A genre auteur?: Enrique Urbizu's post-Western films. (2nd January 2017) - González, Jesús Ángel
Abstract: Enrique Urbizu belongs to the 'New Generation' of Basque film directors who (together with Medem, Bajo Ulloa, de la Iglesia and Calparsoro) 'were greeted as the new generation supposedly destined to carry the flame of Basque cinema forward' in the 1990s (Santaolalla 1999, 311). Of all these directors probably the one who has received the least critical attention is Urbizu, maybe because he belongs much less to the 'auterist tradition' of Spanish and Basque cinemas (Evans 1999 ) than some of his fellow directors. This tradition may have been particularly harmful to Urbizu's reputation, since he has frequently been considered 'un cineasta de perfil "industrial"' (Benet 2005, 68), a genre specialist rather than an auteur. This article vindicates the value of genre studies in Spanish cinema, following the call made by Beck and Rodríguez Ortega to 'explore the interrelationships between national cinemas, transnational media flow and genre as discursive frameworks for constructing meaning' (2008, 18), reviews Urbizu's career, and considers some of Urbizu's films from a generic perspective, specifically through the lens of a subgenre which has inherited and modified the features of a classic Hollywood genre: the post-Western.