The government claims cinema as a memory conformator and the “courage” of filmmakers against the dictatorship

The Spanish film library hosts a cycle of projections within the framework of the fifty -year -old woman of Franco’s death

The Ministers of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, the socialist Ángel Víctor Torres, and the head of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, to add, have claimed on Wednesday the representatives of the world of cinema who planted face to Franco and this art as a memory as a conformator and social conscience.

They have done it in the presentation of the ‘images for a country in freedom. Cinema, Citizenship and Democracy (1975-2025) ‘Organized by the Spanish Filmoteca, within the framework of the program’ Spain in Libertad. 50 years’.

Torres stressed that the current “attacks on democratic values” and “totalitarian temptations” make this cycle even more necessary and has valued the work of filmmakers who worked in Spain in full dictatorship “despite the risks”, raffling Franco censorship.

No excess films of the civil war

In addition, it has been in total disagreement with those who complain that Spanish cinema has “abused” the theme of the civil war or dictatorship, something, in their opinion, totally necessary, just like the films set in the Second War World.

“What would it be of ours without ‘Life is beautiful’?” He has set as an example. He has also stressed that if ‘Ay, Carmela’, ‘The language of the butterflies’ or ‘The infinite trench’ would have contributed to “forgotten land” and has highlighted the role of cinema as a conscientious conformator social.

For his part, Urtasun has referred to those who made cinema in those years as members of “a modernity cell that torn the positions and the repression of a dictatorial regime.” “His was a rebellion and a courage that faced impositions that had to do with our lives, our freedoms and our rights,” he said.

Urtasun has referred to cinema as a “Citizenship School and Memory Capsule”, recalled the strike of actors and actresses of 1975 and highlighted the response of Spanish culture to “intolerance, hatred and authoritarianism.”

“What began in 1975 was not a path of roses towards freedom. And our celebrations today have to ignore that pain also from the past. You cannot blur and a new account of memory and the lived,” he warned.

Gutiérrez Aragón, Molina, Bardem and Bollaín

As detailed by the Technical Counselor of the Spanish Filmoteca, Nuria Misert, more than 20 productions will be screened, among which there will be short and long fiction and documentaries, and which will be presented by participants in them, members of the Academy or historians.

The first will be ‘black litter’ (1977) that will present its director, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón. To this film about the violence of the extreme right in the transition, Torres has been referred to regretting that now the “Soflala to recruit young fascists” are now heard. ”

They can also see ‘Maixabel’, by Iciar Bollaín; ‘Let’s go Barbara’, by Cecilia Bartolomé; and ‘Night Function’, by Josefina Molina; ‘El Puente’, by Juan Antonio Bardem, and the report ‘after’ José Juan and Cecilia Bartolomé, among others.

On her side, the commissioner of the program of activities ’50 years of freedom ‘, historian Carmina Astrán, has shown her desire that these projections invite reflection not only about the past, but also especially the way traveled by Spain in The last five decades, as well as on the future of the country and democracy.