Screening Nation Brands: New Zealand and Spanish Perspectives on Film and Country Image

Abstract

Not long ago I was talking to a colleague, a Shakespeare scholar, about the progress of my research on the international image of Spain when he, quite casually, made a link that left me puzzled. ‘It is curious,’ he said, ‘how Spain has become such a popular destination when only a few decades ago it was for many little more than an exotic and unsophisticated land in the periphery of Europe.’ ‘A bit’, he added, ‘like New Zealand in this part of the world . . .’ I never knew if he was implicitly suggesting a noble lineage for less peripheral countries like Britain, France or Australia, which the ‘unsophisticated’ Spain and New Zealand could never aspire to emulate. Leaving aside the geopolitical implications of my colleague’s comment, the fact that Spain and New Zealand could be spontaneously compared struck me as a rather uncommon idea.