Draft:Nancy Berthier

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Nancy Berthier is a French Hispanist, specialist of the visual arts of the Hispanic and Ibero-American worlds, and a professor at Sorbonne University. After studies at the École normale supérieure (ENS Ulm) and the award of agrégation in Spanish, she obtained her doctorate in 1994 with a thesis on propaganda cinema under Francoism. Her research interests include cinema and historical memory, the Cuban revolution, political charisma in the visual arts, and urban representations in Iberian and Ibero-American cinema.

She has been director of Casa de Velázquez since January 2022.

Education and qualifications : between film studies and Hispanism

Nancy Berthier graduated from the ENS Ulm and took a preparatory class in literature at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand before embarking on a double degree course in film studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and in Hispanic studies at the Institut d'Études Hispaniques de la Sorbonne. She obtained her Aggrégation in Spanish in 1989

She began her doctoral studies with a Master's thesis on literary adaptation in the films of Luis Buñuel. Then, she turned her research towards a historical perspective, notably in her DEA, where she studied Franco's propaganda films under the supervision of Professor Carlos Serrano.

In 1994, she defended her doctorate entitled "Cinéma et propagande en Espagne sous Franco. Study of three cases: Raza, Franco ese hombre and El último caído by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia". Her thesis examines the interaction between cinema, politics and history, taking the work of José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, the official film-maker of the Franco regime, as an example of the instrumentalisation of cinema by an authoritarian regime, in particular with the famous fiction Raza, the screenplay of which is based on a story by Francisco Franco. She explains that the aim was to see how the propaganda discourse functioned and how it was used through three films representing three film genres at three different times.

Nancy Berthier's thesis marked a turning point in her research into the cinema of Spanish-speaking countries and was hailed as one of the first scientific works in the field of cultural studies within French Hispanism when it was published by PUM, with a preface by Bartolomé Benassar. Her research then extended to Cuban cinema, following her discovery of the cinematographic production of the Cuban revolution. Her Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR), focusing on the relationship between 'Cinema and History in the Hispanic World', analyses in particular the works of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, recognised as the filmmaker of the Cuban revolution.

Academic career

Serving the visual arts of the Hispanic and Iberian worlds

The year after obtaining her doctorate, Nancy Berthier began a career in higher education and research, working successively in three universities in the Paris region.

At the University of Paris VIII, where she was an ATER and then a lecturer, she was appointed Director of the Iberian and Latin American Studies Department from 1997 to 1999. She was also involved in two of the department's research structures: the Équipe de Recherche sur les Cultures de l'Espagne Contemporaine (Erecec), directed at the time by Danièle Bussy-Genevois, and the group founded by Paul Estrade, Histoire des Antilles Hispaniques (HAH).

From the start of the 1999 academic year, she continued her career at the University of Paris IV Sorbonne (now Sorbonne University) as a lecturer, where her teaching and research contributed to the development of visual arts studies in the Hispanic and Lusophone Languages, Literatures and Civilisations department, as well as the Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires sur les mondes ibériques contemporains (CRIMIC) research team founded by Carlos Serrano. There, she trains candidates in film analysis for the CAPES and Spanish aggregation.

Appointed university professor at the Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (now the Université Gustave Eiffel) in 2006, Nancy Berthier plays a key role in developing research programs in the visual arts within the Literature, Knowledge and the Arts (LISAA) laboratory, of which she is deputy director. In 2008 she founded the online journal L'Âge d'or. She is also director of the Foreign Languages and Civilizations department and a member of the university's CEVU board.

In 2010, Nancy Berthier was appointed university professor in a chair specifically dedicated to the visual arts of the Iberian worlds. In this context, she has been able to further the development of the visual arts at this institution, in particular through the creation of a dedicated component within the CRIMIC, based around a monthly seminar and numerous national and international events. As director of this research team, she has restructured its operations, created its website and an online journal, Iberic@l.

During this period, her defence of the legitimacy of the visual arts as objects of research was also demonstrated by her participation in the creation in 1998 of the Groupe de recherche sur l'image dans les mondes hispaniques (GRIMH), an association under the law of 1901 aimed at promoting the study of the visual arts, alongside Jean-Claude Seguin, Jacques Terrasa and Anne-Marie Jolivet, among others.

Serving Hispanism

In addition to her lessons and the direction of the CRIMIC, Nancy Berthier has held other positions at Sorbonne University, including that of director of the Institut d'Etudes Hispaniques (IEH) at Sorbonne Université between 2014 and 2019. She organised the centenary of this institution under the name Cent ans d'hispanisme en Sorbonne, a centenary that gave rise to more than thirty activities and publications for which the IEH was awarded the Dialogo prize and which are listed in the book Les Archives du lundi : histoire et mémoire de l'Institut d'études hispaniques.

