Film Comedy and Spain

<p>What's so funny about Spanish cinema? Throughout the past half-century film comedies have flourished across Spain breaking box-office records by reflecting praising or scoffing at the fragile transition from Francoist dictatorship to present-day democracy. But how exactly does the nation find itself funny onscreen? And in this cathartic self-deprecating humour what ghosts are exorcised what anxieties released? In this wide-ranging and lively study Matthew Hilborn reclaims comedy as politically influential showing how filmmakers like Pedro Almodóvar Bigas Luna Santiago Segura Álex de la Iglesia Emilio Martínez-Lázaro and Javier Ruiz Caldera continually reimagine 'Spanishness' amid political contradiction and compromise. How Spain sniggers becomes a vital sign of change exposing what's really tickling the nation's fancy - or getting under its skin - at key turning-points in recent history.</p><p>Matthew Hilborn is Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Spanish Studies and Film Studies at University College Dublin.</p>