For professor and programmer Alejandro Ventura, there is a line joining movies apparently so disparate like Rebel Without a Cause (1995) and Trainspotting (1996). Whereas the first one portrays the youth irruption during the 50s, its moral conflicts and generational confrontation at the time, the second one shows youth cynicism in a group made up of heroin addicts at a decadent Edinburgh —but both place vicissitudes from teenagers and young adults as their central plot.

Through his brand-new book Juventud y Cine (‘Youth and Cinema’), Ventura, holder of a Doctorate in Communication from the Pompeu Fabra University, identifies the different faces from the ‘being young’ throughout the history of cinema and the attitudinal changes characterizing youth over the past sixty years. Juventud y Cine —where Ventura adapts his doctoral thesis as a doctoral student in the CINEMA group and adds it to the collection Biblioteca de Infancia y Juventud— will have its first launching on Thursday the 10th of October as a part of the first Taula de Nova Recerca (TNR) UPF from the academic year 2019-2020.

A second launch of the book will be held as well at 19:00 at Espai Contrabandons (C/ de la Junta de Comerç, 20) with the UPF professors Xavier Pérez, the prologue author, Carles Feixa, the director of the collection Biblioteca de Infancia y Juventud and Carlos Losilla, a film reviewer.

During the first event, from 13:30 to 16:30 at room 55.410 in the Tànger building, the following presentations will be taking place. ‘Los jóvenes en la gran pantalla’ (‘Young people on the big screen’) in charge of professor Pérez, ‘Juventud y cine: de los jóvenes rebeldes a los jóvenes virtuales’ (‘Youth and cinema: from young rebels to virtual ones’) by Ventura, ‘Jóvenes y series televisivas: de Física y Química a The Wire’ (‘Youth and TV shows. From Física y Química to The Wire’) by María José Masanet, a lecturer in Communication at the UB and a member of the UPF MEDIUM group, and ‘Cine y bandas juveniles en el Proyecto TRANSGANG’ (‘Cinema and young bands in the TRANSGANG project’), in charge of Margot Mecca, a Geography associate professor at the UAB and a researcher in the TRANSGANG project.