Revolutionizing the ‘national means of expression’: The influence of Soviet film culture in pre-Civil War Spain

This article examines the influence of the USSR on the film culture of 1930s Spain. It focuses on the years before the Civil War, researching the role that Cominternaligned initiatives had on Spanish non theatrical educational and political filmmaking, as well as institutional developments associated with these movements. It analyses the complex dynamics of representation fostered by film as a tool for cultural and social progress, in a country that was desperately seeking new models of political organization and modernization. In particular, I explore how cultural exchanges with the USSR were mediated through film journals, film-clubs, festivals and congresses, fostering nationalist and internationalist imaginaries in which the interests of very different social actors paradoxically converged. Ultimately, the article explores how the introduction of Soviet aesthetics in Spain by a group of intellectuals since the late 1920s paved the way for the radicalization of the Spanish cultural landscape during the Civil War.