Аннотация:This study analyzes recently discovered or restored early films shot in Spain to trace how the early cinema of Spain incorporates the Spanish stereotypes that originated in other art forms, such as literature and painting. These myths about the Spanish focus primarily on Andalusian stereotypes: flamenco dancers, bullfighters, gypsies, and bandits. These stereotypes were carried over from the art, music, drama, and world literature of the nineteenth century. They were archetypes already deeply rooted in the minds and psyches of film operators and film directors, both from Spain and abroad. The figures were so clichéd, in fact, that by the 1920s, films using them were already known as españoladas. Though Spanish film-makers formalized their resistance to this kind of imagery in the Salamanca Conversations of 1955, these clichéd images of Spanish culture are popular with foreigners to this day. This paper traces the origins and development of the Spanish/Andalusian imagery from the earliest films shot in Spain by Lumière operators, Alice Guy of Gaumont, and various fiction films based on the opera Carmen.
