EIFF: 600 Millas / 600 Miles (Gabriel Ripstein, 2015)

Tim Roth and Kristyan Ferrer

    A tense and suspenseful road movie - and effectively a two-hander for much of its running time - Gabriel Ripstein's directorial debut seems to me to have a good chance of acquiring at least a limited release in the UK, not least because of the presence of Tim Roth and the bilingual nature of a story that unfolds on both sides of the US / Mexican border. 
    Roth plays Hank Harris, an ATF agent who gets taken hostage and taken over the border into the badlands of Mexico when he attempts to bust two young gun runners (Kristyan Ferrer and Harrison Thomas) who are aiming for the big time. It's revealing that this central scenario is born out of a combination of lack of planning (Harris spots the two men by chance while he's doing his rounds of the gun shows in the area and mistakenly thinks he sees an opportunity when they part company) and panic (Carson (Thomas) acts impulsively towards the threat but it is the unsteady Arnulfo (Ferrer) who then decides to bundle the agent into his truck and drive back across the border alone) - throughout the film, all of the characters are required to think on their feet when events do not turn out as planned and they must try not to let fear get the better of them.
    I actually don't want to say too much about 600 Millas / 600 Miles before more people get the chance to see it. I've read some reviews since I saw the film in Edinburgh and a lot of them reveal too much information given the suspenseful nature of the narrative - I'd advise you to go in as blind as possible because I think my experience of it was all the more effective for knowing only the one line synopsis. But the other reason that I'm not going to say too much is that I was so engrossed in the film that I barely wrote anything down (and what I did write down, I wrote over the top of what I'd already written because I was looking at the screen)...which I guess is indicative of a recommendation, but it's not exactly helpful for analysis.
    But I will say that it's an interesting representation of the performative nature of masculinities - learning to put up a front, living up to familial expectations, the play and display of homosocial bonding, and knowing that certain situations require different modes of behaviour - particularly in the performances of Ferrer and Thomas whose youth underlines the malleability of the personalities of their respective characters (they are still defining themselves but are also (self)conscious of how they are seen through the eyes of others). But Roth astutely also demonstrates that less is more in his interpretation of an inherently watchful and shrewd man. Ripstein and co-writer Issa López expertly crank up the tension through the skilful use of extended silence and (an often related) lack of comprehension, in a range of contexts - shock at violent events, fear, the sense of being out of your depth, and also not understanding what is being said because it's not your language. The bilingual aspect is also used to indicate shifts in the balance of power onscreen. 
    In short, I'd like to watch it again because I think it's a really tightly constructed film that pays attention to - and economically employs - the mechanisms of cinematic suspense but is also rooted in its characters and their relationships in a way that we don't see often enough onscreen. I recommend it if it plays near you.

EIFF: La Danza del Hipocampo (Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba, 2014)

"Like salt in the sea, we are made of an infinite number of moments"

    La Danza del Hipocampo / The Dance of the Memory (Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba, 2014) screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival as part of the Focus on Mexico strand. Structured around the question of which seven memories you would use to sum up your life (our short term memory can only hold seven items), Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba's essay film delves into her long term memory (located in the hippocampus) and personal family archives for a lyrical meditation on the meaning and formation of memories.
    The film includes an exploration of the fragility of memory formation and maintenance, i.e. the biology of it - the haphazard nature of electrical impulses (memory effectively exists in voids or, from another perspective, fills them) and the fact that of the five senses, taste and smell are also stored in the hippocampus (hence those Proustian rushes of memory that can be triggered by flavours and scents). But the director concentrates on our efforts to 'fix' memories in place through the use of visual mementoes and recordings, described within the film as "leaving breadcrumbs through time" - the physical traces that we use to find our way back into the past. She also looks at how - in the accumulation of moments that make up this "intimate cartography" of selfhood - we co-opt the memories of those close to us.

All images taken from the trailer

    Every family has shared experiences - stories that are retold over and over, running jokes, and significant moments that crystallise a given event - but we don't need to be present at all of them for them to in some way shape us. Hence Domínguez Ruvalcaba decides that one of her seven memories will be one that actually belongs to her grandfather - it is not an experience that she has lived (and it is not technically her memory) but, in the telling of it, her grandfather has made it part of the fabric of her identity and that of her family. Family is important to the director and central to her film. As she goes back into her past, she relies on home movie footage - an uncle who worked in film "dedicated himself to making a 'behind the scenes' of his own life" resulting in a copious amount of footage of the director as a child - but the compulsion to record (to see life through a lens) seems to have been passed down from one generation to the next because the moving images (in a range of formats) date all the way back to her grandparents. By extension, this sets up a further question - do you remember the event itself, or is your memory influenced (distorted?) by the recording of it?

    The director gets up close to the texture and form of the different film formats, an element that reminded me of José Luis Guerin's Tren de sombras (1997) - which is a different kind of reconstruction of the past, but the extended inclusion of the actual fabric of film seemed like a connection to Guerin's playfulness with form and representation. As Domínguez Ruvalcaba points out, a film cannot change (the image is photographically fixed onto celluloid or digitally stamped into pixels) but it changes because we change - each time we revisit the film (or still photograph) we see new details, and view events with the benefit of hindsight or the changing perspectives that come with ageing. Within that context, the degraded state of the films that La Danza del Hipocampo scrutinises - the scratches, colour desaturation, and lost definition - stands as a metonym for the mutability of memory and how it fades over time.

    The film also touches upon the idea of physical places as repositories for memory - both in the sense of troubled histories but also as a stimulant to recall the past - but ultimately this is a personal meditation on the accumulation of the scattered moments that define us as individuals. The process of making her film seems to have changed the director's perspective on the need to embed her memories in visual physical manifestations - she decides that some things deserve to be remembered (as a conscious decision) while we are living them rather than recorded to be revisited at one remove at a later date. However, as a record of its maker and her familial web of memories, La Danza del Hipocampo is a skilfully crafted and visually distinctive essay film - worth seeking out if you get the chance.

EIFF Focus on Mexico: Gabriel Figueroa (1907 - 1997)

Dolores del Rio in The Fugitive (John Ford, 1947), the film that Figueroa believed contained his best work.

    I’ve only had time to watch a handful of Gabriel Figueroa’s films, and I’m writing this before seeing María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1944) and Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960) in Edinburgh – so this is a general introduction to some of Figueroa’s (relatively early) work, but I hope to track down some of his other films in the future. I’ll say something more about the two films showing at EIFF once I’ve seen them.
    Gabriel Figueroa was born in Mexico City in 1907. Orphaned and without financial support, he and his brother had to go out to work at a young age, but he began his professional career as a stills photographer before using a moving camera for the first time in 1933 when Howard Hawks and James Wong Howe went to Mexico in order to shoot exteriors for Viva Villa! (Jack Conway, 1934). Two years later Figueroa went to Hollywood as part of a government-funded initiative to develop Mexican cinema, and with the aid of a letter of introduction from the Mexico-based cinematographer Alex Phillips he was taken on by Gregg Toland as his student. Although Figueroa returned to Mexico in 1936, he and Toland remained in contact, with the (only-slightly) older man continuing to serve as Figueroa's mentor up until Toland’s early death in 1948. Such was Toland’s regard for his protégé that when Samuel Goldwyn refused to release Toland to work with John Ford on The Fugitive (1947), Toland suggested Figueroa as his replacement – and when Toland died, Goldwyn offered Figueroa his contract (he declined). In fact Figueroa would find it difficult to work in the US as due to the combination of his union work (he co-founded the STPC - 'Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producción Cinematográfica' [Union of Cinema Production Workers], the first such independent union in Mexico, in 1944) and a refusal to answer questions from US officials about his political affiliations, he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and couldn’t get work permits (in an 'every cloud has a silver lining' situation, this did however mean that he was free to work with Luis Buñuel in Mexico throughout the 1950s and 60s).

