Clandestí: Invisible Catalan Cinema Under Franco, Cinematheque francaise, ParisDec 16–Feb 17

OPENING NIGHT! With filmmakers Antoni Padrós, Mariano Lisa and curators Manuel Barrios and Marta Sánchez!

Catalonia, and Barcelona in particular has often born or fostered the harbingers of major political and cultural movements. After the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939),both the artistic and cinematographic focus moved to Madrid, where power could be easily monitored. Under Franco (1939-1975), the film industry was not nationalized but remained under the tight control of the government. When the industry was to appear in movies, political criticism advanced hidden.

Clandestí: Invisible 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.

Access to a wealth of additional study material HERE. Includes supporting language texts, film clips and more!

Special thanks to Bernard Payen and The Institut Ramon Llull, an organization of public officials charged by the Catalan and Balearic governments to promote Catalan language and culture to the worldwide public. In order to advocate Catalan artistic expression, the organization provides grants, information and advice to international organizations that are planning events related to Catalan creative arts such as literature, music, theater, dance, film, visual arts and photography.