Basque Cinema: A Cultural and Political History 9780755694860, 9781780769820

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The convergence of tradition and innovation in Aupa Etxebeste! (Hooray for Etxebeste!, Asier Altuna & Telmo Esnal, 2005) (Alokatu S. L., Irusoin). Courtesy of Asier Altuna and Irusoin. Axun (Itziar Aizpuru) and Maite (Mariasun Pagoaga) express longing and belonging in 80 egunean (For Eighty Days, Jon Gara˜no & Jose Mari Goenaga, 2010) (Irusoin, Moriarti Produkzioak). Courtesy of Jose Mari Goenaga and Irusoin. Ricardo’s deathbed in Un drama en Bilbao (A Drama in Bilbao, Alejandro Olavarr´ıa, 1924) (Hispania Film). Courtesy of Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca. The foregrounding of Basque customs and traditional dress in El mayorazgo de Basterretxe (The Basterretxe Estate, V´ıctor Azcona & Mauro Azcona, 1929) (Producciones Azcona). Courtesy of Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca. Imanol Uribe receives the Premio Perla del Cant´abrico a la Mejor Pel´ıcula de Habla Hispana for El proceso de Burgos (The Burgos Trial, 1979) at the 27th San Sebastian Film Festival (8–19 September 1979). Courtesy of Festival de San Sebasti´an/Donostia Zinemaldia. Press panel at the 59th San Sebastian Film Festival (16–24 September 2011) featuring the director and protagonists of Bertsolari in the Official Section: Miren Amuritza, Amets Arzallus, Maialen Lujanbio, Asier Altuna, Andoni Ega˜na, Jon Sarassua. Courtesy of Festival de San Sebasti´an/Donostia Zinemaldia; Photographer: Montse Castillo.

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Celebrations of Basqueness in Ama Lur (Motherland, Fernando Larruquert & N´estor Basterretxea, 1968) (Distribuciones Cinematogr´aficas Ama Lur, Frontera Films S. A.) Courtesy of Andoni Esparza Leibar. Garazi (Silvia Munt) endures torture in Akelarre (Witches’ Sabbath, Pedro Olea, 1984) (Amboto Producciones Cinematogr´aficas). Gaizka (Juan Jos´e Ballesta) and Txomin Garay (Carmelo G´omez) explore generational conflict in La casa de mi padre (Black Listed, Gorka Merchan, 2008) (Media films, Montfort Producciones, Videntia Frames). Courtesy of Gorka Merchan. Sacrifice and example in Estado de excepci´on (State of Emergency, I˜naki N´un˜ ez, 1977) Courtesy of I˜naki N´un˜ ez and Grupo Araba Films. Konrad´ın (Fernando Guill´en Cuervo), Juantxo (Karra Elejalde) with the ring and Pako (Alberto San Juan) gambling in Airbag (Juanma Bajo Ulloa, 1997) (Asegarce Zinema, Canal +, Degeto Film, Euskal Telebista, MGN Films, Marea Films, Road Movies Dritte Produktionen, Televisi´on Espa˜nola, Virgin). Courtesy of Josean Cantalapiedra of Bainet Media. Alba (Elena Anaya) and Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) constructing identities in Habitaci´on en Roma (Julio Medem, 2010) (Morena Films, Alicia Produce, Canal + Espa˜na, Instituto de Cr´edito Oficial, Instituto de la Cinematograf´ıa y de las Artes Audiovisuales, Intervenciones Novo Film 2006 Aie, Televisi´on Espa˜nola, Wild Bunch). Courtesy of Crist´obal Garc´ıa at Morena Films. The woman (Iazua Larios) inspects her body horror in M´aquina (Machine, Gabe Ib´an˜ ez, 2006). Courtesy of Txema Mu˜noz and Kimuak (Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca). Tipo (Nacho Vigalondo) (centre) pauses before leading his captive chorus in 7.35 de la ma˜nana (7:35 in the Morning, Nacho Vigalondo, 2003) (Ibarretxe & Co. S.L.). Courtesy of Txema Mu˜noz and Kimuak (Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca). Josu Zubizarreta and Luis Zubizarreta in Zuretzako (For You, Javi Zubizarreta, 2011). Courtesy of Javi Zubizarreta. (By the Old Bridge Productions). Devouring children in Amaren ideia (Mother’s Idea, Maider Oleaga, 2010) (La Maroma Producciones, Moztu Filmak). Courtesy of Maider Oleaga. The man (Ram´on Agirre) considers his options in Tercero B (3B, Jos´e Mar´ıa Goenaga, 2002) (Moriarti Produkzioak). Courtesy of Txema Mu˜noz and Kimuak (Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca).

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The weekly colloquium and screening of Cineclub FAS. Courtesy of Cineclub FAS. Claudia (Sabrina Garciarena) and Chema (Gorka Otxoa) in Bilbao’s Loiu airport in Pagafantas (Friend Zone, Borja Cobeaga, 2009) (Antena 3 Films, Canal + Espa˜na, Euskal Telebista, Sayaka Producciones Audiovisuales, Telespan 2000, V´ertice 360). Carmelo G´omez, Txema Blasco and Kandido Uranga play themselves revisiting the baserri of Vacas (Cows, Julio Medem, 1991) in Bazt´an (I˜naki Elizalde, 2012) (Erpin 360, Euskal Telebista, Lazo Films, Orreaga Filmak). Courtesy of I˜naki Elizalde.

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Acknowledgements This book is the product of a collaboration between its co-authors, who depended upon and are immensely grateful to many individuals and institutions. Thanks are due to our respective institutions, the University of Birmingham in the UK and the University of Deusto in the Basque Country. Thanks are also due to the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Major Research Fellowship to Rob Stone, without which this book would not have been possible, and to the Basque Government and the University of Deusto for so generously supporting the research and production of this volume. To Philippa Brewster, Anna Coatman and all at I.B.Tauris, as well as series editor L´ucia Nagib, our sincere thanks. We would also like to express our gratitude to Joxean Fern´andez, director of the Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca (Basque Film Archive), as well as Mari Carmen Ausan and all the kind and efficient staff who made us welcome and responded so kindly to our requests. Interviewees who gave generously of their time included Gorka Merchan, ´ I˜naki Arteta, Asier Altuna, Jos´e Mari Goenaga, Jorge Gil, Txaro Landa, Angel Amigo, Txus Retuerto, Joxean Mu˜noz, Carlos Ju´arez, Alain Xalabarde and Javi Zubizarreta. Excellent friends and wise colleagues who aided us in countless and varied ways included Paul Cooke, Carlos P´erez, Alex Marlow-Mann, Alan O’Leary, Chris Homewood, Barry Jordan, Peter William Evans, Chris Perriam, Joanna Rydzewska, Andrew Watts, Axel Bangert, James Walters, Leyre Arrieta Alberdi, Dunja Fehimovi´c, Amparo Mart´ınez Herranz, Catherine Grant, Julia Paz Moreno, Ann Marie Stock, Guy Baron, Bel´en Vidal, Steven Marsh, Gorka Merchan, Michael Samuel, Ann Davies, Mar´ıa Jes´us Pando, Annabel Martin, Cristina Ortiz, Conchi Otaola and the marvellous Cineclub FAS.

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Thank you / Gracias / Eskerrik asko.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

And finally, as ever, our deepest gratitude to Esther Santamar´ıa Iglesias and Josu´e Mendivil Caldentey, to whom this book is dedicated, for their advice, support and love.

Rob Stone & Mar´ıa Pilar Rodr´ıguez

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Preface Bearing in mind the primary readership of this book dictated that the common English versions of placenames were used throughout. San Sebastian instead of Donostia or even San Sebasti´an, for example, and Biscay instead of Bizkaia or Vizcaya. Organisations and institutions keep their original names, however, whether in Euskara (Basque) or Castilian Spanish or both, and several acronyms, such as those of the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ/PNV) and the Basque Film Archive (EF/FV) are rendered in a way that represents both languages. Others, such as SSFF for the San Sebastian Film Festival, reflect the internationalism of the subject. The choice of film titles throughout tends to respect the language in which the films were made and are best known. Where possible or required, alternative titles in Castilian and English are also provided. No preference for, or hierarchy of languages is intended nor should ever be inferred. Some sections of Chapter Nine appear in revised form in Stone, R. & Rodr´ıguez, M. P. (2014) ‘Contemporary Basque Cinema: Online, Elsewhere and Otherwise Engaged’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Liverpool).