Requiem / Under The Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa – Art and Film from Fotográfica Fundación Televisa on Vimeo.

    In 1941 Figueroa co-founded the production company Films Mundiales, which became the starting point for the team he was part of with director Emilio ‘el Indio’ Fernández and actors Dolores del Rio and Pedro Armendáriz. Figueroa and Fernández made 23 films together over the course of 13 years and the relationship is central to the kinds of images that the cinematographer is associated with. Figueroa said in interviews that Fernández was one of only four directors (the other three being John Ford, Roberto Gavaldón, and Ismael Rodríguez) who would instruct him as to the effects that they wanted the scene to achieve but then allow him to design the scene’s composition as he wished. Other directors with whom he is associated – such as Buñuel (they made 7 films together, including Los Olvidados (1950) and The Exterminating Angel (1962)) – expected him to change his style to suit their requirements, and he did not have the same sort of artistic freedom on all of the 200+ productions he worked on. In terms of world recognition, the Fernández/Figueroa partnership’s breakout film was María Candelaria, which not only jointly won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1944 (an award that would later become known as the Palme d’Or) but also won Best Cinematography (the first of many major prizes for Figueroa).

Emilio 'el Indio' Fernández / Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa - Art and Film from Fotográfica Fundación Televisa on Vimeo.

    What does a cinematographer do, and why is the style of certain films ascribed to Figueroa rather than their respective directors? Exploring the concept of 'authorship' in relation to cinematic images, Lieberman and Hegarty outline the responsibilities of a cinematographer:

[...] there are several duties that can generally be ascribed to the cinematographer: (1) devising a lighting strategy and supervising its implementation; (2) making choices regarding lenses, filtration, film stock, camera, and lighting equipment; (3) determining exposure, contrast, focus, and depth of field; (4) orchestrating and executing (or supervising the execution of) camera movement; (5) collaborating with the director on framing and all aspects of shot composition as well as on the breakdown process in which the scene is divided up into individual shots; (6) participating, oftentimes, in positioning the actors on the set and blocking their action; (7) placing, moving, or removing set dressing, and (8) consulting on wardrobe, makeup, location choice, and production design. In all of these ways, and many others, the cinematographer contributes to the authorship of the image, making creative decisions that [...] inscribe his or her sensibilities and vision onto the finished work [...] (2010: 33)

Certain visual commonalities across a significant number of the films Figueroa photographed highlight his own cinematic signature. Lieberman and Hegarty's article (which is very interesting but not available online without a subscription - the full reference is below) compares the 'technical and aesthetic convergences' between Figueroa and Toland - unsurprisingly, given that one was the pupil of the other, their work shares certain characteristics (most obviously deep focus compositions and chiaroscuro lighting - for example, several scenes in The Fugitive take place in near complete darkness apart from an outline of light around Henry Fonda's priest on the run) although that is also indicative of their shared influences (German Expressionism and Renaissance painting, for example). 
    But their analysis reveals that despite these similarities, 'both cinematographers used virtually every one of their overlapping techniques to quite different ends' (2010: 37) - for example, if in Toland's work deep focus / the use of multiple focal planes is used to convey shifting power relations, Figueroa (who composed scenes with shallow and medium focus as often as he did deep focus) was instead more likely to utilise it to connect characters with their environment, and likewise their respective use of low angles conveys distinct things about the onscreen characters (power versus empowerment and ceilings versus skies). The article goes into a lot of detail with the comparisons and interpretations. Figueroa's influences were also rooted in Mexico in the form of Dr. Atl (a.k.a. painter Gerardo Murillo), who had multiple vanishing points in his landscape paintings (which informed Figueroa's distinctive use of curvilinear perspective - creating a spherical, or three-dimensional, visual space), and Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished 1931 film Que viva México (which is out of copyright and viewable here - the commentary is in Italian, but it's the images that are important).  

Noche / Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa - Art and Film from Fotográfica Fundación Televisa on Vimeo.

    As I say, I've only watched a few of Gabriel Figueroa's films so far, so I can't expand on the topic any further at the moment. But I'll be reviewing María Candelaria and Macario, so when I link to those reviews on here I'll possibly write a bit more - but whether I return to him as a focus on the blog or not, I will be seeking out some of the films seen in these videos (there are more - each arranged around a different theme - here).


I've read a few good articles / interviews with Figueroa as their focus - 

These ones aren't freely available online but you should be able to access them via a library:

• Dey, T. (1992) - 'Gabriel Figueroa: Mexico's Master Cinematographer', American Cinematographer, March, pp.34-40.
• Feder, E. (1996) - 'A Reckoning: Interview with Gabriel Figueroa', Film Quarterly, 49:3, pp.2-14.
• Lieberman, E. and Hegarty, K. (2010) - 'Authors of the Image: Cinematographers Gabriel Figueroa and Gregg Toland', Journal of Film and Video, 62:1-2, pp.31-51.

Online texts:

• Figueroa's official website  
• Higgins, C.R. (2007) - Pulling Focus: New perspectives on the work of Gabriel Figueroa, unpublished PhD thesis, Durham University - a critical evaluation of his cinematography (I've not read it yet, but it's the only substantial piece of work on the cinematographer that I've come across in English).
• A special issue of Luna Córnea dedicated entirely to Figueroa. I've only flicked through it so far but it seems to cover all aspects of his career (it is in Spanish, however), and the images are sumptuous.  
• Pinkerton, N. (2015) - 'Sky's the Limit', Artforum, 6th March - on the current retrospective in New York.  

A Collective Impulse: an overview

This post has been moved to my new blog - you can find it here.

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I'd like to thank the following people for allowing me access to their work: Luis López Carrasco (twice over), Xurxo Chirro, Ramiro Ledo, Víctor Moreno (for giving me access to Edificio España before the DVD was available), Juan Rayos, Lourdes Pérez at Producción El Viaje (and Jonay García at Digital 104 for passing that request along), and Deica audiovisual.
If you click on the 'el otro cine español' label below, you will see posts relating to my ongoing, broader project.

