Quinqui (film genre)

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Cine quinqui or cine kinki (meaning "delinquency cinema") is a Spanish exploitation [1] film genre that was most popular at the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s. [2]

Contents

Features

The films were centered around underclass delinquents, drugs, and love, and usually starred non-professional actors picked off the street. [2] The most representative directors of the genre are José Antonio de la Loma  [ es ] and Eloy de la Iglesia, even if other directors such as Carlos Saura, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón and Vicente Aranda also reproduced the quinqui social imaginaries in some of their films. [3]

Quinqui films focused on marginalized working-class adolescents in the outskirts of Spanish cities involved in small-scale robbery and street crime. [4] They showed raw violence, explicit sex, police brutality, and commonly depicted heroin use. [4]

The genre draws inspiration from Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. [4] Several of the stars of quinqui cinema would go on to die prematurely, [2] most due to heroin use but some of AIDS. Some of them include José Luis Manzano  [ es ] (prostitute at age 16, died from overdose at age 30), El Pirri  [ es ] (heroin user at age 14, found dead in a wasteland at age 23), [5] El Torete  [ es ] (died from AIDS, age 31) and José Antonio Valdelomar  [ es ] (died from heroin overdose, around age 44). [6]

In terms of its political-ideological leanings, José Luis López Sangüesa distinguishes three types of quinqui films: those representative of a Catholic paternalism (de la Loma's films and Klimovsky's ¿Y ahora qué, señor fiscal?  [ es ]), those representative of a Left disenchanted with the Transition (Eloy de la Iglesia's films and to a lesser extent Saura's Deprisa, deprisa and Raúl Peña's Todos me llaman Gato), and a quinqui strand that could be discursively categorized as extreme right-wing or sociological Francoism (embodied by pictures such as Juventud drogada, Chocolate, and La patria del Rata). [7]

Notable films

Legacy

After the demise of the quinqui trend, some directors have looked back to the quinqui era themes in films such as Makinavaja, el último choriso (1992), Semos peligrosos (uséase Makinavaja 2)  [ es ] (1993), Stories from the Kronen (1995), What You Never Knew (2000), 7 Virgins (2005), My Quick Way Out (2006), El mundo es nuestro  [ es ] (2012), Criando Ratas  [ es ] (2016), Outlaws (2021), [8] or Caged Wings (2023). [9]

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References

  1. ↑ Castelló Segarra, Jorge (2018). "Cine quinqui. La pobreza como espectáculo de masas". Filmhistoria Online. 28 (1–2). Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona: 114. ISSN   2014-668X.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Alonso, Guillermo (11 February 2019). "Historia negra del cine quinqui: la reivindicación de un género que no dejó supervivientes". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 3 February 2020.
  3. ↑ Imbert, Gérard (2015). "Cine quinqui e imaginarios sociales. Cuerpo e identidades de género" [Quinqui cinema and social imaginaries. Body and gender identities]. Área Abierta. 15 (3). Madrid: Ediciones Complutense: 61. doi: 10.5209/rev_ARAB.2015.v15.n3.48937 . hdl: 10016/28606 .
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Moral, Pedro (4 January 2019). "Heroína y crónica negra: guía básica del cine quinqui". Cinemanía (in European Spanish). 20 minutos . Retrieved 3 February 2020.
  5. ↑ Belategui, Oskar (18 April 2018). "Los héroes caídos del cine quinqui". El Correo .
  6. ↑ Casas, Quim (12 February 2021). "Cinco actores del cine quinqui: de la delincuencia a la gran pantalla". El Periódico de Catalunya .
  7. ↑ López Sangüesa, José Luis (2017). "Política y cine policíaco de la Transición española" [Politics and the Police-Themed Cinema of the Spanish Transition](PDF). Trípodos. Barcelona. p. 90. ISSN   1138-3305.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Rosado, Ricardo (8 October 2021). "Las mejores películas del cine quinqui". Fotogramas .
  9. ↑ Escobar Rivas, Ana (22 August 2023). "Mario Casas y Óscar Casas prenden las redes a golpe de cadera y bachata: "Tenemos una propuesta indecente"". Los 40 .
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