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1 Basque Cinema: Citizenship and Sentiment No single viewpoint is valid on Basque cinema. There are too many different angles on what being Basque means, too many alternative takes on its history, too many jump cuts into its narrative of nationhood and too many competing versions of Basque identity playing in local, regional, national and transnational contexts. In sum, the plethora of features, documentaries, animated films, experimental shorts, festivals, activities and online ephemera makes the case for the study of a national cinema that is intact and at the same time fragmenting. Even the academic usefulness of objectively grouping together films and filmmakers must compete against definitions of Basque identity that might be plotted on a sliding scale of exclusionist and inclusionist criteria, nationalist strategies, individual and collective affiliations, funding models and cultural initiatives. For this reason, as many writers have acknowledged, one cannot avoid encountering and grappling with contradiction and paradox in the study of Basque cinema.1 Previous studies point to a national cinema defined in terms of aesthetic, linguistic or thematic differences and even otherness, periods when films signified a cultural metaphor for a lack of identity, and a Basque language prioritized at certain times and subject to relegation at others. All these aspects feature in a cultural and political history that vaporizes above the molten differences of numerous definitions of Basqueness. To an extent, Basque identity has evolved in a cinematic tug-of-war between these differences and between difference and its disavowal. Contradictions thus abound not only in politicized aesthetics and industrial strategies but in themes, genres, the demands of various audiences, and the ambitions of distinct generations or waves of filmmakers. But if no single viewpoint is valid on Basque cinema, then they all are; for this Whitmanesque enquiry into whether it contradicts itself is easily answered. Very well, then it contradicts itself. Basque cinema is large, it contains multitudes. 1

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This book on Basque cinema offers a disparate display of historical, thematic, aesthetic and political analyses grouped as much by mutual repulsion as by attraction but always relevant to the hypostasis or underlying reality of Basqueness. Basque cinema is and always has been a vital medium for the examination and perpetuation of Basque identity from numerous perspectives emanating from a specific geographical point and resulting in diverse trajectories. It is as buffeted by civil war and social change as it is by new media technologies and linguistic, cultural, propagandist and industrial imperatives. In response it has proven itself a durable vehicle for the historical, political, social and artistic interests of the Basque people and has duly imagined past, present and future variations on local, national and international concerns that all contribute to this frustrating, yet at the same time liberating ambiguity about the Basque Country. We can see an argument for recognition of this regional, even national cinema, in terms of industry, politics and aesthetics; but at the same time we are uncertain of its citizenship and must investigate its relationship to national Spanish cinema, while also wondering how that cinema might do without Basque filmmakers. However, it would be wrong to expect Basque filmmakers to be engaged in any uniformly auteurist or collective endeavour to create a unique cinematic monument to Basque identity, particularly when this is so entangled in theories of homeland and exile, subject to the migrant condition and generational shifts in ambition and the economic centre of gravity. Thus, while we aim to root our enquiry in Basque specificities, readers should accept that such things are subject to a fragmentary and evolving condition. This book is also the result of a collaboration that saw value in pitting a view from the outside looking in against one from the inside looking out. Its co-authors duly argued, exchanged ideas and theories, swapped impressions of films and countless drafts of chapters. What has hopefully emerged is a cultural and political history of Basque cinema that resists any bias, which punctures assumptions, and admits on occasion that conclusions are elusive. Yet this is also a Bergsonian analysis in the sense that it does not aim to pin artificially categorized stages of Basque cinema to a board on which, for example, precise measurements of nationalism can be noted. Instead, though mostly chronological in its structure, the accumulating analysis seeks to observe Basque cinema in all its becoming. We begin with an explanation of the main theoretical tools that we have chosen for this task, being principally the transposition of Georg Sorenson’s notions of communities of citizens and sentiment and their relevance to cinemas within and beyond the nation state. From this we move to the origins of Basque cinema in Chapter Two before Chapter Three picks up the thread of the history of the Donostia Zinemaldia or San Sebastian International Film Festival, and finds that pulling it brings many of the political, social, artistic and industrial concerns of this book into focus. Chapter Four contends with various attempts at representing history and heritage in Basque cinema and considers the aims and legacy of the first Basque wave, while Chapter Five examines representations of terrorism. Chapter Six engages with the second

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wave of Basque cinema, which reached international audiences primed for auteurist endeavour in the 1990s, and Chapter Seven examines the history of short films and finds a recent swell of experimentation leading to a third Basque wave. Following this, Chapter Eight looks beyond any territorial definition to examine the Basque diaspora and its filmic investigation of identity, exile and reconciliation, while the ninth chapter goes looking for contemporary Basque cinema and, undeterred by derelict cinemas and punitive policies, finds it online, elsewhere and otherwise engaged. Finally, the conclusion returns to the views from inside out and outside in to argue that the future of Basque cinema should be considered in terms of an open and mixed Basque cinema, which takes in plural subject matters and formats and which is, at the same time, a kaleidoscope of reflections that reveal the thinking and feeling of contemporary Basques. This book therefore situates Basque cinema firmly within notions of Basque art, cultural practice and visual studies and alongside political and cultural strategies and developments, while considering its relevance to other small nations as a model industry, albeit a highly unstable one in which Basque citizenship and sentiment are continually transforming. We therefore once more echo Whitman as a warning. Basque cinema can be as bad as the worst and as good as the best. To those in search of a definition we say it exists as it is, and that’s enough.

A Place in the World At first sight, Basque cinema seems to represent a very small place in the world. Its climate is mostly damp and overcast, punctuated by blasts of brilliant sunshine and solid rainbows. The landscape, like the weather, changes so abruptly that the idea of the Basque Country being several nations in one seems proven after any long drive, which can resemble time travel, although on closer inspection, its history, politics and art are revealed as both interwoven and constantly unravelling. For example, there are now several categorizable if not categorical generations of Basque filmmakers, whose differences add fuel to the argument that there are various versions of Basque cinema. A summary of this fractured and contested history begins with the pioneers and mavericks (1895–c.1930) that punctuate the early cinema of most nations, although no more than can be accommodated in a tiny retrospective made of fragments more than films. These were mostly made by employees of the Pathe Fr`eres and Fr`eres Lumi`ere for their showreels and are a counterpoint to indigenous filmmaking in the Basque Country that includes the newsreels of Reportajes Mezquiriz, de u´ ltima hora (Latest Mezquiriz Reports) and the ethnographic features sponsored by the Eusko Ikaskuntza (Society of Basque Studies) between 1923 and 1928, alongside the beginnings of commercial cinema and a few legendary but partially or wholly lost experimental works. Thereafter, attempts at documenting the rapid growth of Basque cities and the contrary survival of rural customs were piecemeal and the effort was devolved to 3

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competing propagandists in the periods of the Second Republic (1931–36), the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and the dictatorship of General Franco (1939–75) that would prohibit the Basque language of Euskara and curtail almost all film production in the Basque Country. Deprived of industry and even language, it would take until the dissident context of the 1960s for Basque artists and members of film societies to engage in film theory and practical experimentation with film grammar as an oppositional politicised discourse. Their efforts at ethnographic features, abstract animation and avant-garde documentary shorts constituted a unique aesthetic response to oppression that was often rendered in canted angles, jump cuts, ellipses and staccato editing that boasted equivalency with the peculiarities of the otherwise forbidden Euskara. The collectively realised Ama Lur (Motherland, N´estor Basterretexea & Fernando Larruquert, 1968) was the first full-length feature made in the Basque Country since the Civil War and a major influence on its re-imagined community. Alongside the emergence of the world-renowned San Sebastian Film Festival, which began in 1953, the Basque Country gradually assumed a degree of autonomy in the latter years of the dictatorship before it was boosted by the transition to democracy and the autonomy that was officially granted in 1979. Thereafter, successive Spanish and Basque governments would push and pull funding and distribution quotas, apportioning degrees of responsibility to regional and national television networks. The election to Spanish government of the Partido Socialista Obrero Espa˜nol (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, hereafter PSOE) in 1982 brought filmmaker Pilar Mir´o into the role of Directora General de Cinematograf´ıa (General Director of Film) and subsequent measures aimed at increasing the production of quality features and their international distribution informed what became known as the Ley Mir´o (Mir´o Law, actually Royal Decree 3304/1983). This advocated that ‘good films had to appeal to different audiences within the nation and become nation-building narratives that would paper over the cracks and debunk the myths of Francoism.’2 Yet this ‘nation’ was so evidently a centralised notion that regional cinemas within Spain, such as the Basque and Catalan, were largely subsumed within ‘the demands of plurality’ or ignored.3 Nevertheless, the response of the Comunidad Aut´onoma de Euskadi (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, hereafter CAE), which had been formed from three Basque provinces in December 1979 and which had received responsibility for Basque culture in Royal Decree 3069 of September 1980, was a radical sentiment that prompted unprecedented investment in film production. Protectionist and supportive measures that saw film as a vehicle for Basque nation-building culminated in the first wave of modern Basque cinema with its forthright, polemical films about recent and mythic Basque history led by El proceso de Burgos (The Burgos Trial, Imanol Uribe, 1979), which ‘would come to mark the launch of modern Basque cinema.’4 These measures were closely linked to the establishment of Euskal Telebista (Basque Television, hereafter EiTB)

