The extra features now included on many DVDs, especially but not exclusively with blockbuster Hollywood movies, provide film enthusiasts with a whole new extra-textual world, in which they can become -within carefully controlled limits- destroyers of their own cinematic illusions. A fairly common (if only mildly exciting) extra on European film DVDs is the film trailer, a marketing tool that predates the DVD format which has more recently made it more accessible to us. Film trailers are edited compilations from the full-length features, but they have their own stylistic, narrative and thematic languages. By selection or even manipulation they can be tailored to attract different audience groups to take account of cultural differences. As cinematic texts, they can produce effects not always identical to the films to attempt to sell us. The gaps which can open up between these two related but functionally distinct types of text are the subject of this paper, which will be illustrated by reference to film trailers for films byJuan de Orduna, Pedro Almodóvar, Benito Zambrano.

Mark Allinson, BA, PhD (Leeds), Dip Media (London)

Professor in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Leicester, UK. His research and teaching interests are in European and especially Spanish cinema. He has published three books, A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar, Spanish Cinema: A Student Guide, (co-authored with Barry Jordan), and ˇTe toca! A New Communicative Spanish Course (with Richard Pym). Other recent publications include chapters on Bardem's Calle Mayor and Almodóvar's All About My Mother, and an article on the films of Juanma Bajo Ulloa. His book on Almodóvar has been updated and translated into Spanish.