Square and Room: Space and Identity in the Short Films about the Crisis

Abstract

The article investigates the tension between private and public space that informs the dramatic and spatial structures of Spanish short films about the crisis. The plots of these films are often one-way passages from the inside to the outside that admit no turning back. Attempts to return to the abandoned private spaces fail and reveal that these spaces have changed. This transformation of private space symbolizes a crisis of identity that the films’ characters have to confront. In some films the characters fail if they remain on the inside, while those who accept the challenge are linked to the outside as a public sphere. Thus, two identities are interwoven  with two representations of space: the inside corresponds to traditional middle-class values like individualism and hedonism, while the outside represents collective and political attitudes. Therefore, these short films can be viewed as an epic of the development of political awareness.