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in December 1982 and they culminated in the Proyecto de Ley de la Cinematograf´ıa (Cinema Law) of February 1983 in which a definition of Basque cinema was made law: Basque cinema was simply that which was eligible for funding of up to 25 per cent of its budget by the Basque government provided that 75 per cent of the cast and crew resided in the CAE, where the film could be shot in Castilian on the condition that a single copy was made available dubbed into Euskara. As with the effects of the Mir´o Law on national Spanish production, ‘national’ Basque cinema increased in quantitative, if not always qualitative terms. Many filmmakers left the Basque Country for Madrid or the Basque diaspora beyond Spain, while others sought to build up a Basque-language industry from within via initiatives such as the Ikuska series of documentary shorts (1979–84) engineered by Antxon Eceiza. However, changes in policy in the late 1980s led to the scrapping of non-repayable subsidies and a move towards more commercial projects that would be managed by a limited company called Euskal Media, which promised a return on the investment of public money but whose attempts at a commercially viable Basque cinema attracted accusations of thematic irrelevance, favouritism and ineptitude in the matter of enabling a national cinema that was supposed to help build the new Basque nation. Nevertheless, market changes and production conditions in the early 1990s were such that a second wave of Basque cinema associated with auteurist practice emerged, only to profess temporary disassociation from Basque locations, themes and generic traditions. Thereafter, the digital revolution and the internet prompted so many transformations in the way that films are made, seen and thought about that the argument for an introspective and centripetal Basque cinema was blindsided. With film now software for downloading, sharing and streaming as well as capturing the everyday with unprecedented intimacy, digital technologies have allowed for the relatively unregulated dissemination of ideas beyond any legislative, industrial or ideological control. Consequently, the way that Basque filmmakers see themselves and the world (and increasingly how the world sees the Basque Country) has been transformed by novel forms of collaboration and communication via new means of production and distribution. By the new millennium, a new economic model of filmmaking had been enabled that could afford to be experimental, ephemeral and centrifugal. The government-sponsored Kimuak short film production scheme currently crests a third wave of Basque cinema that embodies Nicolas Bourriaud’s altermodernism because of its effort to ‘translate the cultural values of cultural groups and to connect them to the world network’ while foregrounding ‘the fight for autonomy, but also the possibility of producing singularities in a more and more standardized world.’5 Those making all kinds of films in the Basque Country now have their sights set on so many industrial, commercial, artistic and even political targets in the global exchange of cinematic images that our portrait of Basque cinema extends beyond its frame. Consequently, this book offers multiple perspectives on the various periods and aspects of Basque cinema while remaining faithful to the paradoxical, ambivalent,

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and heterogeneous nature of the films themselves, thereby avoiding any possibility of reducing the subject to fixed or biased critical interpretations. However, in order to achieve this some new framework of understanding is required; one that emphasizes the creative, even emancipatory potential of sentiment in relation to Basque cinema without ignoring the complex matter of its citizenship.

The Basque Community of Citizens The modern state evolved in response to the decline of empire and its functioning was based upon the distribution of citizenship that had previously only belonged to an elite. This was calculated by the exchange of obligations and rights of its citizens, whose public order, payment of taxes and other contributions to the status of the state, such as military service, were rewarded with rights to education, basic welfare and a sense of inclusion that trumped exclusion. As time turned into history, citizenry became a people with political, legal, social and economic obligations and rights and a shared idea of itself as a subject with a separate historical, cultural and even linguistic identity that resembles Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined community’.6 This idea accommodated plurality in social structures and cultural expression but also safeguarded traditions as a way of preserving and promoting a collective identity that was coherent and desired. As obligations grew, rights were extended until the cultural sense of belonging turned into a difference worth defending and became its own reward. Thereafter, as Georg Sorenson describes, national identity was enhanced by seven factors that determined the contest of inclusion over exclusion, each of which are in flux but integral to the formation of the modern Basque Country.7 The first is a common language, where the contest is dominated by an occasionally tense face-off between Euskara and Castilian. The second is a single set of laws for all, which is contested when radicals seek to modify citizenship or the Basque government disagrees with the Spanish one in Madrid. The new middle class that Sorenson sees as essential for the formation of a modern nation is enabled by education and culture, which overlap matters of language. War too is a factor that intensifies collaboration and the sense of difference, with terrorism, which has special meaning for the Basque Country, being a version of this. The sixth factor is a move from religious to secular authority, which is complicated by the history and tradition of religion being inextricable from any previous factors. And the final one is referendum, which is the means by which the imagined community influences the progress of the nation by the establishment of majority decisions affecting the previous six factors and much else besides. Sorenson explains that when all these factors are present, the community of citizens is one of strong, defining links between citizens and the state based upon an exchange of political, legal and social-economic rights and obligations. Consequently, the cinema of these citizens will be one of close links between 6

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government and the film industry, established and maintained by policies, quotas, incentives, funding and protectionism, and therefore somewhat akin to the Basque cinema that sustained and promoted the idea of nation-building following the creation of the CAE. Yet this definition does not cover the extent and complexity of this particular community for, whereas three Basque provinces form the constitutionally recognized CAE, four more exist beyond it. The CAE is comprised of only Gipuzkoa and its capital San Sebastian, Alava with its main city Vitoria, and Biscay with Bilbao. Separate from the CAE, though in the territory of Spain and complying with Spanish jurisdiction whilst enjoying a degree of independence that includes the collection of taxes, is the Chartered Community of Navarre, which was excluded from the Statute of Autonomy and has a stand-alone government based in Pamplona. Basse Navarre, Soule and Labourd are Basque provinces on the French side of the Pyrenees. Thus the CAE is and is not the Basque Country, whose citizenship is fractured between languages, locations and definitions that are also complicated by the Basque diaspora and a history of Basque migrations that add to the challenge of defining its cinema according to a limited or chartered geographical zone. In an attempt to clarify and extend the Statute of Autonomy, the Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea/Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party, hereafter EAJ/PNV) proposed the Ibarretxe Plan in 2003, named after lehendakari (president) Juan Jos´e Ibarretxe.8 This advocated a status of free association for the Basque Country with Spain, a right to self-determination and the categorization of Basques as either citizens or nationals. It was vague about the rights (and therefore obligations) of nationals, but gave the Basque regional government the power to call referendums (Sorenson’s final factor) and thereby suggested a means to independence that was facilitated by the removal of the Spanish government’s right to suspend the powers of the regional government. Opponents argued that the European Union would not support a move that had consequences for many other European regions with separatist inclinations or movements and the EU indeed refused to debate what it declared was an internal matter. Yet the Basque Country’s disassociation from Spain would have carried with it exclusion from the EU, which could only have been resolved by application and an EU vote that Spain could veto. In any case, the plan was rejected by the Spanish government in 2005 by a majority of 313 to 29 (and 2 abstentions), only to reappear in 2008 in relation to demands for a consultative referendum on two vital matters that were meticulously but still vaguely worded. First, whether to support dialogue with Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom, hereafter ETA) to end violence if ETA declared a will to do so. And second, whether to support a democratic agreement about the right to decide of the Basque people that would be the subject of another referendum in 2010. The proposal was again suspended, partly because of disagreement over who was entitled to vote in the referendum: was it only those in the CAE, the entire Basque Country or all of Spain? In effect, who had the right to vote on who had the right to vote?