Corruption, Collusion, and Censorship: Ciutat Morta / Dead City (Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega, 2014)

Patricia Heras

    This post is more about the case that Ciutat Morta takes as its focus than about the film itself - it may be easier to revisit the documentary as a film at some point in the future when the case has stopped whirling around in my head. But after writing last year about the censorship or suppression of documentaries in Spain in relation to Rocío (Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 1980) and Edificio España (Víctor Moreno, 2013), I find myself returning to the theme in 2015, following the censored broadcast of Ciutat Morta on Catalan TV this past weekend. I didn't initially find anything written in English about the case (the censorship or the event the film is about) - but the story has appeared on The Guardian's website today. In essence, Ciutat Morta details what appears to be a gross miscarriage of justice - in fact justice has little to do with the matter - wherein a group of young people were brutalised and tortured by the police, the latter ably supported by the Barcelona judicial and political classes, and prosecuted for a crime to which there is no physical, forensic, or independent eye-witness evidence of their involvement. Corruption, collusion, and self-interest combined in a poisonous brew alongside racism, xenophobia, and homophobia in what is suggested to be a systemic pattern of behaviour within official bodies in the city.
    On the night of 4th February 2006 on the Calle de Sant Pere Més Baix in Barcelona, a Guàrdia Urbana (urban police) operation sought to evict a party (of several hundred people) from an occupied theatre. As the police approached the theatre, one agent (not wearing a helmet) was hit on the head by an object and grievously injured (he would go into a coma). Those are the only uncontested facts of the incident. Early reports (repeated by Barcelona's then-Mayor, Joan Clos, in a radio interview) suggested that the agent was hit by a plant pot that either fell or was thrown from the roof of the theatre - and video footage from that night clearly shows those on the ground shouting that things are being thrown from above and urging other officers to put helmets on. However nobody from inside the theatre was arrested. Instead the police led a baton charge against those in the street (i.e. people who could not have thrown anything from the roof) and arrested seven people - three Latin American young men (Rodrigo Lanza and Álex Cisternas from Chile, and Juan Pintos from Argentina - each of whom has either Spanish or Italian nationality), a German girl, and three Catalans (the latter four are not named within the documentary, so my assumption (which may be wrong) is that they were released fairly quickly in comparison to the other three). Two more people (Patricia Heras (who was from Madrid and had only moved to Barcelona six months earlier) and Alfredo Pestana) would be arrested later in the night after having the misfortune to cross paths with the police at the hospital where the latter had escorted the Latin Americans for treatment after an initial beating at the police station following their arrest. Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega's documentary tries to unpick the series of events that followed, a tangled web of violence and torture, combined with police, judicial and political obstruction.
    It may be best to start with an outline of the basic facts:

• After being arrested at the hospital, Patricia and Alfredo were put at the disposition of the Mossos d'Esquadra along with the five who had been arrested in Calle de Sant Pere Més Baix.
• Amnesty International supports the official complaint by Rodrigo, Juan, and Álex that what happened next (quite aside from the earlier brutality they had suffered) was that they were tortured by masked officers who concealed their ID numbers. Amnesty included the complaint in their 2007 report given to Barcelona City Council - their concern was that complaints against the Mossos were not being investigated.
• The first judge the defendants encountered - Carmen García Martínez - ignored the evidence of torture.
• All nine of the people arrested had European passports, but only the Latin Americans were kept in custody while awaiting trial. They were in prison for two years before the trial started, the maximum amount of time that an accused person can be held before being tried under the Spanish State. 
• The trial began in 2008. Spain has an 'investigating magistrate'-style legal system (by my understanding that role was taken by Carmen García Martínez) and jury trials seem to be quite rare - this case was heard by the Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona (effectively a panel of magistrates).
• The police changed their version of events to fit the location of the people arrested in the street - saying that the injured officer was hit by a stone thrown from street level. The forensics / medical experts said that this was incompatible with the injuries suffered by the officer - the kind of fracture he sustained could only have been caused by a large heavy object coming from above.
• If the object came from the roof and no culprit could be found - and it would be impossible to identify who threw it given the number of people on the premises that night - civil liability would be down to the owner of the building. The building in question is owned by Barcelona City Council.
• No physical evidence (plant pots or stones) was collected from the street on the night of 4th February because Barcelona's clean-up team swept up before the forensic investigation could begin. It has never been ascertained who gave the order for the clean-up crew to clear the street.
• A lot of evidence requested by the defence (specifically the opportunity to question officials who may have had access to different pieces of information relating to the chain of command and control of information) was denied. 
• The defendants were convicted on the basis of police testimony alone. No physical, forensic, or independent eye-witness evidence supported the version of events put forth by the police. 
• At each stage of the investigation and subsequent trial, the various arms of the State (police, judiciary, local politicians) backed each other up despite evidence pointing to the innocence (and severe mistreatment) of the defendants.

