Clandestí: Forbidden Catalan Cinema Under Franco

Within Spain, Catalonia, particularly Barcelona, has often welcomed the forerunners of major social and cultural movements. Unsurprisingly, Barcelona was also the nation’s first gateway to the art and industry of film, a role the city enjoyed until sound cinema and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) moved the center of Spanish filmmaking to Madrid. Under Franco (1939-1975), the film industry was never nationalized but remained under the close supervision of government authorities. Political criticism, when it appeared in films, was dramatically veiled.

Clandestí: Forbidden Catalan Cinema Under Franco focuses on a generation of independent filmmakers whose innate unwillingness to conform forced them to produce, distribute, and exhibit radical films in Catalonia, with the furtive hope of sending them into the rest of Franco’s Spain. Shooting under the pretense of amateur filmmaking, they hid within crowds of protesters, producing works that were often highly creative and even experimental. They used short ends—bits of unexposed footage left over from shoots—made available to them by sympathetic professionals and distributed their films in recreation centers, private homes, cinema clubs, universities, social and cultural associations, and even parochial schools.

Being clandestine required these artists to develop aliases, which has led to some difficulties for historical investigation and film preservation. Many of these films have no credits, in order to protect the identities of its participants. While this body of work represents a margin of Spanish film history, it nevertheless contains some of the most crucial, first-hand documents of the end of the dictatorship, revealing problems of housing and social services, immigration, the fate of political prisoners, and restrictions on expression and free speech. These filmmakers, members of a generation born after the Civil War, also chronicled the ongoing psychological, social, economic, and cultural effects of the conflict. Forced to choose between exile and intellectual annihilation, they instead expressed themselves, putting their art in the service of a political movement that altered the course of Spanish history.

THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER, New York
Clandestí: Forbidden Catalan Cinema Under Franco

DATE: May 8-12, 2009
SIDE EVENTS: Panel discussion with the filmmakers at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center on Saturday, May 9, 3:00 p.m. More info here

PROGRAM I: MORALITY AND SOCIETY
Happy Parallel (1964, 32 ’) Enric Ripoll i Freixes, Josep Maria Ramon
Far from the Trees (1963-70, 103’) by Jacinto Esteva-Grew.
May 8: 1pm; May 10: 12 noon

PROGRAM II: COUNTRYSIDE AND THE CITY: THE STRUGGLE TO MAKE A LIVING
52 Sundays (1966, 29 ’) by Llorenc Soler. 52 Sundays
Long Journey to Rage (1969, 26 ’) by Llorenc Soler
Field for Men (Helena Lumbreras, Maria Lisa), 1973; Spain, 49 min.
May 8: 3:45pm; May 10: 2:45pm

PROGRAM III: THE ONGOING POLITICAL STRUGGLE
Protest February 1/8 1976, Anonymous, 1976; Spain, 20 min.
Mountain, Anonymous, 1970; Spain, 10 min.
The Sopar, Pere Portabella, 1974; Spain, 50 min.
OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION May 8: 6:30pm
May 10: 5pm

PROGRAM IV: AESTHETIC SUBVERSION: ANARCHY AND ABSURDITY
Lock Out, Antoni Padros, 1973; Spain, 127 min.
May 9: 8:30pm; May 10: 6:45pm; May 12: 1:30pm

PROGRAM V: OVER THE EDGE: THE AESTHETICS OF OUTRAGE
…and then none will laugh, Manel Esteban, 1968; Spain,16 min.
Sexperiencias, Jose Maria Nunes, 1968; Spain, 94 min.
May 8: 9pm; May 10: 9:00pm; May 12: 3:30pm

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