EIFF: Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960)

    Overall at EIFF this year, my favourite screenings were the classics - I saw The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974) and The Driver (Walter Hill, 1978). But Macario was the surprise of the festival for me. A magic realist fable set in the 18th century - but nonetheless feeling incredibly modern - Roberto Gavaldón's film is at times jaw-droppingly beautiful (courtesy of Gabriel Figueroa) but also sharp and humorous in its presentation of a simple woodcutter in a deal with Death. My review is now up at Eye for Film - here.
    David Cairns has written about Macario (here) in his regular 'The Forgotten' column - like him, I'd like to see more of Gavaldón's films because on the basis of this one he merits further investigation.

    This is the last of my EIFF posts. I reviewed nine films for Eye for Film in total, four of which were Mexican films that I've already linked to on here, but among the remainder The Iron Ministry (viewable over at Doc Alliance), Precinct Seven Five (which I think is getting a UK release later in the summer) and Prophet's Prey are all interesting documentaries about very different subjects - the latter is quite harrowing viewing, but I'd watch the other two again (in fact it was my second viewing of The Iron Ministry). Normal service on the blog will resume shortly...

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.

Iberodocs, Glasgow: N-VI Vanishing Roads and Humano

    My reviews of two films showing at the 2nd weekend of the 2015 edition of Iberodocs are now online:

• N-VI Vanishing Roads (Pela del Álamo, 2012) - a portrait of the abandoned N-VI road between Madrid and Galicia, presented through the people who still live alongside it. My review is here.
• Humano (Alan Stivelman, 2013) - 25-year-old Alan sets off on an existential journey in the Andean mountains, searching for answers to fundamental questions about what it is to be human. My review is here.

Pela del Álamo's film continues the festival's 'Focus on Galicia' strand and looks at what happened to the communities alongside the N-VI road when it was superseded by the A-6 motorway. The film accumulates a sense of loss and isolation as it progresses but also captures the stubborn endurance of those people left on the wayside - it's well worth catching if you get the chance. Humano is not really my cup of tea as films go, but if you're more open to adventures in spiritual enlightenment than I am, you may find something of interest in director Alan Stivelman's Andean quest.

Interview: Xurxo Chirro

Vikingland

    I contacted director Xurxo Chirro a couple of months ago when I was writing about 'Un impulso colectivo' and needed to track down a way of seeing Une histoire seule. So, when I realised that his film Vikingland (which I had already seen) was screening at Iberodocs, I contacted him again and asked whether he had the time to answer some questions about the film via email - he kindly agreed, and the resulting interview has been published over at Eye for Film (here).

    Where I've had the opportunity to interview directors in the past month, besides asking about the specific film they're promoting, I've also asked about 'el otro cine español' (obviously a topic of ongoing interest for me). In this case, I also asked about a more regional phenomenon - New Galician Cinema (Novo Cinema Galego). I've seen a number of films pertaining to this group but they were presented in isolation, so I don't know very much about the group collectively or how it came into being - i.e. why has there been this cinematic flourishing in the region. So the interview was enlightening for me in that context. But Xurxo's comment about 'el otro cine español' being like an archipelago with filmmakers either working alone or in smaller clusters (rather than a collective movement) also chimes with what I observed in Barcelona, and some of what filmmakers there said in response to similar questions on the general topic (in essence, I think there was another collective cluster detectable among certain films at the D'A Festival this year, in terms of filmmakers who are actively collaborating with each other and who share perspectives and cinematic attitudes). 
    As I've said on here before, I find the overall shape of 'el otro cine español' (as it is written about in Spanish publications) difficult to approach in an analytical way because the range of filmmakers included is broad and unwieldy. My method of breaking it down into a manageable starting point has been to concentrate on the documentaries, but I'm now wondering whether it might be more useful to identify a few of the concentrated clusters of filmmakers and use them as a starting point. I don't think this particularly contradicts what I've written so far on the subject; it is a refinement of my perspective and methods. But I will ponder this some more while I write up things from Barcelona - and I also have a specific topic I want to explore in relation to documentaries by filmmakers such as Víctor Moreno and Pablo Llorca, among others - so this won't be an immediate change in focus, but I may start to change my approach.

Iberodocs, Edinburgh: Arraianos and Vikingland

    The first of my reviews relating to Iberodocs have now gone online. Both films are part of the festival's 'Focus on Galicia' strand drawing attention to both the phenomenon of New Galician Cinema and a particular trend for documentary fictions.

