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.
 

OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION May 8: 6:30pm with EL SOPAR by Pere Portabella

Most of these films will be shown in digital formats, due to the difficulties of preserving them on their original formats.

Organized by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Pragda, curated by Marta Sánchez and Manuel Barrios. With the support of the Institut Ramon Llull. Collaboration for the exhibition comes from Filmoteca de Catalunya, the Embassy of Spain, Washington, DC. Special thanks to The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, Josep Guirao, Món diplomatic/ Unesco Andorra, Alicia Conesa and Montserrat Bailac, Research department of TV3 - Televisió de Catalunya and the filmmakers Llorenc Soler, Marti Rom and Maria Lisa. Film prints courtesy of Filmoteca de Catalunya, TV3 - Televisió de Catalunya, Institut del Cinema Català ICC and the filmmakers. This exhibition is part of CATALAN DAYS Arts, Food and Literature from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, an cultural program devoted to Catalan culture and artists.

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

DATE: May 8-12, 2009
SIDE EVENT: 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

INFO ON THE PROGRAM
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INFO ON CATALAN DAYS

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.
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

Only recently restored, Padrós creates a nightmarish, allegorical world peopled by politically and sexually unsatisfied characters that hover between lethargy and revolution. One of the most fascinating personalities in Spanish cinema, Padros worked as a bank clerk by day while creating this desperate cry for freedom secretly at night. We hope that Antoni Padros will be with us for this rare screening of his film. U.S. Premiere

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A revealing look at one of Barcelona’s more notorious neighborhoods, “El Paralelo,” known for its prostitution and torrid nightlife even during the Franco era. U.S. Premiere

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In 1974, on the night that militant anarchist Salvador Puig Antich was executed, five former political prisoners – Angel Abad, Jordi Cunill, Lola Ferreira, Narcís Julian, and Antonio Marín – gather in a farmhouse to prepare a meal and appear in a movie on the problems and issues arising from long prison sentences. A pillar of Spanish independent cinema, veteran avant-garde artist Portabella surprises with this highly intimate and moving political classic about the political struggle within prisons. OPENING NIGH RECEPTION TO FOLLOW

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One of the landmarks of Spanish cinema in the Sixties, Far from the Trees is a kind of “updating” of Bunuel’s classic Land Without Bread that focuses on the pervasive presence of popular traditions involving pain and death. Shot on weekends over 7 years, the film was a conscious protest against the then-fashionable image of Spain promoted by the regime of a rapidly modernizing nation. Restored 35mm print; Warning: the film contains scenes of animal abuse.

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Capturing the spirit of revolt that spread throughout the world in 1968, Esteva takes his critique beyond the regime to a more acidic rendering of Spain’s Catholic, bourgeois culture.  U.S. Premiere

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A charter member of the avant-garde “Barcelona School,” Nunes charts the reactions of an elderly man and a young girl living in a sheltered Spain at the news of the international groundswell of protests that characterized the late Sixties. The film features an extraordinarily complex sound track that alternates asynchronous sequences with seemingly random sounds of waves, steps, and cars. U.S. Premiere

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A key work by the only female directors active in the clandestine cinema movement, Field for Men explores rural poverty, highlighting both the difference and the similarities experienced in two very different regions, Galicia and Andalucia. U.S. Premiere

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The underside of the “Spanish miracle.” Crowds of men and women, leaving the countryside and entrusting their fates to the city. U.S. Premiere

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One of the finest works on the world of Spanish bullfighting, 52 Sundays chronicles the misadventures of a group of young men trying to become toreros (bullfighters). Soler captures the hopes and dreams of a class feeling it has fewer and fewer options to get by. U.S. Premiere

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Raw, incredibly immediate images of the widespread protests in favor of amnesty for political prisoners in 1975. A rare document of the popular nature of protests, these anonymously authored images are juxtaposed by comments culled from police radio messages. U.S. Premiere

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A document chronicling the sit-in protest by a group of artists and intellectuals in the Monastery of Montserrat against the trial of ETA militants held in Burgos in December 1970.  U.S. Premiere

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