Rodrigo, Juan, Álex, Patricia, and Alfredo were all found guilty (despite ambulance drivers placing the latter two elsewhere in the city at the time of the incident) and given sentences ranging between 2.5 to 4.5 years (lenient given the severity of what they had been accused of). Time already served meant that Rodrigo, Juan, and Álex were released on parole. All five appealed their sentences, only for them to be upheld and the sentences lengthened, meaning that in 2010 the Latin Americans were returned to prison for an additional two years and Patricia was also jailed in October of that year (Alfredo was pardoned before entering prison). In December 2010, Patricia was put into a semi-open work release programme but was unable to settle into a routine (or, as one friend explains, to accept a social punishment she had not earned) and fell into a depression. She committed suicide on 26th April 2011 while on day release. Rodrigo was the last of the defendants to be released from prison, in December 2012.
    Given the amount of exposition required to explain all of this, and also taking the time to consider legal, personal, and sociological angles on the issues raised, a lot of talking head footage is utilised by the directors. However the film never loses sight of the human cost paid by the defendants and their loved ones, and they manage to avoid a dull back and forth (it would admittedly be difficult to make this story dull, but it could still have become a dry retelling), instead composing a complex but coherent overview of a case that has been deliberately obfuscated by powerful vested interests. One particularly effective device is a clock superimposed over the screen, showing a minute ticking by. This first appears after Rodrigo gives an account of the initial beating received at the police station (which left behind a pool of blood bigger than himself, a visual image that clearly made an impression on him because he repeats the phrase several times with the same confusion he says he felt at the time (i.e. how could the pool of blood be bigger than him?)) – he says that maybe it only lasted a minute, but it felt like eternity. The clock then ticks down a minute in silence, not just indicating the time passing but also the isolation of being completely on your own in those circumstances. The device recurs later on superimposed over footage of one of the policemen named in the official complaint working out at the gym; as the man sets about kicking and punching a full-size punch bag, barely breaking a sweat, you appreciate how much damage he could do to a human being in the same amount of time. But the heart of the film is the absent Patricia. The film fleetingly resurrects traces of her through a combination of still images and the memories of those who knew her, and she is given a voice via her poetry (read as voiceover by her former girlfriend, Silvia Villullas), but her absence is palpable nonetheless.
    It was Patricia's suicide that brought the case to the attention of Xapo Ortega (an architect) and Xavier Artigas (a sociologist) - two men who had not long met via the audiovisual commission relating to 15-M and were looking to work on local stories together. Patricia became the focal point for the protests relating to the case (known as 4-F, or #4F on twitter). As Gregorio Morán, a journalist at La Vanguardia who wrote about Patricia at the time (here and here [the latter has been translated into English]: he is one of the few local journalists to have covered the case - silence was the norm), the young woman stands out because of her sensitivity and the articulacy of her self-expression in the poetry and diaries she left behind (her personal blog - The Dead Poet - is still online, including her first person account of her arrest and subsequent treatment). She was essentially arrested because she was 'different' and her belonging to a marginal social group was manifested in her appearance (the specific thing seized on by the police was that part of her head was shaved in a chessboard pattern - she was a Cyndi Lauper fan). Rodrigo and Juan both highlight that the police statements referred to them as a type via their appearance (they labelled them 'okupa' [squatter] or 'anti-sistema' on the basis of how they were dressed) - the inference being that it was therefore fine to treat them like scum to be washed from the streets (the film gives examples of how such groups are routinely written about in the local press). But as Silvia Villullas points out, the police misread Patricia's appearance in thinking her a punk / okupa - she was actually a goth and more glamorous in how she dressed than the 'label' they put on her. Because they didn't understand her, she was 'other' and therefore not treated as a citizen. 
    As Ortega and Artigas's investigations got underway several other incidents coalesced to reveal previously hidden information. You could say that these other incidents were unrelated to 4-F except that they reveal that the behaviour of the authorities in that case was not a one-off, and in fact something more widespread and insidious was transpiring. The first piece of information was the likely identity of the author of the initial incident report (mentioned by the Mayor in a radio interview the following day) which referred to a plant pot being thrown from the roof - this report would later be denied as the narrative changed to the stone thrown at street level. Video footage relating to a drug investigation was leaked to the press in December 2009 - one of the videos shows the Guàrdia Urbana's Information Officer, Víctor Gibanel, explaining that he is responsible for the reports and risk assessments of operations that make their way to the Mayor. In the video he is accused by the investigating judge of lying, spreading false rumours, and trying to discredit this very judge - on the basis of the evidence accrued by the judge, Gibanel tells the judge that he will resign. Jesús Rodríguez, a journalist at La Directa, reveals within Ciutat Morta that out of all of the videos leaked in relation to the drug case, this was the only one not to have been made public by the press. Gibanel did not resign, or get fired, and was later promoted by the Mayor. 
    The version of Ciutat Morta broadcast for the first time on Catalan TV last Saturday night was missing the five minutes relating to Víctor Gibanel - a judge decreed that the documentary infringed Gibanel's 'right to honour' and personal privacy and ordered that the section be censored before broadcast (Gibanel is also suing Jesús Rodríguez for violating his honour, seeking damages of 45,000€). Apparently there was no announcement before the film - or indication within it - to inform viewers that it had been censored (an omission that recalls what happened in the Rocío case). Ciutat Morta has already screened at dozens of film festivals and also in Spanish cinemas (and has been available on Filmin for around a month - although that version has now also been cut) - Gibanel did not protest until the film was due to be broadcast on television in Catalonia (a broadcast that the television channel had been dragging its heels over for several months). His legal actions probably ensured a wider audience for the film than it might otherwise have had - certainly it has made his name better known - and Catalan / Spanish people on social media were (and still are) extremely vocal in highlighting the censorship (as a result it is fairly easy to find the excised five minutes online).
    The second incident was the arrest and prosecution of two police officers for the torture of another youth, as well as perjury and falsifying evidence - no Spanish or Catalan news channel reported on the overlap in accusations. Six months after Patricia's suicide, two Guàrdia Urbanas (Víctor Bayona and Bakari Samyang) were sentenced to two years and three months for seriously torturing a young man (known as Yuri J) from Trinidad and Tobago after he attempted to defend a female friend who was being sexually harassed by the off-duty officers. He was tortured in a police station for at least 3-4 hours. To justify the arrest, the officers declared Yuri a drug dealer, but they had finally picked on the wrong person: Yuri was the son of a diplomat who had enough clout to see charges brought against the two officers who could be identified. The two men are mentioned in Patricia's accounts of physical and psychological abuse, as well as named within the official complaint made by Rodrigo, Juan, and Álex - the complaint ignored by judge Carmen García Martínez. Taking the 4-F case in conjunction with the Yuri J one reveals a system beset by racism, xenophobia (Rodrigo, Juan, and Álex were berated within racial slurs during their beatings and were treated differently to the other defendants in terms of not being granted bail), and homophobia (in relation to Patricia). 
    You would think that the overlaps between the accusations of torture would be sufficient to see the 4-F case reopened (in addition, Ciutat Morta reveals that the authorities are aware of an anonymous witness who has named the person who threw the plant pot, but the latter won't come forward to make an official declaration). You would think. But that had not happened during the film's production and although noise has been growing since the broadcast at the weekend, at the time of writing the prosecution services are saying that the case will not be reopened without new evidence. (Anyone who is interested could probably keep up to speed by searching for #ciutatmorta or #4F on twitter).

The subtitled trailer for Ciutat Morta is here. The film is currently on the TV station's catch up service but if, like me, you don't speak Catalan, you might want to watch it here - with full English subtitles and uncut (for the time being). I've taken that to be a legitimate viewing platform because the film has been uploaded by one of the directors. There is also a link there to buy the DVD although they don't currently have the subtitled version available (I've asked). The interview Fotogramas has posted today with Xapo Ortega and Xavier Artigas may also be of interest.  

The Carlos Saura Challenge, Part 9: La madriguera / Honeycomb (1969)

Director: Carlos Saura
Writer: Rafael Azcona, Geraldine Chaplin, Carlos Saura
Cast: Geraldine Chaplin, Per Oscarsson, Teresa del Río, Julia Peña, María Elena Flores, Emiliano Redondo.
Synopsis: Five years into their marriage, the arrival of a collection of inherited furniture puts a strain on Teresa (Chaplin) and Pedro's (Oscarsson) relationship.

Contains some spoilers from the first third of the film.

   The third of Saura's eight cinematic collaborations with Geraldine Chaplin is an odd film. Teresa (Chaplin) and Pedro (Per Oscarsson - dubbed and looking decidedly un-Spanish (in fact I've belatedly worked out that he reminds me of a permanently peeved Jon Voigt)) have been married for five years and are settled in a routine (he manages - and possibly owns - a factory, she is a lady of leisure) and a rather sterile home. The arrival of a collection of furniture from Teresa's childhood family home triggers a nightmare and subsequent sleepwalking, followed by regressive and childish behaviour. Teresa replaces their furniture (in keeping with the modern - verging on Brutalist - architecture of their house) with what has arrived (which is distinctly different in style, with dark wood and richly coloured fabrics) - the film then settles into a series of extended role play 'games' between husband and wife. 
    I didn't hear an explanation as to why Teresa was receiving the furniture now (there are no subs on the VOD, so something may have flown past me), but it seems like an inheritance. The nightmare triggered by the arrival of the furniture and childhood mementoes appears to be a recollection of being at boarding school, woken by two nuns in the middle of the night and taken to an office (I took it to be the memory of being informed of a death)...at which point Teresa sits up in bed screaming but doesn't wake up. During the subsequent sleepwalk she unpacks the first of the furniture - an armchair and a rug - and proceeds to act as if her father is sitting in the chair: she implores her father not to send her away, says that she wants to stay with him and the rest of the family, and begs him not to make her marry Pedro. Pedro - who has followed his wife during her sleepwalk - at this point sits in the chair and takes on the father's role, asking what Teresa wants to do instead of getting married ('go to college' is her reply). Later in the film when Pedro goes through some of Teresa's possessions he finds photos of her as a child (contemporaneous with her appearance in her nightmare), a child's drawing of a plane crash (with 'Mama' and 'Papa' written next to two bodies) and a funeral notice - the suggestion is that Teresa's parents died when she was a child (supported by her nightmare), but that doesn't really fit with the conversation with her father during the sleepwalk. 

