Black extras and actors in Francoist cinema

While colonial cinema has been studied as an epic and propagandistic text of the Franco Regime (Elena, 2010. La Llamada de africa, Estudios Sobre el Cine Espanol Colonial. Barcelona: Bellaterra), the presence of Africans in Spanish filmography before 1975 has gone unnoticed. Few saw their names in a movie's credits. When an African had some lines due to script requirements, the role was offered to African American and Afro-Latin actors, or it was performed by sinister blackface actors without the slightest qualm. In this game of masks, the African Negro is at the bottom of an absurd melanocratic classification that dissociates race and color. Invisible as mute bodies and faceless ghosts, the extras, a non-detachable part of the set, do not act but are acted out (Didi-Huberman, 2012. Peuples Exposes, Peuples Figurants. L'oe il de l'histoire, 4. Paris: Minuit). In this article we examine the hierarchy underlying a racializing assemblage (Weheliye, 2014. Habeas viscus. Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Duke University Press) indissociable from Spanish (self)exoticism, as well as the conditions that exceptionally allow the presence of African characters played by African actors.

Automated summary

This article discusses the presence of Africans in Spanish filmography before 1975, which has been unnoticed. It highlights the fact that Africans were often portrayed by African American and Afro-Latin actors or by actors in blackface, perpetuating racial stereotypes. The article also examines the racial hierarchy and exoticism underlying Spanish cinema and the exceptional conditions that allowed African actors to portray African characters.