Casa de Velázquez was an obvious choice. She has been member of the École des Hautes Études Hispaniques et Ibériques from 1992 to 1994, alongside Marie Franco, Jean-Pierre Jardin, Christian Rico and Isabelle Renaudet. Her two years of study at EHEHI enabled her to establish exchanges with researchers from a variety of disciplines, as well as with artists in residence at the Académie de France in Madrid. These friendships have led to joint projects, such as those with the photographer Max Armengaud.

She was appointed Director of Casa de Velázquez, a position she has held since January 2022. She is the twelfth director of this institution, inaugurated in 1928, and the first woman to hold this position. She is also Deputy Director of the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study (MIAS), the first Institute for Advanced Study in the Iberian Peninsula.

She also assumed the role of president of the Réseau des Écoles françaises à l'étranger (ResEFE) for 2023.

Research focused on the visual arts of the Hispanic and Ibero-american worlds

Nancy Berthier has developed a diversified body of research, focusing mainly on cinema and its interaction with history and politics in the Spanish and Latin American contexts, tackling various themes such as propaganda, revolution, political charisma and urban imaginaries.

She has published over a hundred texts on the visual arts in the Hispanic world, in particular on the relationship between film and history. She has been invited to speak at conferences and symposia in Europe (France, Germany, England, Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, Italy) and America (Cuba, Mexico, Canada, United States, Brazil, Colombia). She has also supervised Master's theses, doctoral dissertations and research projects on these themes.

Her main areas of research are :

Cinema, propaganda and historical memory under Francoism

In Le franquisme et son image. Cinema et Propagande (1998), Nancy Berthier examines how the Franco regime manipulated cinema to shape public opinion and legitimise its authority. She has subsequently deepened her research into the use of cinema as a propaganda tool under Franco's regime, while exploring the cinematic memory of the Spanish Civil War: De la guerre à l'écran: ¡Ay Carmela! de Carlos Saura analyses the way in which Saura's film addresses the collective memory of the Spanish Civil War through the prism of film. "Guernica: de la imagen ausente al icono" presents an innovative concept, that of the absent image in the analysis of Picasso's work and its cultural and political impact.

Her work illustrates her commitment to deconstructing propagandist representations and exploring the historical and cultural implications of cinema in Spain's collective memory, while at the same time forging innovative concepts.

Cinema and revolution in Cuba

With Tomás Gutiérrez Alea et la Révolution cubaine (2005), she explored the links between Cuban cinema and the revolution, focusing initially on Gutiérrez Alea's work before delving deeper into Cuban cinema and its close connection with the revolution. In this respect, she has co-edited the books Noticiero ICAIC: 30 ans d'actualités cinématographiques à Cuba (2022) and Noticiero ICAIC: memoria del mundo (2023), which are major contributions to Cuban film newsreels based on an innovative collective work resulting in the first comprehensive work on Cuban film newsreels, recognised as heritage by UNESCO.

Charisma and the visual arts

Nancy Berthier has examined the representation of charismatic political figures and their impact on the media in a number of significant works: Fidel Castro: Arrêts sur images (2010) examines the media representation of Fidel Castro and his charismatic role in the Cuban and international context. In collaboration with Vicente J. Benet, Rafael Rodríguez Tranche and Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, she co-authored Carisma e imagen política. Líderes y medios de comunicación en la Transición (2016), exploring media representations of political leaders during the democratic transition in Spain. La muerte de Franco en la pantalla. El Generalísimo is still dead (2020) analyses the rewriting and re-semantisation of Franco's death through audiovisual narratives, from his disappearance to his burial

Contemporary Iberian and Ibero-American cinema

From 2010 to 2020, she founded and led an international research network on 'Contemporary Iberian Cinemas', with Paul Julian Smith, A. del Rey and A. Fernández. This network, which has grown to include around a hundred researchers, has led to the organisation of international colloquia. By co-editing several collective works resulting from these meetings, such as Cine iberoamericano contemporáneo y géneros cinematográficos (With A. del Rey, 2014) or Frente a la catástrofe. Temáticas y estéticas en el cine español e iberoamericano contemporáneo (With Julie Amiot, 2017), she contributes to the study of contemporary Spanish and Latin American cinema, analysing new trends and genres. Nancy Berthier has also coordinated books focusing on certain directors, such as Carlos Saura o el arte de heredar (Avec Marianne Bloch-Robin, 2019).

