The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was not just a Spanish affair. Around the world film-makers of the time, and many others since then, have found it impossible not to engage with this terrible period. In their many different ways, artists like Ernst Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Alain Resnais, André Malraux, Picasso, Paul Elouard or George Orwell all reacted to what was happening in Spain, drawing attention to it through their work.

With the triumph of Franco's troops Spain entered a dark period of repression and censorship. There was no space for cinema to engage with the recent war and the tyranny of the new system - though some film-makers did manage to get around the censors and present visions of a Spain rather different from the regime's.

Following the death of the Generalisimo in 1975, Spain began to explore the Civil War and its legacy in earnest. For some film-makers artistic freedom meant freedom to look back and rexamine a distorted historical period. Others began to offer celluloid visions of a new bright future.

Cinema and The Spanish Civil War offers different views of the period and its consequences. There are documentaries and films that look directly at the war itself, as well as films that use the period as a backdrop to other stories. These have been produced in film cultures as diverse as Hollywood, The USSR, Spain, France, UK, and Eastern Germany over a span of 70 years. The programme also comprises a selection of NO-DOs, Noticiarios Documentales, or News and Documentaries, cinema propaganda newsreels that Franco used from 1939 until 1981 to update the population about the very latest official truths.

The very first film being from 1937 and the most recent production from 2007, this programme represents 70 years of cinema trying to do justice to these historical events.

Joana Granero
Curator