The First Few Minutes Of Spanish Language Films

The first few minutes of a film orient the viewer, offering cues for a richer, more nuanced reading. With this premise, the author provides many insights into the history of Spanish language film, encouraging an enhanced understanding of the Spanish/Hispanic canon commonly taught in courses on film. The author explores El espiritu de la colmena (1973), La historia oficial (1985), Fresa y chocolate (1994), El crimen del padre Amaro (2002), Abre los ojos (1997), Te doy mis ojos (2003) and Carlos Saura's flamenco trilogy--Bodas de sangre (1981), Carmen (1983) and El amor bruno (1986), among others.

Designed to engage students and inspire lively conversational practice, ¡Vámonos al cine! Short Movies for Spanish Conversation provides language learners with a collection of short films in Spanish, coupled with vocabulary and grammar activities, to support language acquisition and improve their speaking ability. The book and movies help students learn new vocabulary, review grammar, and develop an understanding of Hispanic culture, history, and social habits. The text and movies cover a variety of unique and interesting topics, including the influence of technology on personal relationships, romantic and familial relationships, Hispanic culture and history, personal identity and social pressure, immigration, and more. For each topical area, students are challenged to read new vocabulary, answer preliminary questions, and make predictions about the movie they are going to watch. Links and QR codes within the text-which have been updated or replaced for the revised first edition-provide students with easy access to the individual films. After watching a film, students read related articles, answer questions, and review a specific grammatical aspect of the language used in the movie. Finally, they are prompted to create dialogues and perform a scene from the movie or participate in debates about the topics covered in the film or in class. Highly innovative in approach, ¡Vámonos al cine! is a valuable learning resource for intermediate level Spanish courses, especially those with focus on conversational Spanish.