RESOLUCIÓN: On lifetime decisions in Spanish cinema

The decisions made by the protagonists in RESOLUCIÓN take many forms: changing their lives, leaving home, seeking revenge, accepting their destiny... In every case, these are women facing crucial moments of transformation — transitional instants that, on cinematic screen, become visible through recurring gestures and visual motifs, repeated and expanded through time, bringing together past and present female experiences. This intersection of national memory and film representation echoes Raymond Durgnat’s assertion that “the social history of a nation can be written in terms of its film stars.”

The installation — composed of clips from one hundred films spanning nine decades — offers an alternative history of Spanish cinema in which stars such as Aurora Bautista, Sara Montiel, Ángela Molina, Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, and Penélope Cruz (among many others) have embodied the profound and diverse transformations women in Spain have undergone over the past century.

RESOLUCIÓN is both a tribute to the creative autonomy and iconic power of Spanish actresses and a celebration of the liberating, subversive potential of the performative gesture. It also shows how filmmakers, art directors, costume designers, and make-up and hairstyling artists have used clothing, makeup, and everyday objects to visually elevate the life-changing decisions that shape their protagonists’ existences.

This audiovisual installation has been produced by AECID on the basis of a research specifically carried out for EUROPALIA ESPAÑA.