    The next day Teresa has no memory of the night's events - and is visibly embarrassed when Pedro tells her some of the things she said - but becomes increasingly giggly and childish as she continues to unpack toys and mementoes (she glues her milk teeth and a keepsake loop of her infant hair onto a photo of herself as a child), and seemingly decides to use what Pedro has told her about the sleepwalk in order to force her husband to play with her (he thinks that she is sleepwalking again but the audience knows that she has deliberately woken him up). After this point the role play games blur the lines between dream and reality (the blurring of dream, performance, and reality would be something Saura would develop in much greater detail in his next film - El jardín de las delicias / The Garden of Delights (1970)) and Pedro's perception of reality is also altered. At the same time, the question of who is 'playing' whom (in the double sense of who they are actually meant to be, but also which of them is in control of the game) fluctuates. There's a caustic humour and an undercurrent of violence to many of their interactions - Pedro bites Teresa's ankle while he's pretending to be a St Bernard rescue dog (long story) but doesn't take kindly to her smacking him in the face with a mop handle as a result - and as in the later Ana y los lobos / Ana and the Wolves (1972) there is an uneasy sense of foreboding to the games.

    'Honeycomb' seems to be the title given to the film when it was released in the USA, but a literal translation of the Spanish is 'The Burrow', which makes more sense given the centrality of the house to the story - all of the scenes between Teresa and Pedro take place either inside the house (designed by Javier Carvajal and located in Somosaguas (an affluent neighbourhood in Madrid) - other examples of Carvajal's work) or in the surrounding garden. The sense of a limited and clearly defined space gives the film a theatrical feel, as do the curtains they pull across the floor-to-ceiling windows, and overall it is quite a stagey production. It also picks up the recurring motif in the Saura/Chaplin collaborations of the actress playing multiple roles or personalities (whether real or imagined) within the same film, or the idea of women performing different versions of themselves to different 'audiences' - the expressiveness of Chaplin's face (not to mention her gameness in throwing herself into various outlandish scenarios) is put to full use, but she also clearly delineates the different women she performs through gesture and body language as well. As I mentioned in relation to Peppermint frappé (1967), Chaplin's performances might be an element for me to explore in more detail at a later date - the fact that Peppermint frappé and La madriguera are often said to form a trilogy of sorts with the elusive Stress es tres-tres (1968) (unavailable in any form) makes me wonder whether she takes on multiple personalities in that one too.

    I don't know that I'd recommend La madriguera as I found the hysteria somewhat forced and Oscarsson a bit wooden (although as he was dubbed into Spanish, that may not be entirely his fault) - but it has a curiosity value given how difficult it is to get hold of (it has never been released on DVD and has appeared on VOD only in the past year).

The Carlos Saura Challenge, Part 8: Cría cuervos / Raise Ravens (1976)

Director: Carlos Saura
Writer: Carlos Saura
Cast: Ana Torrent, Geraldine Chaplin, Mónica Randall, Florinda Chico, Conchita Pérez, Maite Sánchez, Héctor Alterio, Germán Cobos, Mirta Miller, Josefina Díaz
Synopsis: An eight-year old girl (Torrent) believes that she has poisoned the authoritarian father (Alterio) whom she blames for the death of her mother (Chaplin).

    Nine months after my last CSC post (and about six weeks after I rewatched it as part of my coverage of the Leeds Film Festival), I finally reach Cría cuervos (Fiona Noble wrote a guest post on the film back in June 2013). The delay since rewatching it in November has been due to my having too much else to do (not blog related), but truth be told I've also put off writing about the film simply because I have very little to say about it. This post is therefore a case of me getting it out of the way so that I can continue with the other films, rather than a detailed analysis of what stands as one of Carlos Saura's most celebrated films outside of Spain (which I would in part connect to the fact that it is one of the few to have been widely available in subtitled form).
    Cría cuervos was the only one of Saura's films - apart from the dance films and ¡Ay, Carmela! - that I had seen before starting the challenge. I last saw it 13 or 14 years ago on VHS, at a point when I had seen very few Spanish films. In common with another recently rewatched classic - El espíritu de la colmena / The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973) - it's a film I find easier to admire than to like. Although I can appreciate why the two films are considered classics, both left me slightly baffled on first viewing - and even armed with knowledge of the broader context in which they were made, their (deliberate) opacity is something that I still struggle to engage with.
    The review I wrote for Eye for Film back in November (here) represents my overall thoughts on Cría cuervos, but there were three things that stood out for me on this second viewing of the film:

• The way that the film is structured as Ana's own stream of consciousness - with no clear distinction made between past, present, and future (the blurring aided by Geraldine Chaplin again playing more than one role) - is a continuation of the director's preoccupation with memory, and his repeated attempts to represent in a tangible form how the present is shaped by our understanding and memory of the past (as also seen in El jardín de las delicias / The Garden of Delights (1970) and La prima Angélica / Cousin Angelica (1973) - in my opinion, the latter film is Saura's most effective manifestation of this theme). 
• Saura manages to capture some great scenes of sibling interaction (including general squabbling and evidence of the gullibility of younger siblings). The children (Ana Torrent, Conchita Pérez, and Maite Sánchez) delight in music (if you didn't already have Jeanette's Porque te vas stuck in your head, you do now) and general silliness (when they dress up in Aunt Paulina's (Mónica Randall) wigs and make-up, and enact hysterical scenes of domesticity), which acts to momentarily lighten the mood in what is otherwise a sad narrative of loss and suppression. 
• Roni the guinea pig - a) a great name for a guinea pig, b) I had no memory whatsoever of Ana having a pet, but Roni is another key element in the realistic depiction of childhood in the form of the companionship that the animal gives to the solitary child (she absents herself from her sisters' games as often as she joins in).

In the next CSC post, I will probably be going backwards because La madriguera [a literal translation is 'The Burrow' but I have seen the film referred to as 'Honeycomb'] (1969) - Saura's 6th feature - has popped up as VOD on Filmotech. 

IV Festival Márgenes - free to view online (13th - 31st December)

    Until the last day of 2014, the online platform Márgenes is making the twelve films that played in competition at its 4th Festival (and one that played outside of the official line-up) available to view for free. The online side of the festival started on the 13th December, but I didn't get a chance to take a look until I finished work for Christmas - I've only managed to watch a handful of the films so far, but I thought I should point it out on here before it ends.

    The festival started as an exclusively online event but now organises screenings in Madrid, Córdoba, Barcelona, Montevideo, México DF, Monterrey and Bogotá, before putting the films online. The point of the festival is to highlight those films that have not had a commercial release or that otherwise fall outside of the normal distribution circuit. To be eligible, they need to be more than 40 minutes in duration and originate from Spain, Latin America, or Portugal (the countries included are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela) - you can see the full list of criteria here. Many of the films in the 2014 edition have played at other festivals and won multiple prizes - but the list of winners for the IV Festival Márgenes have also now been announced.