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Transposed to notions of national cinemas in which, as Dunja Fehimovi´c has argued, ‘the national subject both (mis)recognizes its wholeness and identity and glimpses difference and lack,’9 the seven factors of nation-building described by Sorenson fail to resolve such conundrums because it is insufficient to define Basque cinema as one limited to films with a common language (Euskara and/or/without Castilian) or responsive to specific criteria (laws) for funding from the Basque government, such as a percentage of cast and crew being Basque-born. Also reductive is the elitist view of Basque cinema as being intended or marketed for domestic and foreign art house audiences, who might expect thematic limitations that hinder a definition of Basque cinema too, with an emphasis on war (terrorism) being particularly stifling. On the other hand, movement away from traditional themes (such as rural deprivation and urban alienation, ritualistic sports, orthodox gender roles and terrorism again) towards alien genres and foreign tropes might result in a diffuse or dispersed cinema whose links with the Basque Country become incidental, even annulled. Consequently, it is foolhardy, even foolish to erect a hierarchy of knowledge in the matter of identity on the shifting sands of differences and similitudes, fragmentation and coherence, and instability and integration, all of which are subject to changing levels of submission and resistance. One might as well hold an annual referendum on the matter and shift the parameters for yearly stocktaking of Basque films accordingly. Instead we shall turn away from dogmatism towards Sorenson’s argument that there are actually two types of community in relation to the modern state: the community of citizens and the community of sentiment. And we shall replace the word community with cinema.

The Basque Cinema of Sentiment Sorenson argues that globalisation is not only about ideas, but about sentiment too.10 He looks beyond the demise of the nation states indicated by Kenichi Ohmae and Ernst-Otto Czempiel to a borderless world that is freely traversed by the internet and the analogy with the cinema that presents itself may be followed to revisionist ends that provides fresh terminology for understanding the history and evolution of Basque cinema.11 Following Czempiel, for example, when considering contemporary Basque cinema ‘we have to give up the notion and the concept of the state as well as the terminology that is traditionally connected to it [because] there is no use preserving in terminology what can no longer be found in reality.’12 Nowadays, Sorenson argues, European states like Spain and the UK are rather like major companies in that they are under pressure from beyond (globalisation, the EU) and within (nationalist Catalan, Basque, Scottish and Welsh parties) to break up into smaller, certainly more autonomous and possibly more efficient parts. Analysis of socio-political correspondence between Scotland, Catalonia, Wales and the Basque Country is beyond this volume; but the role of cinema in periods and processes of nation-building is exemplified by 8

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that of the Basque Country, which is not autonomous in relation to Spain, the rest of the world or the internet, nor even confirmed as such by looking back at its history or looking up its current definition. Neither is the Basque Country fixed in the global ranking of winning and losing states. Instead it is engaged in its ongoing narrative of nationhood for which, as Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, Homi K. Bhabha, and others have argued, history is an ideological construct that overrides indeterminacy and brings different languages and vocabularies, some figurative, in to a dominant view.13 History forms a pedestal upon which to display notions of nationhood in relation to imperial, post-colonial and/or trans-national contexts and ideologies that may resist intra-national clotting and post-national dissolution alike. It allows for recognition of change and the display of distance, equally from that which is rejected (such as a violent, subservient or shameful past involving genocide, slavery and feudalism) and that which is missed (such as a powerful, noble past that exhibits a pastoral idyll, lebensraum or autonomy). Yet whereas the presentation of nationhood in political speeches, cultural events and heritage industries can express and inspire these sentiments for ideological sustenance, any fixed idea of a national cinema loses relevance in a context of oscillation between a rigidly nationalistic state-centric view of Basque citizenship and the liberal view that supposes the diffusion of an uncontainable Basque sentiment. Moreover, if Basque citizenship is as contested as it is sometimes paradoxical, then any narrow definition of Basque cinema as a cinema of citizens, which is defined by state-given rights in exchange for compliance with obligations, will probably carry with it the same cultural and political baggage and the same flawed, unsatisfying resolutions. Following Sorenson’s community of sentiment, however, which is one of relations enabled by the sharing of language and empathy for historical identities based on cultural expression, leads to a far more pertinent concept of a cinema of sentiment. This is partly a response to the oscillation, fracture and diffusion of citizenship, which Soysal argues has been transferred from nationhood to personhood.14 It suggests a manageable and functioning concept of Basque cinema in the context of world cinema that indicates rupture in the links between nation and cinema. Yet, at the same time, a context of flux instead of rigidity permits the transfer of social values from the cinema of citizens to the cinema of sentiment, which is enabled not by limiting ‘belonging’ but by representing an analytically competent nation, people and cinema, one that is able to rethink collective and individual identity. The sentiment in question is much more than an emotional attachment to a nation and cannot be reduced to pride or longing. It relates to the argument put forward by Anthony Giddens that identity is a ‘reflexively organized endeavour’.15 This happens when, as Giddens explains, identity is no longer inherited, traditional or imposed but ‘discovered, constructed, actively sustained’.16 Sentiment is predicated upon awareness, mindfulness, analysis, evaluation, reflection, revision and, ultimately, acceptance or rejection of elements contributing to or subtracting from identity. A cinema of sentiment can overlap

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a cinema of citizens, but its transactions of identity are largely uncontrolled or even uncontrollable by nations. Overlap occurs in extant areas of state funding and education, representation in international festivals and recipiency of awards, while the cinema of sentiment is certainly dependent upon an umbilical connection with the cinema of citizens at the cultural-historical level. However, it emerges at a time when interest in radical nationalism declines and activity in transnational spheres increases, particularly in recent years via the internet and new media. In essence, where the cinema of citizens is centripetal, introverted and exclusive, the cinema of sentiment is centrifugal, extroverted and inclusive. It might be seen as generational and has much to do with waves of Basque cinema, evolving from the radical sentiment of the late 1970s into the cinema of citizens of the first wave in the 1980s and on through the transitional second wave in the 1990s to the transnational third wave and its cinema of sentiment of the new millennium. Contemporary Basque cinema is a cinema of sentiment in which the Basqueness of a protagonist is a detail that does not determine the events of the film. If, for example he or she returns home at the end of the film, the fact that this home is in the Basque Country is certainly interesting and flavourful but only circumstantial to the universality of the theme that connects with other communities of sentiment worldwide and, indeed, may be paralleled in their own cinemas of sentiment, whether the protagonist returns home to Corsica, Kosovo or Cork.

You Can Go Home Again: Aupa Etxebeste! An example of the contemporary Basque cinema of sentiment is Aupa Etxebeste! (Hooray for Etxebeste!, Asier Altuna & Telmo Esnal, 2005), which was the first full-length feature to be filmed in Euskara since 1993. Like many of their generation, Altuna and Esnal graduated from the Kimuak initiative described in Chapter Seven, having co-directed the shorts Txotx (1997) about the Basque cider ritual and 40 ezetz (Forty Says No, 1999) which describes a murder over cloning oxen in the sport of idi demak (stone dragging). Altuna also made Topeka (Ram Fight, 2004) for Kimuak, which prefigures Aupa Etxebeste! by indicating frustration with the stubborn rigidity of the community of citizens. In Topeka a throng of male spectators argue their bets and rally rams into conflict, but the impulse spreads amongst the men, who head-butt each other senseless. Sarcastic and profound, in just three minutes Topeka reflects upon myths, symbols, gender roles and customs and exudes clear-eyed frustration with tradition. Aupa Etxebeste! retains its caustic wit and allusive political sensibility about Basque heritage in a comic tale of a Basque businessman and political hopeful named Patrizio Etxebeste (Ram´on Agirre), whose company makes the classic Basque berets and is quickly going bust. Compelled to retain his status in the community, Etxebeste pretends to take his family away for their annual summer holiday but actually hides them at home for four weeks until able to fake their return. Aupa Etxebeste! is prescient 10

