{"product_id":"vision-machines-isbn-9781859840795","title":"Vision Machines","description":"Over the last decade, visibility and sexuality have become a major theme in Spanish and Cuban cinema, literature and art. \u003ci\u003eVision Machines\u003c\/i\u003e explores this development in the light of contemporary history and recent theoretical accounts of sight by writers including Paul Virilio, Gianni Vattimo and Teresa de Lauretis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe very visible women of Almodóvar’s cinema are Paul Julian Smith’s first subject. He shows how, in his early \u003ci\u003eDark\u003c\/i\u003e Habits, lesbianizes the look, putting women’s pleasure at the centre of the frame, and then examines Almodóvar’s recent film, \u003ci\u003eKika\u003c\/i\u003e, where the conflict between cinema and video is played out in the bodies of women: good, bad and ugly. Moving the focus to Cuba, Smith discussed the reception in Europe and North America of Nestor Almendro’s remarkable documentary on gays in Cuba, \u003ci\u003eImproper Conduct\u003c\/i\u003e, and traces the trial of visibility to which effeminate men were exposed. He compares Amendor’s work with the autobiography of exile novelist Reinaldo Arenas, which revels in graphic sex, and also looks at the first Cuban film with a gay theme, Gutierrez Alea’s \u003ci\u003eStrawberry and Chocolate\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSmith returns to Spain to consider the response of artists and intellectuals to the public invisibility of AIDS in a country with one of the highest rates of HIV transmission in the Eurpean Union. Drawing on Anglo-American debates on the representation of AIDS, he concentrates on the one major intervention by Spanish scholars and artists, \u003ci\u003eLove and Rage\u003c\/i\u003e, and on the only figure in any medium to address AIDS in his aesthetic practice, the conceptual artist and video-maker Pepe Espaliu. He concludes with a fascinating account of Julio Medem’s pathbreaking film from 1993, \u003ci\u003eThe Red Squirrel\u003c\/i\u003e, which has opened up a new approach to two formerly taboo subjects: Basque nationalism and female sexuality.\u003cb\u003ePaul Julian Smith\u003c\/b\u003e is Professor of Spanish and Head of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Cambridge University. His previous books include \u003ci\u003eVision Machines: Cinema, Literature and Sexuality in Spain and Cuba, 1983–1993\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Moderns: Time, Space and Subjectivity in Contemporary Spanish Culture\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Verso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304898613477,"sku":"NP9781859840795","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781859840795.jpg?v=1767743486","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/vision-machines-isbn-9781859840795","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}