Profundidad de campo. Mis historias de cine II

Cycles return and look nothing like one another. Or, to put it a better way, they look nothing like one another on the surface, but they are born of the same impulse: to settle an account with these narratives that have accompanied us (sometimes secretly, sometimes less so) throughout our entire lives. As Godard once said, paraphrasing Wittgenstein, ‘cinema, like Christianity, is not founded on historical truth. It supplies us with a story and says: Believe — believe come what may’.

That is why this book is a call to return to the jungle of the city, following in the footsteps of corrupt lawyers branded with the sign of Cain; it is an invitation to lose ourselves in the baroque labyrinths of a debauched carnival or to ride through a vast desert wasteland with no landmarks in sight. However, it is also an invitation to accept that the world may adopt, at least for two unforgettable hours, the form of a spy series or a celebration of narcissism in the form of a jolly good story. It can even invite us to witness the transmutation that turns fertile Mexico into war-ridden Spain following the Civil War, or the implacable fire that devours the vast wheat fields of Ukraine while the local population fights tirelessly to repel those who would invade their homeland.

And all this in full awareness of the fact that it is not always the highest peaks that offer the best rewards - rewards which are often reserved for more modest endeavours. All that is required is that you accept the formula that holds that ‘cinema is the gaze that replaces our own to offer us a world in harmony with our desires’. Mis Historias de cine 2 is a modest guide through a series of films that trigger this magical mutation of space and time. It is time that is not lost or wasted, but rather unfolds to reveal an unexpected depth that we would not otherwise have been able to access alone.

Santos Zunzunegui

Second volume of the collection "Historias de Cine" by Santos Zunzunegui that gathers the texts of the lectures given by the professor during the sessions of the second part of the film cycle of the same name organized by EQZE and Tabakalera.

Emeritus Professor of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising (University of the Basque Country). Semiologist, film analyst and historian.He has been a visiting professor at different universities of Europe, the USA, and South America.

His main books include: Mirar la imagen (1984); El cine el País Vasco (1985); Pensar la imagen (1989); La mirada cercana. Microanálisis fílmico (1996; new revised and expanded edition 2016), Robert Bresson (2001); Historias de España. De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de cine español (new revised and expanded edition, 2018); Metamorfosis de la mirada. Museo y semiótica (2003); Orson Welles (2005); Las cosas de la vida. Lecciones de semiótica estructural (2005); La mirada plural (2008), winner of the “Francisco Ayala” International Essay Prize. In 2013, he published Lo viejo y lo nuevo (Cátedra) which included five years of his work at Caimán. Cuadernos de Cine, a journal where he is a member of its Editorial Board. In November 2014, he was awarded the prize from the Groupe de Recherche et Investigation de l’Image dans le Monde Hispanique (GRIMH), comprising French Hispanists and image scholars. In 2017, his Bajo el signo de la melancolía. Cine, desencanto y aflicción, an ambitious study on the film dimension of that "cultural illness" called melancholy, was published.

Author: Santos Zunzunegui
Edition: Shangrila Textos Aparte, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola
Pages: 202
ISBN: 978-84-124128-6-4
Year: 2022

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