The Aesthetic Research of Audiovisual Media Group (CINEMA) began in the Pompeu Fabra University in 2003 under the direction of doctor Domènec Font, gathering the results from the Aesthetic research on audiovisual tales project (1998-2001). The center is nowadays coordinated by doctor Xavier Pérez.

Group CINEMA’s main goal is to constitute a venue for researchers from different fields to analyze both history of cinema and contemporary manifestations of the filmic event. CINEMA therefore foregrounds the aesthetic, narratological and hermeneutic study of audiovisual work, considering the image a receptacle of philosophical, social and political contradictions, and proposing an investigation that makes cinema enter into dialogue with other artistic manifestations like painting, literature, drama or dance, without forgetting its close relation to the comic, television and videogame language. Comparative cinema as a methodological point of view articulates different projects that have been accomplished and it is the conceptual core of the Comparative Cinema magazine —edited by the group since the year 2012— and editorial initiatives such as the collective book Motivos visuales del cine.

During its first years, the CINEMA group focused its attention on European cinema via two research programs: Aesthetic Audiovisual Tendencies in the European Context (CEACE, 2003-2006) and Observatory of Contemporary European Cinema (OCEC, 2006-2012). Within the framework of these projects, several international conferences took place, the last of which — “Gesture Mutations in contemporary European Cinema”, along with the book Poetics of gesture in contemporary European cinema— made visible one of the main research lines of the group’s work: the actor's gesture. This is the methodological focus of the project “Actresses' Erotic Body under Fascism: Spain, Italy, Germany, 1939-1945", "Female Desire in Spanish Cinema during Francoism: Gesturing Evolution of the Actress under Constraint Censorship" and the current "Production of new subjectivities in female characters and actresses: Spanish cinema from the end of the dictatorship to the post-transition (1975-1992)". Furthermore, the group has developed a reserach line in iconology, visual motifs and the public sphere that has resulted in the financed projects "Visual Motifs in the Publich Sphere. Production and Circulation of Images of Power in Spain, 2011-2017" and the current "Mutations of the Visual Motifs in the Public Sphere. Representations of power in Spain 2017-2021: pandemia, climate change, gender identity and racial conflicts" and "Football and Visual Culture in Francoism: Discourses of Class, Gender and National Construction in Cinema, Newsreels and the Press, 1939-1975". 

Furthermore, CINEMA group members perform an intense educational job at the Pompeu Fabra University, particularly in the Bachelor’s degree in Audiovisual Communication, the MA in Contemporary Film and Audiovisual Studies and the International Master in Audiovisual and Cinema Studies from the Department of Communication, and the MA in Creative Documentary and the Postgraduate Course in Video Editing from the Barcelona School of Management. CINEMA group members also enhance television studies research related to INPUT archive available at UPF’s CRAI, develop programming tasks in different Catalan cultural centers, and collaborate in numerous printed media.

Research lines

• Comparative cinema
• Cinema, theater and literature. Cinema and the other Arts
• Cinema visual motifs. Iconology, Gesture and Figuration in the audiovisual
• Mythocritics and narratology
• Star Studies and Gender Studies
• Television quality and innovation. The INPUT file
• Cinemas of the real. Creation documentary
• Comic history and theory
• Applied research in the field of audiovisual creation and education
• Feminist theories and practices