UB Emeritus Professor Josep Maria Caparrós publishes a new book on historical cinema

Cover of the book.
Cover of the book.
Culture
(16/03/2017)

For Josep Maria Caparrós, emeritus professor of Contemporary History and Cinema of the University of Barcelona, films are testimonials of past and present societies. This is the starting point of his last book, El pasado como presente. 50 películas de género histórico, which touches on the period between the independence of the United States and the Fall of Berlin Wall, throughout different works: from The Patriot (2000) to Good bye, Lenin!(2003). The work, from UOC Editorial, is part of the collection Filmografías Esenciales, managed by Jordi Sánchez Navarro, who teaches Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia.

Cover of the book.
Cover of the book.
Culture
16/03/2017

For Josep Maria Caparrós, emeritus professor of Contemporary History and Cinema of the University of Barcelona, films are testimonials of past and present societies. This is the starting point of his last book, El pasado como presente. 50 películas de género histórico, which touches on the period between the independence of the United States and the Fall of Berlin Wall, throughout different works: from The Patriot (2000) to Good bye, Lenin!(2003). The work, from UOC Editorial, is part of the collection Filmografías Esenciales, managed by Jordi Sánchez Navarro, who teaches Information and Communication Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia.

Cinema can be understood in many different ways. Caparrós shows the cinema as a set of visual documentaries that can become historical testimonials. “When films evoke the past, they do so in their present, so that spectators live the films of the past in the present. Also, when they depict the present, it all soon becomes the past”, he says. Film creations gathered in this book have become the mirror of a period, since they show how people who took part in it really were, and the society in which they were born.

Josep Maria Caparrós Lera has been an UB professor since 1982 and the promoter -with his guideline 100 películas sobre Historia Contemporánea- of Contemporary History and Cinema, which was created during the academic year 1995-1996 and which has been a model to follow by other Spanish universities -Basque Country, Granada- and Latin American universities -Santiago de Chile, Santo Domingo. Two of their main collaborators, Magí Crusells and Francesc Sánchez Barba are currently teaching this subject. Disciple of Miquel Porter, first professor of Cinema of the UB, in 1983 Caparrós founded the Centre dʼInvestigacions Film-Història (Film-History Research Center), with a book collection linked of twenty works published by Editions and Publications of the University of Barcelona. Also, since 1991, he edits a specialized magazine of the UB, Filmhistoria. Over these years he has supervised twenty doctoral theses and has published more than forty books on cinema. Member of the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences and the Catalan Cinema Academy, he is also part of the International Federation of the Cinematographic Press (FIPRESCI, Munich). In 2012, the English journal Sight & Sound called him to choose the ten best films of all time and later, the journal Caimán Cuadernos de Cine did as well, to choose the ten best films in the Spanish cinema. Moreover, Caparrós, has been commissioner for three exhibitions on the seventh art. In September 2014, in the Faculty of Geography and History, together with professors Crusells and Sánchez Barba, he organised the 4th International Film and History Conference: “Memòria històrica i cinema documental”.