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about the pending worldwide economic crisis and its local repercussions, while the parochial and familial response to a homecoming engenders universal sentiments of longing and belonging. By situating its tiny Basque village within a global economic downturn, it also exudes the melancholia common to Brassed Off! (Mark Herman, 1996), SubUrbia (Richard Linklater, 1996), The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997) and the similarly plotted L’emploi du temps (Time Out, Laurent Cantet, 2001). At first, the family has to overcome food shortages by trapping pigeons, and the inability to flush the noisy toilet except in synch with that of a neighbour, but there are poignant punchlines to most comic set-pieces. For example, the feast of a neighbour’s cat provokes the grandfather’s memories of such fare during the duress of the Spanish Civil War, when not one was left uneaten. Before he can dine, however, their idyll is broken into by two silent intruders, who opportunistically scoff the roasted feline before making off with the grandfather’s stash of banknotes. Most pointedly, the burglars communicate entirely in grunts and glances, despite being played by Luis Tosar and Guillermo Toledo, two of Spain’s most popular film stars. That these low-life invaders of the home(land) are non-Basques is a witty enough comment on radical Basque nationalism; but the fact that Tosar and Toledo are also mute is a gag – a literal one – played upon Spanish film stars given bit-parts in this Basque language film. Aupa Etxebeste! exemplifies the Basque cinema of sentiment because it is both local and global, enacting a worldwide economic crisis upon the tiny stage of an apartment in Gipuzcoa, in which a bravura tracking shot passes repeatedly through its walls to provide a literal cross-section of the declining middle class and whose cast actually takes a Brechtian bow after the final fade to black. Yet the sentiment that emerges from these people who cannot leave a room is not bleak and vicious like that of El a´ ngel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel, Luis Bu˜nuel, 1962). Instead, the family rediscovers love and respect as the film promotes catharsis through empathy, both displaying and undermining the differences of Basqueness by showing these beret-wearing, Euskara-speaking folk to be citizens of the same world as us. Sentiment in Aupa Etxebeste! therefore plays what Murray Smith following Ronald de Sousa has called ‘a strategic role in our behaviour, by directing our attention and thinking toward particular aspects of situations, and deflecting them from other aspects[.] The point here is that emotion is integrated with perception, attention, and cognition, not implacably opposed to any of them.’17 Indeed, the cinema of sentiment both entails and illustrates this process that calls our attention to sentiment as a way of thinking towards perception. This illustrates Sorenson’s claim that the community of sentiment ‘must also be exposed to changes in a new context characterized by the increased salience of globalization and the transnational relations that go with it.’18 It is an ongoing process which demands that ‘political convictions are no longer preordained from a certain social class affiliation or other tradition. They are created from the great selection of ideologies and values and the end result may not correspond to

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Figure 1. The convergence of tradition and innovation in Aupa Etxebeste! (Hooray for Etxebeste!, Asier Altuna & Telmo Esnal, 2005) (Alokatu S. L., Irusoin).

well-defined party affiliations.’19 Aupa Etxebeste! has a poignant, temporary resolution that chimes with the final male strip show of The Full Monty and the open-top bus concert of Brassed Off!: the family’s pretend return to the village is scuppered by them running out of petrol and their car with them inside being ignominiously carried home on a transporter, which interrupts the local parade full of Basque folk music and dancing figures and becomes an applauded float. Thus, against a backdrop of Basque heritage, local tradition and global uncertainty, Aupa Etxebeste! illustrates Sorenson’s view that collective identity, ‘whether religious, ethnic, cultural or social, is of much reduced significance in the new context [but that] these various modalities of collective identity certainly seem to continue to be important for many people.’20 Moreover, in invoking the parade of Basque traditions as a temporary panacea for global problems, it rejects any notion of that which Anthony D. Smith terms ‘a memoryless scientific “culture” held together solely by the political will and economic interest’ with little or no emotional appeal.21 Instead, it suggests that people can take on any number of new identities without losing or discarding what they already have, thereby illustrating the challenge set by Sorenson ‘to discover the reference points of collective identity that are currently gaining rather than losing importance.’22 As an illustration of Basques in the world, Aupa Etxebeste! reveals the world in the Basque Country.

Resistance and Regionalism Cinemas of sentiment are enabled by the fact that ‘an institutional level “above” the nation state is emerging that can become a new partner for the regional 12

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movements.’23 International and transnational funding and distribution strategies can encourage a region’s resistance to the homogeneity of the state that otherwise claims it while also enabling the area to transcend the heterogeneity of localism. This suggests that regionalism or subjugation might even suit a cinema of sentiment because it is an ideal vehicle for carrying ‘a resistance identity: generated by those actors that are in positions/conditions devalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination, thus building trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles.’24 If Sorenson is right in affirming that the main principle of a community of sentiment is that it should ‘satisfy needs and provide bonding via rituals’, then such rituals in respect of a cinema of sentiment would be filmmaking and filmwatching.25 The community should provide myths, adds Sorenson, which is a natural function of the cinema and clearly demonstrable in key moments throughout the history of Basque cinema, when, as shall be seen, films such as El mayorazgo de Basterretxe (The Basterretxe Estate, V´ıctor Azcona & Mauro Azcona, 1928), Ama Lur and El proceso de Burgos contributed to the realisation of the community in this way, while more recent films such as Vacas (Cows, Julio Medem, 1992), Bazt´an (I˜naki Elizalde, 2012) and Las brujas de Zugarramurdi ´ (Witching and Bitching, Alex de la Iglesia, 2013) have each contended with those myths in different, even subversive ways. A cinema of sentiment, like a community of sentiment, is an ongoing project and as such responds to theories of creative emotion put forward by Henri Bergson, who claimed that evolving, complex emotion or sentiment aids gradual awareness and results in consciousness, which requires constant movement and change. This movement contains the past, which is present in memory, accumulative and the basis of progressive emotion that drives us to create new ideas and transform them into forms. Bergson contends that when our consciousness is sufficiently mobile as to allow us to contemplate the entirety of life we will discover it is a single impulse that he calls the e´lan vital. When applied to the cinema of sentiment, which is analogous in its evolution and reflexivity, it may be assumed that its ‘ongoing project’ is the e´lan vital of the Basque Country. In other words, the Basque cinema of sentiment contains the past of the Basque Country but it is outwardly moving and therefore constantly renewing itself. It rejects fixity and reveals instead an ability to find reality in change. When attuned to this flow, Bergson argues, time seems infinite, incomplete and instantaneous, with everything subject to it caught up in ‘a creative evolution’ that maintains the ‘perpetual creation of possibility.’26 Unlike the cinema of citizens, which is rigid, bounded, regimented, servile and indebted, the cinema of sentiment is one of renewal and exploration. It seeks affinities and contrasts as it moves outwards, looking back on itself as fuel for further progress, which is also enabled by new technologies, transnational opportunities and fresh creative liberties. That said, the weaknesses of a cinema of sentiment are also manifold. Just as successful regions may want to separate themselves from unsuccessful ones in order

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to reduce their obligations to less productive territories, so fragmentation of a nation may occur on an economic or political level that renders it ungovernable. Sorenson supposes that a community of sentiment should enhance local identities and relations with other communities of sentiment, as well as inspiring and enabling communities of citizens with which it may co-exist; but the example can resemble a separatist impulse that recalls stale rhetoric and engenders a stagnant view of itself. A cinema of sentiment should incorporate immigrant or accented cinema but it can become exclusionist when those who mobilize the historic culture that informs the community of sentiment become a professional filmmaking elite.27 In addition, where nationhood remains strong, filmmakers will still want rights (to funding and distribution quotas, for example) allowing the nation to demand some reciprocal responsibility or indenture to the hegemony. When industry is present and audiences are receptive, the cinema of sentiment may be self-sufficient but prone to staleness or conservatism, which results in access to other markets closing down. Furthermore, if industrial, critical and historical terms and conditions, which may be politicized, are favoured, then a cinema of citizens can take over, reinstating the exchange of a limited range of entertainment for routine, undemanding or devoted spectatorship. However, only a cinema of sentiment will emerge when the state does not deliver on funding, education or protectionist measures, for example, thereby prompting the independence and non-paradoxical inter-dependence of responsive filmmakers. Nevertheless, such a reaction may go beyond a ‘resistance identity’ to resemble one of resentment that temporary interest groups may steer towards extremism or specific campaigns. The view of the cinema of sentiment as a project of individual construction also leaves room for solipsism that may be empowered by critical indulgence and theories of auteurism until repetition and redundancy set in. If a film needs a Basque audience to get the cultural references, read the iconography correctly and bring knowledge of the source texts of literary adaptations, then it may also exude exclusivity. A moniker like ‘Basque’ can also misrepresent a cinema of sentiment when it is co-opted by capital, commerce, protectionism or celebrations that can impose limitations of scope, favouring Basque subjects that do not favour universal themes. At first sight, these tensions between the cinema of citizens and the cinema of sentiment may be mapped upon an equation put forward by Tim Bergfelder:

