Jarvinen
Subject: Latina/o Studies, Film and Media Studies
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-5286-6
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-5285-9
Pages: 256 pages
Publication Date: June 2012
Series: Latinidad: Transnational Cultures in the United States

Praise for The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking:

"Jarvinen effectively and meticulously undermines common assumptions about Spanish-language films and the transition to sound in this compellingly argued analysis of a largely overlooked body of Hollywood production."
—Colin Gunckel, University of Michigan

Description:

Silent film was universally understood and could be exported anywhere. But when "talkies" arrived, the industry began experimenting with dubbing, subtitling, and dual track productions in more than one language. Where language fractured the European film market, for Spanish-speaking countries and communities, it created new opportunities. In The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking, Lisa Jarvinen focuses specifically on how Hollywood lost a lucrative international Spanish-speaking audience between 1929 and 1939.

Hollywood studios initially trained cadres of Spanish-speaking film professionals, created networks among them, and demonstrated the viability of a broadly conceived, transnational, Spanish-speaking film market. By the late 1930s, these efforts led to unintended consequences and helped to foster the growth of remarkably robust film industries in Mexico, Spain, and Argentina. Using studio records from Warner Bros., Fox Films, and United Artists, Jarvinen examines the lasting effects of the transition to sound and shows how language, as a key marker of cultural identity, led to new expectations from audiences and new possibilities for film producers.

LISA JARVINEN is an assistant professor of history at La Salle University. She has published essays in Blackwell's History of American Film and in Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema (1933–1945)

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Price (paper): $26.95
Price (cloth): $72.00