This is the first genre study of child-starred cinemas from Spain. It illuminates continuities in the political use of the child protagonist in over fifty years of Spanish cinema and how the child-starred genres deploy the concept of childhood to retrospectively define the nation and its future. From Francoist popular to oppositional auteur films, and including Spanish and Latin American cinema, this monograph examines commonalities in aesthetics, narratives and genre functions. It demonstrates the impact of these narratives within Spanish film history and Francoist biopolitics, as well as providing a broader transatlantic perspective on the genre in select productions from Chile and Argentina.

The Feeling Child: Affect and Politics in Latin American Literature and Film compiles a series of essays focusing on the figure of the child within the specific context of the "affective turn" in the study of contemporary sociocultural settings across Latin America. This edited volume looks specifically at the intersection between cultural constructions of childhood and the affective turn within the contemporary sociopolitical landscape of Latin America. The editors and contributors share a common aim in furthering comprehension of the particular intensity of the child's affective presence-spectatorial, haptic, silent, and spectral, among others-in contemporary Latin American cultural expression. The contributions herein approach this theoretical challenge through an interdisciplinary lens which brings together two burgeoning strands of inquiry. The first is the notion of childhood as a significant, and inherently political, sociocultural space; the second is the recognition that affect is integral and fundamental to gaining a more complex understanding of the manner in which contemporary social worlds are made. In each case, this affective presence is teased out as a register of society, shedding light on the issues marking out the current sociopolitical landscape-in particular the traces of the recent past-in the regions represented. This book brings together established international scholars and young academics focusing on Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, and Peru.

This is the first genre study of child-starred cinemas from Spain. It illuminates continuities in the political use of the child protagonist in over fifty years of Spanish cinema and how the child-starred genres deploy the concept of childhood to retrospectively define the nation and its future. From Francoist popular to oppositional auteur films, and including Spanish and Latin American cinema, this monograph examines commonalities in aesthetics, narratives and genre functions. It demonstrates the impact of these narratives within Spanish film history and Francoist biopolitics, as well as providing a broader transatlantic perspective on the genre in select productions from Chile and Argentina.