At closer inspection, the history of European cinemas has always been characterised by two simultaneous yet diverging processes, namely the film industries’ economic imperative of international expansion, competition and cooperation (often accompanied by migration of labour), and the ideological project of recentring the definition of national cinemas through critical discourses and national film policy.28 14

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The cinema of citizens is linked to the emergence of national European cinemas, which was essentially a regional phenomena exalted to the national by industrial prerogatives such as German Expressionism and domestic or foreign critical awareness in the case of Italian Neo-realism. Countries in need of an image of themselves for nationalist or touristic reasons commonly respond to regional expressions of something viable such as heritage, costume, music or cuisine; but unlike the nationalized cinemas of totalitarian regimes, these ‘national’ cinemas were still regional cinemas, regardless of whether they were based in centralized or ‘capital’ areas of film production. This occurs with American cinema too, where Hollywood has overshadowed regional cinemas in the other three ‘coasts’ of New York in the East, Austin in Texas, and that which has recently been associated with the Portland area in Oregon in the North. Alex Marlow-Mann suggests that a regional cinema would ‘have to be understood as filmmaking taking place beyond the “cinematic capital”.’29 However, looking at the ‘cinematic capital’ from another region, where confidence, ambition, resentment, competition and success inform this subjectivity, can render a ‘capital’ cinema like Hollywood regional too. Thus, if the argument for a Basque cinema of citizens is maintained, then that for a national Spanish cinema literally loses ground, especially if it invigorates the case for Catalan, Galician and Andalusian cinema too. ‘Spanish‘ cinema can, of course, be inclusive of all and therefore a cinema of sentiment too, but its cinema of citizens will be dependant upon centralized funding and will only survive until breakaway laws from independent regions set on some degree of autonomy declare otherwise and have the funding, training, infrastructure and creative impulse to back this up. In addition, if national and regional imperatives withdraw from collaboration they may inspire a picking of teams that, for example, sees the films directed by V´ıctor Erice and Vicente Aranda removed from the Spanish line-up and dressed in Basque and Catalan colours respectively. Unlike in football, however, where the national team is drawn from all geographical areas, a regional cinema may be reticent to give back players for any international contest such as Cannes or the Oscars. Being produced within territories invites the labelling of a nationality and a supposition of unity, but also suggests a link between cultural representation and the identity of the nation that can be allegorical, associative or explicit. However, moving on from debates over whether it exists or not, we argue that Basque cinema was at times a cinema of citizens but that it has largely become one of sentiment. This is not merely a discourse and even though its terrorist dramas, urban comedies and heritage films, for example, do fit recognizable categories it does not only offer what Stephen Crofts describes as a genre-specific ‘codification of socio-cultural tendencies’.30 Neither is this cinema of sentiment bound to the articulation of any national, nation state or nationalist prerogative, although elements of each may feature, such as Basque nationalism in a film about nationalism. Crucially,

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a cinema of sentiment can move beyond the ideological project of recentring a national cinema or creating a new one through discourse and policy because it can question ‘the cultural essentialism that informs many definitions of national cinemas.’31 When an example of the cinema of citizens does likewise, as with the government-funded yet subversive heritage film La conquista de Albania (The Conquest of Albania, Alfonso Ungr´ıa, 1984) that is examined in Chapter Four, then it may encounter critical derision and public rejection, its subversive qualities taking decades to be noted.32 This is because any rethinking of definitions of a nation and its people that are ostensibly bound by geographical, ethnographical, political or legal formulations may destabilise a national cinema, which admittedly is sometimes a desire. Above all, however, this rethinking in place of repetition is a necessary stage in the evolution and recognition of a cinema of sentiment that, as Susan Hayward explains, shows how filmmakers and audiences alike may ‘carve out spaces that allow us to reevaluate the concept of national cinema. It makes it possible to reterritorialise the nation (to rewrite Paul Virilio, echoing Deleuze perhaps) not as bounded, demarcated, and distinctive, but as one in which boundaries constantly crisscross both haphazardly and unhaphazardly.’33 This quality takes a cinema of sentiment beyond Crofts’ categorisation of sub-state cinemas made and seen by ‘suppressed, indigenous, diasporic, or other populations asserting their rights and giving expression to a distinctive religion, language or regional culture.’34 Instead, identification of a cinema of sentiment encourages a move beyond mere analysis of the films produced by and within a particular nation in order to find a cure for that which Andrew Higson diagnoses as ‘the limiting imagination of national cinema.’35 This cure for often deliberate narrow-mindedness entails engagement with the context of production and distribution, the political economy and industrial structure, work practice, exhibition systems, audience demographics, critical and cultural discourses and a diachronic concern with thematic shifts or stylistic change.36 Yet this still remains too rigid for the cinema of sentiment, which avoids any definition subject to criteria and acknowledges instead the abstraction of the imagined community into what might be termed differences from itself. On a more literal plane, Crofts notes that ‘national labels have promised varieties of “otherness” – of what is culturally different from both Hollywood and the films of other importing countries’ and then proposes that we ‘write of states and nation state cinemas rather than nations and national cinemas.’37 But, following Sorenson, the territory of the cinema of sentiment is beyond the nation state. It is, after all, not the geographical union of the seven Basque provinces, or the four on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, or the three that make up the CAE, that define the Basque Country, but the sentiment of Basqueness that fuels the imagined community and overrides bureaucratic mapping by signalling established and evolving relations between people who can claim an identity bolstered and expressed via symbols, myths, music, sculpture, language, performance and the composite art of the films that make up the Basque cinema of sentiment.

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The assertion of rights is assumed to form part of what defines a community of citizens, which exchanges them for such things as the payment of taxes and observation of civil order. Yet individuals in Europe have frequently sought recourse to the European parliament when dissatisfied with the rights they receive. Such cases tend to concern emotive issues that can congeal into campaigns, where a terminally ill person’s petition for the right to a dignified death, for example, becomes a debate on euthanasia, or a request for legal recognition of a samesex partnership turns into an argument about equality. Similarly, a region or community within a member state may look to Europe as a higher power that validates its ‘moral’ claim to be different or even unique, to be treated accordingly and awarded rights that enable self-determination. The EAJ/PNV looked to Europe during the Francoist dictatorship because it believed the regime had no place in the framework of democratic Europe, while ETA long favoured a federal Europe that might recognise the union of the seven Basque provinces within it. More recently, this idea of Europe as a supportive context for communities of sentiment that would collaborate in its running was adopted by post-dictatorship political parties that splintered away from the moderate EAJ/PNV such as Eusko Alkartasuna, which married Europeanism with radicalism and sought a Basque republic. Yet the EU did not support the Plan Ibarretxe and deferred questions about the rights of those held prisoner on charges of terrorism to the jailing nations, resulting in a loss of faith that has been signalled by the radical left’s withdrawal of support for the EU while this fails to support the idea of a referendum on the selfdetermination of the Basque Country. Such conflict and confusion about sentiment and citizenship in a contemporary Basque and European context is examined in the Basque-language 80 egunean (For Eighty Days, Jon Gara˜no & Jos´e Mar´ıa Goenaga, 2010), which recounts the late-in-life reunion of two childhood friends. Axun (Itziar Aizpuru) has had an introverted life in the Basque community of citizens marked by an unquestioning exchange of rights and responsibilities, particularly in relation to the rigid gender roles that are evident in her marriage to a farmer who spends his retirement building models of baserriak, the Basque farmhouse that symbolises traditional nationhood. Maite (Mariasun Pagoagoa), on the other hand, has enjoyed an independent and reflective life of self-determination wherein her travels and experiences in Europe have allowed her to realize her ambitions as musician and to live openly as a lesbian within the Basque community of sentiment. When they meet again while visiting relatives in a hospital in San Sebastian, the film gives them 80 days to explore and challenge the tensions between citizenship and sentiment. Maite is a freer spirit, sensitive to moral questions and deeper needs. She awakens feelings in Axun that flower briefly before Axun’s guilt and sense of duty prompt the repression of her e´lan vital. The penultimate scene sees Axun confined to an immobile hearse after the funeral of her