    The official selection of films streaming for free encompass documentary and narrative fiction (links take you to the film - I've indicated which ones have English subtitles):

• África 815 (Pilar Monsell, 2014, Spain, 66m) [subtitled] 
• Carmita (Israel Cardenas and Laura Amelia Guzman, 2013, Mexico, 70m)  
• Crónica de un comité / A Committee Chronicle (José Luis Sepúlveda and Carolina Adriazola, 2014, Chile, 97m) 
• El gran vuelo / The Great Flight (Carolina Astudillo, 2014, Spain, 60m)  
• El rostro / The Face (Gustavo Fontán, 2013, Argentina, 64m) 
• Lacrau (João Vladimiro, 2013, Portugal, 99m) 
• Las altas presiones / The High Pressures (Ángel Santos, 2014, Spain, 85m) [subtitled] 
• Letters from Parliament Square (Carlos Serrano Azcona, 2014, Spain / UK, 53m) [in English]  
• Los ausentes / The Absent (Nicolás Pereda, 2014, Mexico / Spain / France, 80m) [only viewable in Spain] 
• Propaganda (Colectivo MAFI, 2014, Chile, 60m) [subtitled]  
• Todas las cosas que no están / All the Things That Are Not There (Teresa Solar Abboud, 2014, Spain, 42m) [in English] 
• Vida active / Active Life (Susana Nobre, 2013, Portugal, 92m) [subtitled] 

    I've watched four so far - El gran vuelo, All the Things That Are Not There, Las altas presiones (which won the Nuevas olas / New Waves section at the Seville European Film Festival last month), and África 815 - but will hopefully manage to watch a couple more before they disappear (having watched Pablo Larraín's No last year, I'd like to see Propaganda, which is about the 2013 Chilean elections). A common thread across the ones I've seen is 'absence' or the past being retraced through fragments - although in Las altas presiones this is manifested in how the protagonist's (Andrés Gertrúdix) return home heightens his sense of having lost who he really is - and judging by the synopses of the other films that theme unites many of them. Both El gran vuelo and África 815 (my favourite of the four) use a combination of photographs with diaries / memoirs and letters to explore (real) lives hidden from view on the surface. 

El gran vuelo

    El gran vuelo is the story of Clara Pueyo Jornet, and examines her clandestine existence from the Civil War years up to the point when - sentenced to death (she was an active militant for the Communist Party) - she escaped from Les Corts prison in Barcelona in the early 1940s by walking out of the front door (the great flight of the title) and was never seen again. Jornet was constrained by the times she lived in. There was no accepted space for political women in that era - the danger of Jornet's situation is indicated in her coded private correspondence with friends, and she seems to have lived in perpetual flight for years - and even once underground she rejected the rigidity the Communist Party; she had been due to leave the safehouse where she lived with three other women (to set out on her own), the day after the house was raided by the police (the film suggests that this timing may not have been entirely coincidental). She was the only one of the four sentenced to death, her letters proving incendiary in the eyes of the authorities. Through Jornet's own words (copies of her letters are seen on screen and read as a voiceover) and a series of photographs (including several group shots taken inside the prison), Carolina Astudillo manages to fleetingly reconstruct a woman who was forced into absence, and seemingly long forgotten.

África 815

    Flight also occurs in África 815 - Pilar Monsell's father, Manuel, made a bid for freedom via enlistment in 1964, leaving Madrid and heading to the exotic Saharan Spanish colony to carry out his military service. Reading aloud from her father's diaries (which he has since reconfigured as a three-volume memoir) and looking at his photo archive, Monsell compassionately explores her father's hidden life. Black and white stills change to moving colour images in conjunction with the collapse of Manuel's attempts at self denial - he got married in order to have a family - and his return to Morocco in the 1980s in a hopeful (but ultimately unsuccessful) quest to find his true Prince Charming. His sadness and loneliness (as recorded in his diary) as he realises that one man after another merely sees him as an escape route to Europe is palpable even all these years later and when read at one remove by his daughter. Perhaps someone less close to the subject would have asked more probing questions (this is straightforwardly her father's story - her mother is briefly seen in holiday film footage but not mentioned), but this melancholy film was made with love and acceptance - and it also feels like the director was genuinely interested in finding out more about her father. [The film's official website]

    The sadly-defunct Blogs&Docs has been resurrected for a special issue on the films included in the festival (and their archive is well worth exploring too).

The Late Show: Arrebato / Rapture (Iván Zulueta, 1980)

   Shadowplay's The Late Show: Late Movie Blogathon runs between 1st and 7th December - check out David Cairns's site to find links to other contributions. The aim is to focus on a film from late in a person's career - whether people go out on a high or not - but it doesn't have to be a recent film, or someone who has recently died. Learning from my mistake last year, I decided to find an interesting film as the starting point rather than the person whose 'late film' it is. So, having watched it for the first time earlier this year, my contribution (and my 200th post!) is on the influential underground classic Arrebato / Rapture (Iván Zulueta, 1980) and the stories around it.

Will More and Iván Zulueta on the set of Arrebato

Update, August 2017: This post has been moved to my new blog, apart from the clip below (which I've been unable to transfer) - the post can now be found here.

Luis García Berlanga (1921 - 2010) and Juan Antonio Bardem (1922 - 2002)

Luis García Berlanga front left and Juan Antonio Bardem centre, on the set of Esa pareja feliz. Picture taken from the Berlanga Film Museum website

"[Spanish cinema] is politically ineffectual, socially false, intellectually poverty-stricken, aesthetically-void and industrially stunted" - Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955

"Berlanga is not a Communist, he is something much worse: he is a bad Spaniard" - Francisco Franco, allegedly (quoted in Marsh 2006: 122)  

   The 28th Leeds International Film Festival is currently offering a joint retrospective of the two directors - who trained at film school together - concentrating on the early stages of their careers (effectively their key films made during the dictatorship) but also including a few films made by later generations of directors who can be said to have cinematic links to Berlanga and Bardem - Víctor Erice's El espíritu de la colmena (1973), Carlos Saura's Cría cuervos (1976), and Pedro Almodóvar's Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? (1984).

   Although he co-scripted Bienvenido Mr Marshall!, arguably Bardem is somewhat shortchanged by the selection of films - the absence of Calle Mayor / Main Street (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1956) seems a glaring omission. Perhaps Berlanga's films from the period have better withstood the passing of time, their sharpness not dulled one iota (I say this having seen very few of Bardem's films). But Bardem's public criticisms of the cinema made in Spain - and his political commitment (which saw him jailed during the dictatorship - he was a member of the Communist party) - are addressed and / or echoed in the form and content of films made by Erice and Saura. The surprise is perhaps how much Berlanga and Bardem got past the censors - although their films were censored, they still seem pretty blunt in their criticisms of the regime and the Establishment - although maybe the metaphorical style of Erice and Saura (with which I'm more familiar) was a case of filmmakers learning from the postwar generation and cloaking their critique in a layer of opacity (although they still had their fair share of battles with State censorship). 

