HS BVV

Breixo Viejo

Term Assistant Professor

Department

English, Film Studies

Office

264 LeFrak Center, Barnard Hall

Contact

Breixo Viejo is full-time term Assistant Professor in the Film Studies Program at Barnard College, Columbia University of New York, since 2018. His main research focuses on the history of experimental and independent film, diasporic cinemas, as well as alternative modes of film production in Europe and the Americas. He holds an MA degree in Media Studies at the New School for Social Research, New York, and a PhD in Film History (Summa Cum Laude) at the Universidad Autónoma, Madrid. From 2014 to 2018, he was a Senior Research Associate in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at University College, London; before that, he was a visiting scholar at University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Freie Universität zu Berlin, Columbia University in New York, and Casa Buñuel in Mexico City. He has received awards from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the UK Arts Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Academia de Cine.

Viejo is the author of the books Música moderna para un nuevo cine: Eisler, Adorno y el Film Music Project (Madrid: Akal, 2008), an in-depth analysis of the intersection of critical theory and film, and Film Books (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2016), a visual history of cinema literature from 1895 to present day. He has co-edited with Jo Evans Luis Buñuel: Correspondencia escogida (Madrid: Cátedra, 2018), which was awarded Best Book of the Year by the Spanish Academy of Motion Pictures, and translated as Luis Buñuel: A Life in Letters (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019). This English edition has been praised as "an impressive collection" (Film Comment), "an overdue blessing" (Sight & Sound), "an unexpected revelation," as Michel Ciment called it, "a colossal work" (Positif). 

Viejo has extensively written on independent and avant-garde cinema and the film work of directors such as Joris Ivens, Joseph Losey, Dalton Trumbo, Samuel Beckett, Alain Resnais, and Jim Jarmusch. His book chapters have been translated into Japanese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese, and his articles and reviews have been published in international journals - including The Times Literary SupplementBulletin of Spanish Studies, and Archivos de la Filmoteca. He has presented lectures and participated in talks at Yale University, the School of Visual Arts, New York University, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (Durham), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico UNAM (Mexico City), CRAC (Valparaíso), Arts Santa Mónica (Barcelona), DEFA Stiftung (Berlin), and Hochschule der Künste (Bern).  

He is now working on the first critical biography of the exiled Catalan-Cuban cineaste Néstor Almendros, for which he has received two Barnard College Research Grants. As part of this project, he has recently published the article "Crítico, comisario y cineasta experimental: Néstor Almendros en Nueva York, 1957-1959" (Secuencias 53Spring 2021) and presented the lecture "Cine-verdad, Afrocubanism, and Political Dissidence: Almendros in Havana, 1959-1962" at the New Direction in Cuban Studies conference (Harvard University/University of Miami, October 2021).

PhD in Film History (Summa Cum Laude), Department of Philosophy, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2004)

MA in Media Studies, School of Public Engagement, New School for Social Research, New York (2002)

Film History and Theory

Alternative Modes of Film Production (Experimental, Documentary, Independent Cinema) 

Diasporic Cinemas and Women Filmmakers

Transnational Latin American and Spanish Film

 

FILM 2295 World Cinema: Mexico

FILM 3099 Independent Study 

FILM 3201 Intro to Film and Media Studies

FILM 3225 Independent Cinema

FILM 3279 Unseen Masterworks of World Cinema

FILM 3280 From Page to Screen: Truffaut and Rohmer

FILM 3450 The Short Film: History & Aesthetics

FILM 3610 New Cinemas in Latin America

FILM 3650 The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

FILM 3702 Major Women Filmmakers

FILM 3870 Seminar in International Film: Spain and Mexico

Books 

Luis Buñuel: A Life in Letters (edited with Jo Evans), London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019

Luis Buñuel: Correspondencia escogida (edited with Jo Evans), Madrid: Ediciones Catedra, 2018  

Film Books: A Visual History, New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2016

Jose Francisco Aranda: La fabulación de la pantalla (edited, with a preface by Basilio Martin Patino), Madrid: Filmoteca Española, 2009    

Música moderna para un nuevo cine: Eisler, Adorno y el Film Music Project, Madrid: Akal, 2008  

Samuel Beckett: Obra para cine y televisión (edited with David Cortés), Madrid: Museo Reina Sofía, 2006

Jim Jarmusch y el sueño de los justos, Madrid: Ediciones JC, 2002

Book Chapters

"Art, Anti-Art, and Poetic Cinema: Revisiting An Andalusian Dog," in Charlie Keil and Rob King (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Silent Cinema, Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming)

"Rulfo y Buñuel: un margen de disidencia continua" (with J. Evans), in María Esther Guzmán (ed.), Lenguajes y mundos de Juan Rulfo, Mexico City: UNAM, 2019, pp. 143-154

"Neue Musik für einen befreiten Film. Giovanni Fuscos Filmmusik zu Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour," in Peter Schweinhardt (ed.), Kompositionen für den Film, Wiesbaden-Leipzig-Paris: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2008, pp. 235-246 

"Souzouryoku no kaihou: Luis Buñuel no eiga ni okeru ongaku to oto," in Shigue Kanaya (ed.), Luis Buñuel, Tokyo: Kinokuniya Company, 2008, pp. 12-29

"O Cangaceiro (Lima Barreto, 1953)," in Alberto Elena and Marina Díaz (eds.), The Cinema of Latin America, London: Wallflower Press, 2003, pp. 63-69

Society for Cinema and Media Studies

Modern Language Association