Una primera aproximación a la figura de Carmen Prada, periodista cinematográfi-ca y empresaria en el Madrid de los años veinte

The aim of this article is to make Carmen Prada known. A film journalist who wrote in the Madrid press bet­ween 1918 and 1921 under the alias of ‘Duchess Borelli’, Prada will be later the manager of two important ci­nema theatres in the capital. In this text I will focus on her journalistic work. In order to cover all her writings, I have carried out a first reading of her articles and selected the most relevant to make known her insightful and complex knowledge of the cinema of her time. Insightful, because Carmen Prada made use of any press format to promote cinema, from the omnipresent newsletter of those times to the interview or the opinion article, where she demonstrated an extensive knowledge of film. Complex, because in all her writings she co­vers all types of film-related topics: not only the relatively brief film review, or the usual star propaganda, but she also reflects on interesting aspects from the study of film reception, film aesthetics, the work of directors and writers, the behaviour of audiences in the cinema theatre, or the work of film critics. The latter turns Carmen Prada one of the main references of film criticism in Madrid and a fundamental agent to understand that complex segment of film historiography which is the study of film reception.