   Another connection across the years is Fernando Fernán Gómez, represented here as an actor in Berlanga and Bardem's joint directorial debut Esa pareja feliz (made in 1951 but not released until 1953) and El espíritu de la colmena, but he also worked with Saura (Ana y los lobos / Ana and the Wolves (1973), Mama cumplé 100 años / Mama Turns 100 (1979), and Los zancos / The Stiltwalkers (1984)) and Almodóvar (Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (1999)). He is little known beyond the Erice film in the UK, but he was a colossus of Spanish cinema (he died in 2007) with a long and varied career both in front of and behind the camera (he had 212 credits as an actor and 30 as a director (the majority of which were also written by him)) - should I ever finish the Carlos Saura Challenge (hahaha...), I wouldn't mind investigating the films he directed.

   Although his films satirise social issues and regularly skewer the Establishment (both during and after the dictatorship), Berlanga had a more complicated political background than Bardem - Berlanga's father was a Republican who was jailed after the Civil War, at which juncture the future director joined the División Azul (a volunteer regiment sent by Franco to fight alongside the Germans on the Russian Front during World War Two), but he would later officially become 'an enemy of the regime' after the gathering known as the Salamanca Conversations in 1955 (the occasion of Bardem's infamous statement at the top of this post).

   Almodóvar's films more obviously connect with those of Berlanga (although Bardem repeatedly returned to Almodóvar's favoured genre of melodrama) - while Berlanga's work often depicts a realistic social milieu, the humour taps in to Spanish traditions of costumbrismo (effectively a series of stereotypes relating to the rural and working classes, not to be taken as realistic, which took on an ironic edge from the 1950s) and esperpento (in which a distorted version of reality is utilised in order to critique it), which can also be discerned in some of the films by the man from La Mancha (and also those of the other Spanish director who has a retrospective at Leeds - Álex de la Iglesia (who I will write about next week)).

   Both Berlanga and Bardem had long careers - the former directed his last feature in 1999, the latter in 1998 - so there are plenty more of their films to explore if the retrospective piques your interest.

I will add links to the respective reviews of the films listed below as and when they go online.

• Esa pareja feliz / That Happy Couple (Luis García Berlanga & Juan Antonio Bardem, 1953)
• Bienvenido Mr Marshall! / Welcome Mr Marshall! (Luis García Berlanga, 1953)
• Muerte de un ciclista / Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)
• Plácido (Luis García Berlanga, 1961)
• El verdugo / The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga, 1963)
• El espíritu de la colmena / The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973)
• Cría cuervos / Raise Ravens (Carlos Saura, 1976)
• Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? / What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Pedro Almodóvar, 1984)

Edificio España / The Building (Víctor Moreno, 2013)

This post has moved to my new blog - you can find it here.

En tierra extraña / In a Foreign Land (Icíar Bollaín, 2014)

This post has been moved to my new blog - you can find it here.




Trailer IN A FOREIGN LAND by Iciar Bollain from Turanga Films on Vimeo.

