Some Fantastic Material for Spanish Classes

The Spanish Film "Amanece que no es poco"

The 2014 Goya Awards ceremony is being held this Sunday the 9^th and it can be seen at 10 pm (Spanish peninsula time) on TV on channel TVE 1 or on the internet at www.rtve.es. The event is a celebration of Spanish film, en español, that is applauded by movie buffs everywhere. This year marks the 26^th anniversary of a film which, as so often happens in cinema, is loathed by some and loved by others (among people that I known anyway). An adjective has even been created to refer to movie dorks like me which is based on the movie’s title: amanecista.

The creator of this wonderful film is José Luis Cuerda, a scriptwriter and director from Albacete with a diverse catalog of works that contain an unusual imaginative quality, thoughtful tenderness, a healthy dose of irony, contempt, and a surreal vision of life and humor. The title of the movie that celebrated its silver anniversary last year is Amanece, que no es poco (1987), which makes up part of something of a trilogy with the films: Total from 1983 and later Así en el cielo como en la tierra (1995). Other notable titles from Cuerda include El bosque animado (1987), based on the novel of the same name by Weceslao Fernández Flórez.

Instead of featuring one main character, Amanece, que no es poco is a story about a cast of characters that includes nearly all the biggest names in Spanish film and theater of the time. It’s a star-studded cast of acting geniuses performing in a movie that is both absurd and brilliant. 

My passion for this movie has lead me to show it in class to C1 and C2 level groups, although with a little work you could use it for an advanced B2 class too… Years ago I found some fantastic material that I will be eternally grateful for which was created by Álvaro González Soler and Fernando García de Madariaga Miranda. They put together a type of newspaper that was a collection of the most important “news stories” of events that had happened in this magic town in the mountains of Albacete. I’ve used this material a number of times to do the following activity (which involves a week of work –combined with other activities). Each student is given two or more pieces of “news” from this newspaper. Next, they must tell the news to their classmates as if it were a radio news broadcast. Then in groups they comment on the different pieces of information and discuss the absurd and surreal humor, the politically and unpolitically correct elements, the double meanings… You can even take the activity farther by, for example, creating a list of characters from the story which will give a group vision of the movie. Since students already know about different pieces of the story, you can then show the movie with the stipulation that “students must make comments while viewing”. The film can be stopped and started again as many times as necessary to give students a chance to discuss.  

You can find the document mentioned above here. The movie itself is easy to find for sale on the internet and it is available at to be viewed online [https://es.wuaki.tv/ o www.filmin.es] at reasonable prices (between 2 and 4 euros per movie, with permission to view over a 72 hour period). Also, at RTVE there is a complete program of “version española” in which the director and Antonio Resines (Teodoro in the movie) chat with the host offering a few anecdotes about the movie. The TVE program “La mitad invisible” also talks about the film.

Working with this type of movie with an advanced group is much easier with the types of tools mentioned here, and they can encourage our students to discover a love of Spanish language film.