The three audiovisual pieces of this issue of Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays analyze diverse films from an eminently historical perspective. Concurrently, they help us rethink the meaning of the studied artifacts from a contemporary perspective, linking them to several artistic manifestations and disciplines.

In “The Wreck and not the Story of the Wreck”, Fernando Baños-Fidalgo takes Adrianne Rich’s poem Diving into the Wreck as a point of departure to recuperate a Super 8 film recorded in the 1970s. Through this process, he evaluates the conceptual anchor of “stranded films”, putting forth the value of forgotten objects to reconstruct the past.

In “Dolor y gloria. París-Tombuctú. Images of Pessimism in the Cinema of Luis García Berlanga and Pedro Almodóvar”, Juan Carlos Ibáñez weaves a fascinating comparison between the works of both directors—released 20 years apart—, understanding them as representatives of a pessimist trend within Spanish culture, which is also at work in remarkable essays such as Todo lo que era sólido (Antonio Muñoz Molina, 2013) or La España vacía (Sergio del Molino, 2016). In addition, for Ibañez, both directors utilize the representation of the body’s collapse as a metaphor that points to the end of a historical era.

In “Wenceslao Fernández Flórez: the Writer Filmmaker”, José Luis Castro de Paz and Héctor Paz Otero focus on the coruñés writer to examine the key role of different adaptations of his works in the history of Spanish cinema. They highlight, consequently, films of extraordinary importance such as El malvado Carabel (Edgar Neville, 1935; Fernando Fernán Gómez, 1955), Plácido (Luis García Berlanga, 1961) or El mundo sigue (Fernando Fernán Gómez 1963). In these films, Fernández Flórez’ oeuvre functions as a “slightly curved mirror”, allowing Spanish cinema to codify the social fabric through an aesthetic and cultural process that is fundamental to understand its evolution.