Cinematographic imaginations of cities and political uses of public space

Her work explores visual representations of urban spaces in the Iberian and Ibero-American visual arts. This theme is central in Visions cinématographiques de Madrid (2014), Barcelona 70's (2020) and Filmar la ciudad (2020). She is also interested in the statues in public spaces. More recently, building on her longstanding work on the idea of the palimpsest city, she has devised a project based on the political use of squares in Latin America and their visual imaginary in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Books

Author of :

• Le franquisme et son image. Cinéma et propagande (PUM, 1998)
• De la guerre à l'écran: ¡Ay Carmela! de Carlos Saura (PUM, 1999, 2^e édition augmentée en 2005)
• Tomás Gutiérrez Alea et la Révolution cubaine (Cerf, 7e Art, 2005).
• Fidel Castro. Arrêts sur images (Ophrys, Imagenes, 2010)
• La muerte de Franco en la pantalla. El Generalísimo is still dead (Shangrila, 2020
• La place Bolívar au prisme de ses imaginaires. Carnet de recherche buissonnière, Lyon, Collection Villa Hispánica n° 9, 2021.

Co-author of :

• Le cinéma de Bigas Luna (PUM, 2001)
• La Révolution cubaine (Armand-Colin, 2006).
• Carisma e imagen política. Líderes y medios de comunicación en la Transición (co-auteurs : Vicente J. Benet, Rafael Rodríguez Tranche et Vicente Sánchez-Biosca) ( Tirant lo Blanch, 2016)
• Los Memes [archive] (co-auteur : Manuel Palacio) (Ocho y Medio, 2022)

Director of collective works :

• Penser le cinéma espagnol. 1975-2000 (GRIMH, 2002)
• Le cinéma d'Alejandro Amenábar (PUM, 2006)
• Cuba. Cinéma et Révolution (avec J. Amiot, GRIMH, 2006)
• Cine, nación, nacionalidades en España (avec J-C Seguin, Casa de Velázquez, 2007)
• Cine cubano : luces y sombras (Archivos de la Filmoteca, n° 59, juin 2008).
• Guernica: de la imagen ausente al icono (Archivos de la Filmoteca, n° 64-65, juin 2010)
• La Revolución mexicana en imágenes (avec Marion Gautreau, Archivos de la Filmoteca, n° 68, octobre 2011)
• Lexique bilingue des arts visuels (Ophrys, 2011)
• Retoricas del miedo : imagenes de la guerra civil española (avec Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, 2012)
• Operas primas en el cine documental iberoamericano 1990-2010 (avec Alvaro Fernández), (Guadalajara-Mexique, Presses de l'UDG, 2012)
• Charisme et image politique : figures du monde hispanique contemporain [archive] (Dir. avec Vicente Sánchez-Biosca), dossier monographique de la revue en ligne Iberic@l, n° 4, octobre 2013 204 pages.
• Cine iberoamericano contemporáneo y géneros cinematográficos (Dir. avec Antonia del Rey) ( Editorial Tirant lo Blanch Humanidades, 2014)
• Visions cinématographiques de Madrid [archive] (Dir., avec Pascale Thibaudeau), dossier monographique de la revue en ligne Cahiers de Civilisation de l'Espagne Contemporaine Cahiers de civilisation espagnole contemporaine [En ligne], 13 | 2014.
• La cultura de las pantallas. El cine iberoamericano en el panorama audiovisual actual [archive] (Dir. avec Alvaro Fernández), Nuevo Texto Crítico (Stanford University), Volume 28, Number 51, 2015.
• Frente a la catástrofe. Temáticas y estéticas en el cine español e iberoamericano contemporáneo (Dir. Avec Julie Amiot), Paris, Editions hispaniques, 2017, 255 pages
• Imaginario catastrófico: discurso mediático y artes visuales hispanoamericanas en los siglos XX-XX [archive] (Dir. Avec Carlos Belmonte), numéro monographique de la revue Comunicación y medios, universidad de Chile, Instituto de la Comunicación e Imagen, n° 36, Año 26/017- Segundo semestre 2017.
• Cine y audiovisual. Trayectos de ida y vuelta (Dir. avec Antonia del Rey), Valencia Shangrila, 2018, 222 pages
• Barcelona 70's (Dir. Avec Jacques Terrasa et Monica Guell), Paris, Editions hispaniques, 2020, 319 pages.
• Filmar la ciudad (Dir. Avec Carlos Belmonte et Alvaro Fernandez), Guadalajara, Presses de l'UDG, 2020.
• Carlos Saura o el arte de heredar (Dir. avec Marianne Bloch-Robin), Valencia, Shangrila, 2021, 400 pages.
• Les Archives du lundi : histoire et mémoire de l'Institut d'études hispaniques [archive] (Dir. Avec Maria Araujo et Eva Sebbagh), Paris, Editions hispaniques, 2022, 346 pages.
• Noticiero [archive] ICAIC: 30 ans d'actualités cinématographiques à Cuba (Dir. Avec Camila Areas), Paris, INA, 2022.
• Noticiero [archive] ICAIC: memoria del mundo (Dir. Avec Camila Areas), Madrid, Huron azul, 2022.