Basque Film Series San Francisco Basque Cultural Center (abuztuak 26ean hasiko)

The Basque Educational Organization in conjunction with the Basque Cultural Center presents The Basque Film Series, which will showcase three feature length films along with a couple of shorts, to give the audience a taste of Basque Cinema. The series will be hosted by Pedro Oiarzabal, of the Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada Reno, who will introduce each film, give background information on the directors and on the historical context and will moderate a discussion session after the screenings.

Basque Cinema - an introduction

The controversy engendered by Julio Medem's Basque Ball: The Skin Against the Stone is only the latest bout in a struggle to represent and explore Basque identity on film. Early travelogues celebrated a unique landscape and heritage that had bred an indomitable race, and this Romantic notion of a historically, linguistically and culturally isolated nation in mainland Europe, with provinces spilling either side of the Pyrenees, would also charm foreign writers and film-makers such as Orson Welles.However, following the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), hagiography was countered by the oppressive policies and tactics of Franco's dictatorship (1939-75), which forbade the right of assembly and the use of the Basque language of Euskera, and drove dissenters into private film clubs that were a cover for political debate. Consequently, the union of political thought and action with film theory and practice propagated a forceful faith in documentary films as instruments of record and propaganda.

Meanwhile, the distinctive delights of Basque hospitality led to the establishment of the San Sebastian Film Festival in 1953, and various short film and documentary festivals followed. Basque documentarists sought to express the contrast and discord that defined their relationship with the centralized Francoist film industry and, though deprived of Euskera, their juxtaposition of sounds and images created an equivalent language of conflict that culminated in the introspective Ama Lur (1968). Made in the same year that saw an escalation in the violence that has overshadowed the development of the modern Basque Country, Ama Lur inspired many, both politically and artistically, to the extent that, following the end of the dictatorship, the first autonomous Basque government promptly dedicated 5% of its entire budget to the task of nation-building through revival of the indigenous film industry.

Many period epics followed, made by film-makers who took advantage of generous subsidies, and new production companies emerged. The Ikuska documentary series made by Bertan Filmeak provided apprenticeships for such as Imanol Uribe, whose progression through documentary, re-enactment and fiction dominated, influenced - and arguably skewed too much towards terrorism - the cinematic representation of the Basque Country. Other takes on Basque social themes and concerns, such as drug abuse and urban alienation, suggest the universal nature of these problems; but optimism, though rare, is not withheld.

Rob StoneBritish Film Institute Program

Short Films will be added to the program soon.

Tasio

1984, directed by Montxo Armendariz, 95 min, color, in Spanish with English subtitles.Friday, August 26th, 7:30pm, Basque Cultural CenterFree Admission.

"Tasio tells a based-on-fact story of a way of life known by very few, that of a charcoal-maker and poacher living at the edge of the law and society in the Basque province of Navarre. The movie is based on the life of Tasio Ochoa, a man who film director Montxo Armendáriz met while making a documentary about the charcoal makers (Nafarroako ikazkinak, 1981) of Navarre. Armendáriz, who is also from Navarre, felt a kinship to Tasio's fiercely independent spirit. The movie is beautifully filmed by cinematographer José Luis Alcaine. The scenes of the mountains and forests where Tasio makes his living are lovingly depicted. They are depicted in a way which shows their permanence in relation to the transient humans who wander this landscape. The glowing cinematography also shows the fondness that both Tasio and the film's director, Armendáriz, have for this part of Euskal Herria.

A Los Cuatro Vientos(Lauaxeta)

1987, directed by Jose A. Zorrilla, 78 min, color, in Spanish with English subtitles.Friday, September 23rd, 7:30pm, Basque Cultural CenterFree Admission.

A Los Cuatro Vientos (Lauaxeta) / To the Four Winds - Semi-fictional account of Estaban Urkiaga, Basque poet, journalist and major in Basque Army during Spanish Civil War, particularly events of 1937 leading up to Urkiaga's execution by Falangists.

El Misterio Galindez

2003, directed by Gerardo Herrero, 126 min, color, in English & Spanish.Saturday, October 22nd, 7:30pm, Basque Cultural CenterFree Admission.

El Misterio Galíndez / The Galíndez Mystery - Arriving in Spain to work on her doctoral thesis about Galíndez, Muriel Colber receives a tip that leads her to the last people to have seen him alive. She discovers the controversy he caused in the Dominican Republic by publishing an exposé of Trujillos dictatorship -- a work which became a major rallying point for Trujillos opponents -- and travels from Spain to the Dominican Republic and Miami to uncover the secret behind his untimely demise. Unwittingly, she has opened a Pandoras Box and those responsible for Galíndezs death are determined to keep their identities under wraps. Galíndez was an nationalist from the Basque Country who had to leave Spain in 1939, when Republicans lost the Civil War. He lived first in Santo Domingo and later went to New York as a University Professor. Just after publishing his Thesis about Trujillo as a book, he was kidnapped and disappeared. His body was never found.

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