Preliminary Programme

This paper aims to analyse the image of Spanish women in the pro-Franco informative cinema during the Civil War. The news bulletins and docummentaries made by the pro-Franco Side display new Spain’s moral ideals and behavior. They show different kinds of women depending on the intentionality of the message they want to transmit.Two attitudes can be observed:

-the active one, represented by women who took part on the War mainly through the Sección Femenina (Femenine Section) and Acción Católica (Catholic Action), who were in charge of supporting tasks.
-and the pasive one, defenseless women who appear as the victims of the struggle, showing the danger that the red’s victory would cause to the population. The War praises these women and identifyies them with Spain. They are considered as a garantee of the most old-fashion traditions.

All the activities made by women on the Franco side reaffirm the allocation of the traditional role of feminine gender during the conflict. In that respect, it is important not only to analyse what was said about the women role during the Civil War, but also to take care of the silent moments in this speech because of its special meaning. (Show less)

Cold War provided a significant source of interest and space on the mass media. When it was over, it was substituted by other conflicts, for instance, Kosovo, Kuwait or Afghanistan, among many others. All of them were predictable conflicts, distant, significant, but they didn’t require detailed explanations of some aspects of their evolution. In this way, Iraq war did also appear as a perfect news story. For this reason, different Spanish TV networks largely focused on Iraq weeks before the conflict started. This period is important, because audiovisual information anticipated war, as if it were a fiction movie trailer. This procedure became a recovery of war itself, having a great influence on public opinion. Those days Spanish were sure that the conflict was going to explode, independently of their opinion for or against it.
Whit this aim, news about Iraq broadcasted from February the 24th until March the 19th at the 21.00 hours TV newscasts (maxim audience) are analysed. In order to develop comparisons two TV stations has been selected: one public –TVE1- and other private (not pay per view) –Antena 3-. Analysis includes narrative structure, different emotional recourses employed, images impact and its function in the informative system. Thus, importance of TV as a fundamental source in the formation of the public opinion is probed, concluding that the way Spanish TV covered the days preceding Iraq War made that it were more relevant and more plausible: TV show was imposed upon any other concept . (Show less)

This paper wants to analyse the way that NO-DO (the official Franco´s regimen newsreel) made a representation of war between 1943 and 1975. So, my research belongs to the studies about non fiction and documentary cinema. Particularly, it is a part of a bigger research about the audiovisual representation of war, within the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. This study is interesting for several reasons:

Firstly, this newsreel has not been deeply studied, within the media environment during Franco´s regimen. But, maybe, NO-DO was the most popular media for the Spaniards. So, we have to analyse its items and to achieve the level of the research about newsreels in Europe and United States.

Secondly, researchers only have studied the Second World War representation in NO-DO, but they have been ignored the rest of the wars from the forties until the seventies. I want to analyse the most important conflicts (Corea, Vietnam, fights for the decolonisation process, etc.) in order to find their most relevant audiovisual features. The absences are important too, of course. But I am particularly interested in the cinema presence of Cold War, through some items not necessary warlike. The conclusions will be a new contribution to the audiovisual representation of war in the international newsreels: objectives, way of filming, relationship between them and the exchange of reel, etc.

At last, and more important, we could understand the specific labour of NO-DO within a politic and media context of censorship. It was the official newsreel of an authoritarian regime and its objective was to assist the popular support to that politic system. This point of view dominated the news about international issues: far from Spain the situation seemed troubled and dangerous (caused by the communism). There was a big contrast with the social peace that Franco´s regimen guaranteed. In fact, the representation of wars was a part of the propagandistic strategy of the newsreel in order to legitimize the regimen born from Spanish Civil War. And we have to imagine its influence in the mentality of the Spaniards because the cinema was the only audiovisual media until the sixties.

The present research is focused in the items about international wars and fights, showed by NO-DO. I have analysed them following a methodology appropriate for the audiovisual language and, particularly, for the newsreels. (Show less)

Through this work we are going to analyze what kind of construction made the major spanish newspapers (El País, ABC, El Mundo and La Razón) on the War in Irak through their photojournalism. This investigation covers the period from February 24th till May 1st of the year 2003 due to our interest in verifying the configuration of the conflict, weeks before the official begining – its aticipation - and its later evolution until the armistice.

We have gathered around 800 pictures from these spanish main journals and wich we have processed in a Data Base considering various elements, such as main characters appearing in the pictures (soldiers, civilians, children, women, armament, etc...); the side in wich they fight; secondary characters with the main ones; the scene in wich the action takes place (city, country, air, sea, etc...); and the action represented in the picture (attacks, bombings, military operations...). We also consider the presence of dead or wounded people, or if its a nocturnal or a diurnal shot, in addition to the author of the picture among other aspects.

From this analysis we are able to make a complementary quantitative and qualitative study wich can enable us to establish the concept of War that was transmited though the media: if it’s visually similar to the previous wars or not; and also the characteristics attributed to each contender and its allies.

In short, this investigation demonstrates that mass-media only reproduce homogeneized roles and differences stereotyped in the visual creation of War and that this construction conditions our perception and opinion on the conflict. (Show less)