Spain (Un)censored: BFI Southbank 2008Jan 15–Feb 17

Is it possible to make good films during a dictatorship? Between Buñuel and Dalí­ (Un chien andalou, 1929) and Almodóvar’s first film (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap, 1980) there emerged a whole series of directors whose films developed the visual and oral language which would be used by subsequent Spanish film-makers. This is a cinema, argues Marta Sánchez, which has not always received the recognition it deserves.

Spanish cinema flourished during General Francisco Franco’s regime (1939–75) despite the dictatorship. Provoked by the system they lived under, Spanish directors told dramatic stories about the people’s hopes and troubles by using humor and symbols that reached their audiences and sidestepped the censors.
We are now showing a first-rate ensemble of films, which not only applaud freedom of expression, but also the courage and intelligence of the filmmakers who made them, who managed to find alternative ways of expression to appease censorship without relinquishing what they wanted to transmit.

More than three decades later, these twenty features reveal an enthralling, daring, and formally innovative era of Spanish cinema.
All films are from Spain and in Spanish, with English subtitles.

In memory of Fernando Fernán Gómez