• Arraianos (Eloy Enciso, 2012) - a poetic portrait of the borderlands between Galicia and Portugal. My review is here.
• Vikingland (Xurxo Chirro, 2011) - footage filmed by a Galician sailor who was working on a ferry between Germany and Denmark in the early 1990s is arranged to echo Melville's Moby Dick. My review is here.

Neither is a straightforwardly conventional film and would be rich texts to explore if you were considering issues of identity (personal, regional, and national), work, metaphysics, the natural world (and our place in it), and emigration - they have enough going on that I could write another review of each, focussed on entirely different elements. Both are worth seeking out if you get the opportunity. Arraianos is available on DVD (with optional English subtitles) directly from the people who made it - here.
    My other Iberodocs reviews will be of films screening in Glasgow, so I will write a separate post for them next weekend. I'll also write another post later today, to link to the interview I did with Xurxo Chirro.

Iberodocs 2015

    My coverage of the D'A Festival is still ongoing (see my previous post), but the 2nd edition of Iberodocs starts this week in Scotland - it takes place in Edinburgh from this Thursday and moves to Glasgow the following weekend. I've written a preview for Eye for Film, which you can read here. 
    If you're able to go to either weekend, I can recommend Vikingland (dir. Xurxo Chirro), Arraianos (dir. Eloy Enciso), and La plaga / The Plague (dir. Neus Ballús) - plus, Arraianos is screening with Lois Patiño's short film Montaña en sombra, which I found breathtaking when I saw it in Bradford last year alongside Patiño's Costa da Morte (my favourite film last year, as if you need reminding). I'll be reviewing some of the films showing at Iberodocs over the coming fortnight, and I also have an interview with Xurxo Chirro about how Vikingland came to be and what New Galician Cinema is all about. I will post the links on here as and when they exist.

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.  

Sobre la marxa / The Creator of the Jungle (Jordi Morató, 2014)

My review of Sobre la marxa - as seen at the Leeds International Film Festival last weekend - is up over at Eye for Film, here. I'll return to the film on here when I start pulling together my thoughts on the various Spanish documentaries I've been watching in the last few months.

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.

Speaking Truth About Power: Documentary, Censorship, and Rocío

Rocío (Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 1980), a.k.a. the rabbit hole I fell down during August.
    It started with a book review. I was working my way through a backlog of film magazines, when a book review (by Antonio Santamarina) for El caso Rocío: La historia de una película secuestrada por la transición (edited by Ángel del Río Sánchez, Francisco Espinosa Maestre, and José Luis Tirado) caught my eye in the May edition of Caimán Cuadernos de Cine. 'A film hijacked by the Transition' piqued my interest, as did the fact that the film was a documentary (yes, that is what I'm supposed to be looking into at the moment) and that the book came with both a copy of the uncensored version of the film and a documentary, El caso Rocío (José Luis Tirado, 2013), about the making of Rocío and its subsequent legal troubles. And then I watched it. In fact, I think I've watched Rocío half a dozen times now, but I can't really explain why it has drawn me in as it has.
    I set myself challenges on here, or start projects, in an attempt to give myself a structure to write within. I'm someone who thinks through writing (anyone who has spoken to me immediately after a film viewing will know that I'm rarely coherent in my thoughts at that stage), but it's not often that I write due to a sense of compulsion - Rocío is, however, one of those instances. I wrote because the film was stuck in my head, because I couldn't find anything written about it in English (beyond a New York Times story about the trial), because in the emphasis placed on the censorship of the film people seem to have avoided writing about it as a film (which is a shame because it is an incredibly rich, and visually distinctive, piece of filmmaking), and because it tapped into the sheer enjoyment I get from properly delving into an unfamiliar film and working out how it 'functions'. I decided to focus on the two aspects that pulled me down the rabbit hole - the story of the injustice suffered by Fernando Ruiz Vergara and Rocío, and the visual components of the film itself.
    What I've written is over at Mediático.

Note: the censored version of the film is available on YouTube with English subtitles.

