Underground film criticism via Star magazine (1974-1980)

Abstract

Star is an example of a publication that contributes to exposing cinematographic critiques of underground cinema, as well as emerging practices of audiovisual works whose distribution is minority or unknown for the social context of the transition that Spain is experiencing. At the same time, this magazine establishes a bridge for the establishment of new ways of understanding the effervescence of cinematographic currents that, together with other subcultural and countercultural phenomena such as comics, music or fanzines, are beginning to acquire a certain interest in the entry into new avant-garde areas of the cultural industries. This article aims to investigate the themes, authors and film critics who were committed to making these film currents visible in a process of social and cultural legitimation. To do so, a search has been carried out through all the issues of the magazine with the purpose of offering from a content perspective the films, directors and trends that were made known, as well as the people who signed these critiques. Similarly, a link is established with the historical context between the years 1974 and 1980, a period covered by the publication and which coincides with a particular moment of effervescence for marginal, subcultural and countercultural publications within the democratic transition, from the end of the so-called openness or late Francoism to the beginnings of the establishment of democracy in Spain.