Abstract

Within cinematic self-referentiality, films about filmmaking occupy a particularly complex position, since they do not merely introduce cinema as a theme, but stage the very process through which images are produced. This article analyses the viewfinder as a regulating element of cinematic mise en abyme in a corpus of Spanish films about filmmaking produced between 2000 and 2010: Obra maestra (David Trueba 2000), Torremolinos 73 (Pablo Berger 2003), La mala educación (Pedro Almodóvar 2004), Los años desnudos: Clasificada S (Félix Sabroso and Dunia Ayaso 2008), Los abrazos rotos (Pedro Almodóvar 2009), and También la lluvia (Icíar Bollaín 2010). Starting from the distinction between frame fiction and embedded fiction, the article argues that the viewfinder does not usually operate as a transparent window onto the present of the shoot, but rather as a device that anticipates the already filmed image. Thus, the viewfinder produces a technical flashforward: it presents as present an image that, aesthetically and materially, belongs to the future result of the filming process.