Plan of Action: Documentaries and Blurred Borders

   It has been my intention in the last couple of months (I've kept getting waylaid by other things, as is my habit) to start imposing some kind of order on to my 2014 project ('El otro cine español'). The filmmakers who are being labelled with that tag are a disparate and unwieldy bunch - while I'm trying to work out who I would classify as belonging to this 'movement' (and how I will define 'it', and my own classifications) it seems sensible to divide them up into more manageable groups, even if I later draw the lines in different places.
    As I've previously said, I have some qualms with Caimán Cuaderno de Cine's criteria for their list. The actual articles they've published on the theme are more inclusive (so, even more filmmakers are mentioned, but that makes more sense to me - i.e. there is a thread that can be followed further back than CdC's arbitrary (to me) one year period). I've been reading my way through the articles and making translated notes (it would appear that the only way information will stick in my mind is in English), or in the case of Carlos Losilla's key article ('Un impulso colectivo', Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, September 2013, pp.6-8) I've written a full translation. As a side note, I'd like to say that the enthusiasm and excitement of the Spanish critics (in CdC but also websites such as Blogs&Docs) who have been writing about - and championing - these films (and particularly in what they've written about the newer group of filmmakers as being a group of people united by the conviction that you have to make images of the world and of ourselves with the aim of changing it and changing us (Losilla 2014: 22)) is compelling and infectious, and manages to even survive my broken up manner of translation (i.e. having to stop to look a word up in a dictionary when I'm not sure I've understood something properly). I've still got articles to work my way through, but I now have a better idea of the key themes or strands to what constitutes this 'other' cinema and also a view on which filmmakers I think need to be added to my considerations.
    I've come to the conclusion that documentaries are where I need to start - because of the number of documentaries being made by these filmmakers (and there are a lot of filmmakers who switch back and forth between making documentaries and making fiction films, which seems unusual to me because I can't think of many examples of this happening extensively elsewhere - Werner Herzog is one of the few names who springs to mind but please feel free to inform me of others), the manner in which documentaries more obviously fit with the apparent impetus and intentions of this 'movement' (I'm not 100% clear on this aspect at the moment, but that's my instinct), and also because it is some (but not all) of the more straightforwardly 'fictional' filmmakers (they make more or less exclusively fiction features - I'm not suggesting that they themselves are fictional, although that would make for an interesting digression) who I have more difficulty seeing quite how they fit into the larger collective. I've said 'straightforwardly' fictional because there are also a group of films that blur the borders between documentary and fiction - for example, in La plaga (Neus Ballús, 2013) the characters are local people playing fictionalised versions of themselves - and I'm going to include those films with the documentaries, at least in this initial period of research. So I need to do some reading on documentaries generally, but also look at documentary traditions within Spain as well.
    That almost inevitably means looking at filmmakers who date back to earlier periods but I don't want to get bogged down in the past too much, so I'm restricting myself to two antecedents for the time being - Joaquim Jordá (because he is frequently referred to in relation to this contemporary 'other' cinema) and Pere Portabella (because his films are clearly 'other', his filmography includes documentaries (some of them - particularly the political documentaries - key works in Spanish cinema), and I've recently watched all of them - rule no.4: always include something on your 'to do' list that you have already done, so that you can cross it off straight away). At this stage I'm not intending to write about either of them - I just want to watch as many of their films as I can get hold of, so that I have a better idea of connections Spanish critics might be seeing. It may be that as I read more, I come across more names or films that I'd like to see - but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that it's the people working now who I'm wanting to investigate and write about.
    Who makes the first cut? Again, I'm sure that more names will occur to me - or cross my radar - once I get going, but I think that Jose Luis Guerin (not on CdC's list) and Isaki Lacuesta (on CdC's list) both have to be on my list without question. The two of them move back and forth between documentary and fiction (or blur the borders in an individual film) and they've also got established careers, so there is a trail to be followed and they possibly act as a bridge between cinematic past and present (again, that's just my instinct at the moment). The other filmmakers I'm intending to look at initially are mainly people who are on CdC's list (with a few additional ones who have already crossed my path), most of whom have fairly short filmographies, but inclusion (or not) will partly depend on whether I can get hold of / view their films. It is about the films, after all. Documentaries actually seem to be easier to track down than some of the fiction films (another reason to start with them), so I do have access in some form or other to the majority of films in my initial selection (see the notes in the image above).
    That's where I'm starting - I don't know how frequently I will write about the films on here, but I will continue to at least give an indication of what I've been watching. I'm doing general reading at the moment and then I'm intending to spend some time just watching the films, before doing some more specific research. I'm taking notes when I view things already, so I may write them up in brief batches or something - but I'm not setting a schedule for including stuff on here, and in terms of my overall schedule for the project, I need a better idea of what I'm dealing with before I start setting myself deadlines. To be continued...

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).

Mercado de futuros / Futures Market (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011)

I had a weekend of watching Spanish documentaries including La pantalla herida / The Wounded Screen (Luís María Ferrández, 2014), which discusses the current sorry state of the Spanish film industry - I'm intending to write something about that one in the next week or so, but it may have to wait until I get back from a few days at the Edinburgh international film festival (which starts this week).