Frank Stein (Ivan Zulueta, 1972)

Zulueta's peculiar singularity of vision points ultimately toward the digital dream of instant access to all components, as he doubly reconfigures James Whale's 1931 classic Frankenstein by playing it at speed — reducing the runtime to under 4 minutes — and crossing the boundary between the televised and the filmed. In demolishing both form and narrative in such a well-known film, Zulueta transforms it, transposing the lumbering creature feature into an exploration of time and the authenticity of the camera's gaze.

Frank Stein, alongside A Malgam A and some of his other shorts can be taken as sketches of the themes that inform his later masterful exploration of the all-consuming nature of cinema, perception, and the endurance of genre — framed within the low-budget, high camp environs of the Movida — Arrebato (which should itself probably top this list, and is only not included out of a bullish intention to confound).

In a nice — and perhaps inevitable — twist, Spanish filmmaker Alberte Pagan undoes Zulueta’s short by expanding it back to its full length in his 2015 cinematic response, Frank.

TR