Wounded...but not dead yet: La pantalla herida and the state of Spanish cinema

    I've been researching Spanish cinema for more than a decade and in that time it has almost continuously been described (within Spain, at least) as being in 'crisis'. That's sometimes a relative term - the obsession with box office statistics and Spanish cinema's fluctuating share of their home market is often written about in negative terms (e.g. 'down 5% on last year') without giving context to put the figures in perspective. For example, there were so-called slumps in 1996, 2000, 2002 but all three followed years that had generated substantial increases in takings (Ansola González 2003: 49), something that was repeated between 2006 (a bumper year for Spanish cinema) and 2007 (in which only El orfanato made a serious dent in the Spanish box office). But since around 2009 events have taken on a darker hue and in the last couple of years a 'perfect storm' of not-so-perfect conditions (consumer habits have changed but a series of controversial measures by successive governments have also had a crippling effect) have combined to knock the Spanish film industry off its feet with little sign of a coordinated or sustained fightback.
    It's a positive sign that I've recently seen two Spanish documentaries that look specifically at the changes that Spanish cinema is undergoing - BARATOmetrajes 2.0 (which I wrote about here) and La pantalla herida / The Wounded Screen (Luís María Ferrández, 2014). Taken together they give the impression that something constructive might transpire because people are starting to listen as well as talk (those working in the industry, at least - in the past week, the Spanish government has shown itself happy to blend the vindictive with the economically stupid: reaction here, here, and here). Luís María Ferrández organised a series of discussions - in the spirit of the 1955 Conversations of Salamanca - with sets of people from different sections of the film industry (a full list of participants is below) and filmed the resulting conversations about finance, production, distribution, and exhibition.
    All of the participants agree that Spanish cinema is in dire straits, and that this state of being has been allowed to continue for too long - either by being ignored or simply not being dealt with effectively - but beyond that initial point of agreement, the film expands into diverse discussions as to the causes of the malaise and what possible solutions might be. This diversity is where it gets really interesting because while there is a general sense of frustration or exasperation (in relation to certain issues, not least 'subvenciones', people are fed up with having to explain themselves and / or justify their livelihoods) - and at times a sad air of defeat - there is also anger and the sparks of people being willing to fight. So, where to begin?
    Education is mentioned several times in the context of cinema not being valued - one illustration given is that Spanish politicians are photographed at football matches and tennis games in the pursuit of votes, but you won't see them at the opera or cinema - and that to change that attitude some kind of audiovisual appreciation needs to filter into the school curriculum. 'Culture' is the operative word here; culture is more than entertainment, it is part of our identities, enriching lives, and it is also the manner in which a country exists in the outside world (through the images it generates). In the Spanish context, it's partly about countering the attitude of rejecting one's own culture - Spain does not have the reputation of respecting its own artists - and the proportion of the Spanish public who won't view a Spanish film simply because it is Spanish. The stereotype is that "Spanish cinema is the Civil War seen from the point of view of the Republicans" (statistics on how few Civil War films are made in Spain are repeated several times in the course of the film with great testiness). Politics rears its head at this point - is Spanish cinema too politicised? 
    There are proponents of the 'shut up and sing' attitude towards politically-inclined actors in the mix but I've never seen why artists should hide their political opinions - especially if they have the opportunity to give voice to sections of the community that are not being listened to (if the Spanish government feels publicly humiliated by the vocal criticism of its domestic and / or foreign policies that often occurs at the Goya Awards, they can rest assured that the right-wing press goes after the people in question with vehement intent the following day). Imanol Uribe shares the anecdote of a taxi driver who told him that by making their politics clear, those in Spanish cinema automatically set themselves up to be rejected by 50% of the population. I don't think it's that straightforward - I don't think the rejection of your home culture is (party) political - because although those Spanish films that are big box office hits (I'm thinking of the Torrente films or the likes of El orfanato, or most recently Ocho apellidos vascos) tend to be 'genre films' (for want of a better phrase - all films belong to one genre or other) with little in the way of overt politics, if the public were making their filmgoing choices on party-political lines then surely those few Spanish filmmakers at the other end of the political spectrum would have a better showing at the box office (on the basis that the Left are spoilt for choice, which would presumably split their audience, but the Right have little to choose from)? Did I miss Holmes & Watson: Madrid Days (2012) setting the Spanish box office alight?
    What does come across is a sense of frustration that - as an industry - they are not very good at countering misrepresentations that circulate in the press or society more generally. The discussions get most heated with the topic of subventions because it is here that there seems to be the greatest discrepancy between representation and reality. As many of them point out - a) it's a line of credit that has to be repaid, not simply a handout, b) numerous other industries, such as car manufacture and (bizarrely) the Catholic Church, receive far bigger subsidies than cinema, c) the money is reinvested in the local economy and generates jobs, d) all countries support their cinema (this goes back to the point of culture being more than entertainment). In the current economic climate, particularly in austerity-ridden Spain, public money being invested in cinema is not popular - but is that partly because of how it is represented (feckless Lefties running amok on taxpayers' money)? As producer Sandra Hermida urges, should they not be taking out full page ads in national newspapers proclaiming their achievements, the number of jobs created, and money invested locally? They generally need to be more proactive in countering misinformation. 
    Although the press is criticised for not supporting Spanish cinema, to the detriment of sustaining a connection with the Spanish public, I don't know that Spain is that different to other European countries (with the possible exception of France - which is held up a paragon of cinematic virtue more than once). Maybe my view is skewed because I mainly read the specialist press and perhaps the wider Spanish press give it little attention. But, for instance, how often does Empire put a British film on its cover? Sight & Sound probably has British covers (and coverage) more frequently (or focuses on British filmmakers, if not British films) but the mainstream likes of Empire and Total Film rarely put homegrown talent on the front cover and they're unlikely to get a multipage spread inside either. In contrast, in 2013 Fotogramas had 5 Spanish covers (which is unprecedented in the 9 years I've had a subscription), Cinemanía had 2 (which is 2 more than 2012), and at the more erudite end of the market Caimán Cuadernos de Cine had Spanish films on their cover 3 times and extensive coverage of what they're championing as 'el otro cine español' - so the specialist press in Spain is reacting to the free-fall being experienced by the Spanish film industry and attempting to actively promote the films it produces. Admittedly I don't know what their circulation figures are like, but it just seems a little simplistic to say that the Spanish press don't do enough to support Spanish cinema (although I would argue that in terms of the general press, and their attitudes towards the film industry, this probably is an area where politics come into play - as a group, and as individuals, 'los del cine' are attacked with regularity in the right-wing press).
    It's obviously difficult to change the structure of an industry, but most of the participants think that change is necessary - especially in terms of how money is distributed - and that even the most romantic ideal of the cinema needs to have an industry supporting it. Ángeles González Sinde and Agustín Díaz Yanes propose that the committees that distribute the money need to have people with experience of filmmaking and a better eye for talent, pointing out that the first films by Álex de la Iglesia and Alejandro Amenábar were produced by established directors (Pedro Almodóvar and José Luis Cuerda respectively) who recognised nascent talent and took steps to nurture it. The French system, wherein a percentage of the price of all cinema tickets feeds back into the French film industry, is held up as a possible model, and the price of tickets is generally seen as something that needs to be looked at more closely. On the one hand, tickets prices are seen as expensive (although as Rubén Ochandiano points out, people will spend more money buying a gin and tonic in a bar), but on the other nothing in life is free (piracy is also touched upon, with director Miguel Santesmases pointing to research that concluded that those who pirate the most are also those who are most willing to buy when given the opportunity - so accessibility is also an issue (BARATOmetrajes looks at that issue in a bit more detail)). Multiple contributors argue that the subventions should be aimed at the ticket prices rather than production costs, to encourage people back into cinemas, with producer Luis Manso suggesting that tickets prices for Spanish films could be cheaper than for US productions - not because their films aren't as good, but as a way of encouraging the Spanish public to see them (he also notes that it is impossible for Spanish productions to compete with Hollywood in terms of promotion or the number of copies of a film distributed). 
    One of the questions Luís María Ferrández asks is whether people can continue to make a living making cinema in Spain. The arts are a field with a strong vocational aspect and producer Pilar Robla counsels that each individual has to have a conversation with themselves about what working conditions they will accept, but the consensus seems to be that fewer and fewer people can 'live' on making films - and certainly there is not enough work to support the number of graduates coming out of various kinds of film schools. 'Cine low cost' is discussed in this context, as although the democratisation of technology has enabled filmmakers to make films without help from 'normal' sources, the participants here say that it's not a set-up that will allow them to continue making films and nobody earns (or is properly protected) on those productions (again, BARATOmetrajes contains some different points of view on this aspect). Producer/director Luís Miñarro argues that although crowdfunding can achieve specific things, it is not the basis of an industry. Likewise, talk of cooperatives - although useful in difficult circumstances - also highlights that you can't make a living long-term in those situations.
    If all of this sounds slightly depressing - and as I've already said, there is an air of sadness to the film - the vocational element of artistic endeavour is where hope remains. Too many people can't imagine a life without culture, without cinema: while people still have passion for film, cinema will survive. What this documentary suggests though is that cinema will have to utilise its capacity for innovation and creativity in order to adapt to the changing circumstances it finds itself in, and that there need to be more conversations and more communication within (and outside) the Spanish film industry if it is going to get back on its feet.
    Despite this turning into something of an essay, I've barely summarised what's discussed in La pantalla herida and I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in contemporary Spanish film. It's available to rent on Vimeo (here) - there are no English subtitles, but if you have any Spanish at all, have a go (I'm by no means fluent but I found most of it easy to follow - it helps if you have an awareness of the issues under discussion).



The participants: José Luis Acosta (president of SGAE, writer and director), Belén Bernuy (producer), Marisa Castelo (intellectual property lawyer), Fernando Cayo (actor), Raúl Cerezo (president of the Academy of Spanish Short Films), Jesús Ciordia (actors' agent), Eduardo Chapero Jackson (director), Agustín Díaz Yanes (writer and director), Karra Elejalde (actor), Javier Elorrieta (producer and director), Valentín Fernández Tobau (writer and president of abcguionistas), Gustavo Ferrada (producer), Gil Parrondo (art director), Enrique González Macho (president of the Academy of Cinema), Ángeles González Sinde (ex-Minister of Culture, ex-president of the Academy of Cinema, director and writer), Fernando Guillén Cuervo (actor, producer, and director), Sandra Hermida (producer), Antonio Hernández (director), Carlos Jiménez (director of the Museo del Cine in Madrid), Julia Juániz (editor), Juan Ramón Gómez Fabra (president of the distributors of Spain), Enrique López Lavigne (producer), Joaquín Manchado (camera operator and DoP), Luis Manso (producer), Fele Martínez (actor), Luis Miñarro (producer and director), Pepe Nieto (composer), Rubén Ochandiano (actor), Lourdes de Orduña (costume), Pedro Pérez (ex-president of FAPAE - federación de productores audiovisuales), Félix Piñuela (director of Versión española, TVE), Paco Ramos (producer), Diego Rodríguez (president of the platform of festivals of the community of Madrid), Pilar Robla (producer and president of APPA (Asociación profesionales producción audiovisual)), Gerardo Sánchez (director of Días de cine, TVE), Miguel Santesmases (director), Susana de la Sierra (Director General of the ICAA (Ministry of Culture)), Hugo Silva (actor), Imanol Uribe (director), Manolo Velasco (camera operator and DoP), Nacho Vigalondo (director), Luis Zahera (actor).