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The Cinema of Citizens and the Cinema of Sentiment: 80 egunean

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Figure 2. Axun (Itziar Aizpuru) (right) and Maite (Mariasun Pagoaga) express longing and belonging in 80 egunean (For Eighty Days, Jon Gara˜no & Jos´e Mari Goenaga, 2010) (Irusoin, Moriarti Produkzioak).

son-in-law, sitting beside her impassive husband as their daughter admits that life with her violent husband had been an ordeal. In Aupa Etxebeste! the community and cinema of sentiment was celebrated in the final scene in which the family members acknowledge the lovable truth about each other while sitting in a car that becomes the flagship float in a parade. Here, however, Axun realizes that the members of her family know nothing about each other but must nevertheless offer a performance of mourning in the rigid religious and social spectacle of a funeral that suits the exchange of rights and responsibilities in their community of citizens. The inclusion of 80 egunean in international festivals (San Sebastian, of course, but also Karlovy Vary, Montreal, London BFI, Cairo, Chicago, Cleveland, Palm Springs, Dublin, S¨ao Paulo, Nantes, Tudela and Guadalajara, as well as the Czech Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Milan International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, where it won the Main Jury and Grand Jury awards for best film respectively) was followed by a niche release pattern on the art house circuit in several major international cities. In a game of art house and film festival Top Trumps, this film’s lesbian theme was apparently worth more points than its minority language or the novelty of the advanced age of its protagonists. Unlike La muerte de Mikel (Mikel’s Death, Imanol Uribe, 1984), which illustrated homosexual and Basque identity as kindred victims of marginalisation and repression but found them incompatible in a community of citizens driven by radical nationalism, 80 egunean offers a vindication 18

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The Language of Basque Cinema The coincidence of both Aupa Etxebeste! and 80 egunean being in Euskara brings forth the inevitable enquiry into the role of the Basque language in Basque cinema. Sorenson’s call for identification of ‘a common language’ could be extrapolated to encompass the uniquely Basque film grammar formed by staccato, repetitious editing, sharply canted angles and abrupt fade-outs that characterizes the dissident short film Pelotari (N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1964); but this does not extend into the post-Franco years, when censorship was lifted and the need for coded discourse was erased. Then the heightened debate on the nature of Basque cinema was led by left-wing nationalists, whose radical sentiment envisaged a cinema committed to the denunciation of the repression of the Basque nation, one that would support the Basque proletariat and be in Euskara. Thus the cinema that producer Antxon Eceiza and others envisaged as resulting from his Ikuska (Inspection) documentaries (1979–84) that were intended to serve as ethnographic documentation of the experience of the Basque working class and provide apprenticeships for Basque filmmakers, was one in which Euskara would be the privileged and politicized signifier. Indeed, the Ikuska series was accompanied by other documentaries in Euskara that included Betiko borroka (Never-Ending Fight, Xabier Zelaiaundi, 1979), Ikurrinaz filmea (Basque Flag Film, Juan Bernardo Heinink, 1977), Arrantzale (Fisherman, Antton Merikaetxebarria, 1975), Ez: centrales nucleares (No: Nuclear Power Stations, Imanol Uribe, 1977), Euskal herri musika (Music of the Basque People, Fernando Larruquert, 1978) and Euskara eta kirola (Basque Language and Sports, Antxon Eceiza & Koldo Izagirre, 1980). Together they gave rise to the first wave of modern Basque cinema that emerged from a sentiment so radical that it actually resulted in one of citizens, duly indicating that the future of Basque cinema was imagined as being in Euskara and capable of progressively incorporating filmmakers and audiences as they became more fluent in the now freely taught and spoken Basque language. However, although films in Euskara may carry extra fascination for non-speakers and a comfort, familiarity or vindication for those that do, recognizing Basque cinema by its language rigidifies the criteria for its classification and thereby reinstates a cinema of citizens, when the facts are that the first wave included films in Castilian too and those associated with the second wave in the 1990s were almost entirely in Castilian, due partly to the reluctance of several filmmakers who did not speak Euskara to be labelled Basque and by oscillations in public policy regarding funding for Basque productions. Thus, the exclusivity demanded does not materialize unless

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of universality, which is distinct from homogeneity. The nationality and language used by the protagonists, for example, do not obscure the film’s meaning. Instead, like their being old and gay, it adds detail, nuance, colour and shading to a more universal sentiment of self-determination and its frustration.

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one artificially limits the catch of Basque cinema to films in Euskara, which has been posited, of course, by those who believe Basque cinema should educate, entertain and employ members of a Basque community of citizens that holds proficiency in Euskara to be a principle criterion for inclusion. The definition and projection of Basque cinema as one signified by the Basque language has informed many appraisals even though any fixed definition tends to automatically exclude aspects of the heritage of Basque cinema, ignore the present context and deny new contributions that its future life might bring.38 It also fails to recognize that in recent years, when it is possible to speak of a third wave of Basque cinema that resembles one of sentiment, its more inclusive, transnational, hybrid formula posits Euskara as just one language of choice both at home and abroad. Contemporary Basque cinema also features the languages of ‘accented’ filmmakers working within the Basque Country, while English is often privileged by directors of Basque origin living and working in the United States, for instance, whose diasporic activities still count as, and result in Basque cinema. The intended audience should also be considered because Castilian and Euskara, which was standardized by the Euskaltzaindia (Basque Language Academy) as Euskara Batua in the late 1960s, are both official languages in the CAE. Euskara is now spoken by around 27 per cent of those in all provinces, communities and territories and its use is growing. The ongoing initiative by Basque language television entitled EiTB a la carta offers 30 films for free streaming online in Euskara without subtitles in any other language.39 The list includes Basque films shot in Castilian and dubbed into Euskara such as Secretos del coraz´on (Secrets of the Heart, Montxo Armend´ariz, 1997), but beyond the question of whether this signifies ‘correction’ into Euskara or merely an educational strategy, the campaign revives exclusionist tactics because it limits the audience for the films both within and beyond the Basque Country. Defining Basque cinema by its language, whether original or dubbed, also ignores the practice of subtitling which done well enables communication through diversity. Yet subtitling is not the norm in Spain and the commercial DVD of Aupa Etxebeste!, for example, demands a choice between original Euskara or dubbed into Castilian with no subtitles for either. Thus, it disables difference and erases diversity, whereas subtitles would have underlined distinctiveness and also encouraged unity albeit at the risk of interpretative summary and occasionally dubious attempts at cultural equivalence. The claim of exclusivity for Euskara puts a limit on the cinema of sentiment that is both impractical for filmmakers and ungenerous to audiences at home and worldwide who may nevertheless enjoy the experience of different languages, aural textures and the cultures they unlock, for language is a carrier of much greater sentiment than that which is expressed in dialogue. Filmmaking by the contemporary Basque diaspora, for example, reveals how its identity is served by adherence to the notion of a Basque community of sentiment, wherein complex interactions between languages are extended throughout the world to reach and include the most remote

