This project will produce the first ever ‘history from below’ account of women working in the Portuguese and Spanish film and television industries in the 1970s. To this end, we will focus on roles conventionally designated as ‘below-the-line’, such as editing, costume design, continuity and production management. ‘Below-the-line’ work in the film and TV industries is usually treated as low profile and replaceable, affording relatively little scope for individual artistic vision when compared to the more prestigious work of the director who is nearly always a man, especially in the male-dominated tradition of the ‘auteur’. While scholars have already paid attention to the few Portuguese and Spanish women who worked ‘above the line’ and directed their own films during this period, we depart from the premise that women provided alternative forms of low-visibility leadership in far greater numbers working ‘below the line’. Our methodology will entail wide-ranging archive research and the recording of oral interviews with women who were active in Portuguese and Spanish cinema and television in the 1970s. We will also use the information derived from this research to re-analyse the classic, male-directed films of this era, from the perspective of the artistic visions and personal experiences of the women workers who contributed to them.
