Historians of world cinema have traditionally underrepresented Spain and Latin America. This Pro-seminar is designed to provide a graduate-level survey of the history and evolution of cinematic creation in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, starting with the arrival of the first Lumière operators and extending roughly to 1980. The seminar privileges breadth over depth as we attempt to map the history of major film movements, the rise of new genres, the nature of national spectatorship, and the antagonism between commercial (escapist) cinema and socially engaged works. Special attention will be paid to medium specificity (in relation to literature), the formal aspects of cinematic production, and the less studied genres such as short cinema and animation. Additionally, students will become familiar with pedagogical and presentational strategies including the appropriate software for manipulating film images in the form of stills and clips. The goal of the seminar is to prepare graduate students in Spanish and Latin American literature programs to incorporate film effectively and thoughtfully into their research and future course offerings.