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Negotiating Basque Cinema Basque cultural studies are presently anchored in the perspective of mobility, through the figures of the migrant, the tourist, the international student or professional, and Basques living abroad. From this perspective, the Basque homeland and global population are conceived as a complex and evolving group defined by factors of class, wealth, ethnicity and gender in a process of validation and contestation that corresponds to, and indeed depends upon the community of sentiment for its validation and identity. In which case, Basque cinema may have to improve upon its habit of being relatively sexless and rarely funny, as embodied by Chema (Gorka Otxoa) in Pagafantas (Friend Zone, Borja Cobeaga, 2009), a bilba´ıno who falls for Claudia (Sabrina Garciarena), a vivacious Argentinian who locates him ´ firmly in the friend zone. Such tribulations recall those of Mat´ıas (Oscar Ladoire) ´ in Opera prima (Opera Prima, Fernando Trueba, 1980), a key film of the postTransition movida, not least because Ladoire plays ‘t´ıo’ (uncle) Jaime, the pretender to Chema’s mother’s affections. Similarly, it is a film about transitions between stubborn traditions and new opportunities that also targets Basque cinema with a running gag about ‘t´ıo’ Jaime’s refusal to wean his photographic business off its dependence upon celluloid and explore the opportunities of going digital. The film is charming in its detail of life in Bilbao and wry about relationships, but just as Chema speaks Spanish with Claudia, so the film uses Castilian to reach its desired audience. Cobeaga studied filmmaking at the University of the Basque Country and was a rising star in Basque and Spanish television before benefitting from the Kimuak initiative and going on to be nominated for an Oscar for his ´ short film Eramos pocos (One Too Many, 2005). In 2010 he announced to the press at a film festival in Gij´on that his next film entitled Fe de etarras would recount the comic tale of an ETA terrorist cell that is happily integrated in the French hamlet that is their hideout. El Diario Vasco reported that the assembled journalists ‘simultaneously laughed and made the sign of the cross’ and indeed the feature was never realized.40 Instead, his most recent attempt at injecting humour and humanity into the conflict over the Basque Country came with Negociador (Negotiator, Borja Cobeaga, 2014), which had its debut in the Zabaltegi section of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, where it generated baffled responses to its disorienting tone but still won the Irizar prize for best Basque film. This lighthearted reconstruction of negotiations between the Spanish government and ETA led by a well-meaning but bumbling official named Manu (Ram´on Barea)

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communities. Purists and radicals and those with a specific idea of what Basque cinema should be may baulk, but the tug-of-war over language has lost relevance in recent years when new filmmakers enabled by digital technologies have simply let go of the rope, suggesting that the triumph of an exclusively Basque language cinema has been indefinitely postponed.

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demystified the progress towards peace by depicting ordinary, fallible folk going about their business without any special skills or great intelligence. Instead, Cobeaga burdens a simple sketch of four people sitting around a table with the punchline of resolving decades of violence. The negotiations take place in France with an English mediator and a translator who renders Pa´ıs Vasco, Euskadi, the Vascongadas (Basque provinces) and Euskal Herria alike as ‘the Basque Country’, thereby erasing political and ideological differences. Dubbed ‘a metalinguistic political film’ by Bel´en Vidal, Negociador pricks its comic speech bubbles with references to tragic events such as the bombing of Madrid’s Barajas airport in 2006 but insists upon dialogue as a means to empathy and a unifying sentiment.41 ‘¿Qu´e problema hay en que nos pongamos a hablar?’ (What problem is there in us talking?) asks Manu, who begins the film in a bar in which Basque nationalist friends from his schooldays snub him and ends it in the same bar being greeted. Thus, Negociador reveals progress towards a more open, pluralist society in which the effort to reach understanding is rewarded. In this, at least, it encapsulates not only the movement towards peace of the Basque community of citizens and its simultaneous conversion into a community of sentiment but also, as this book examines, the negotiations endured and even partly resolved by its cinema.

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2 Melodramatic Beginnings: Early Basque Cinema Modernity hit the Basque Country hard. Rapid industrialization and urbanization transformed the landscape and living conditions, but the growth of mass communication, which included the invention of the cinema, also created an increased political and social awareness that was inseparable from a sensorial response to such changes. The spread of technology, the disintegration of social relations and the shift to mass consumption prompted new modes of political organization but also philosophical understandings of an eternal becoming and its flipside, perpetual loss. This Bergsonian paradox informed modernist aesthetics, which Miriam B. Hansen affirms were themselves ‘cultural practices that both articulated and mediated the experience of modernity, such as the mass-produced and mass-consumed phenomena of fashion, design, advertising, architecture and urban environment, of photography, radio, and cinema.’1 Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer and Theodor W. Adorno each considered cinema as a symptomatic element of modernity that Ben Singer describes as both essential to its understanding and an appropriately technological innovation for recording ‘the most profound and striking explosion of industrialization, urbanization, migration, transportation, economic rationalization, bureaucratization, military mechanization, mass communication, mass amusement, and mass consumerism’.2 In the Basque Country, where industrialisation turned Bilbao into a foundry, the influx of immigrant workers occasioned the rise of both Socialism and Basque nationalism, which Santiago de Pablo defines as ‘deeply rooted in tradition’.3 Early Basque cinema was associated with progress and innovation. It revealed technological advances and new forms of experimentation but combined these with a mix of nostalgia and aspirations for the imagined community that was propounded by its principle ideologist, Sabino Arana, who prophesied an idealized Basque nation called Euskadi that was at risk of corruption from modernity. The party that he founded, Euzko 23

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Alderdi Jeltzalea/Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party, hereafter EAJ/PNV), promoted citizen participation in electoral politics and advocated the use of new technologies like the cinema to promote its ideas. The nostalgia for an unspoilt Basque Country that the party’s policy and propaganda exuded was not merely a sense of longing conjured up by passive remembrance, but a yearning for the restoration of nationalist sentiment. The role of early Basque cinema in this melting pot of conflict, tradition, modernism, immigration, industrialisation, nostalgia and utopian ideals was to illustrate ambitions for a modern Basque cultural identity and nation. Few films or fragments remain, but those that do offer moral certainties that hit back against the impact of modernity.

First Features: Projections and Productions The earliest film exhibitions and the initial steps in the artistic elaboration of films in the Basque Country have been the subject of several foundational works in the area of Basque film studies.4 The Lumi`ere brothers presented ten tiny films in Paris on 28 December 1895 and the first public projections on Basque territory took place in Biarritz on 1 August 1896. The Basque show included Llegada de la familia real espa˜nola de veraneo a San Sebasti´an (Arrival of the Spanish Royal Family on its Summer Holidays to San Sebastian, 1896), which had been filmed by Alexandre Promio on his return journey from presenting the cin´ematographe in Madrid on behalf of the Lumi`ere brothers.5 Shows in San Sebastian on 6 August 1896 and Bilbao on 9 August 1896 followed quickly, but those in Pamplona and Vitoria were delayed until 24 October 1896 and 1 November 1896 respectively. By 1897, however, all the main Basque cities had hosted screenings, which suited the ebullient tradition of leisure in the Basque Country, which celebrated sports such as jai-alai (Basque ball) and romer´ıas (local religious festivities) alongside the new variety shows and caf´es with live entertainment. Screenings were mostly in travelling marquees, but the Sal´on Olimpia opened in Bilbao in September 1905 and by 1916 films had been screened in villages throughout the Basque Country.6 Despite its popularity, however, this new form of entertainment encountered resistance from those who favoured the theatre and opposition by the Catholic Church as well as frequent fires and complaints about the noise. The first attempt to create a Basque film industry occurred in 1911 with the establishment in Bilbao of the French company Path´e, which made a series of travelogues by hitching their cameras to trams and trains to make San Sebasti´an en tranv´ıa (San Sebastian by Tram, 1912), Paseo en tranv´ıa por Bilbao (Bilbao by Tram, 1912), and Viaje de San Sebasti´an a Bilbao (Voyage from San Sebastian to Bilbao, 1912). These images of the Basque Country created an audience keen to see itself reflected as a ‘devout, hardworking nation that was proud of its unique culture and tradition’ and were complemented by Path´e filming the visits of prominent figures to the Basque Country and local events such as carnivals or regattas.7 In 1918 the First 24

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´ Melodramatic City: Un drama en Bilbao, Lolita la huerfana and Edurne, modista en Bilbao Independent film companies appeared too. Enrique Santos founded Hispania Films in 1923 with the intention of schooling actors but the company also enabled the pioneer directors of Basque cinema with its first three films: Un drama en Bilbao (A Drama in Bilbao, Alejandro Olabarr´ıa, 1924), Lolita la hu´erfana (Lolita the Orphan, Aureliano Gonz´alez, 1924) and Edurne, modista en Bilbao (Edurne, Seamstress in Bilbao, Telesforo Gil del Espinar, 1924). Each of these films is a melodrama set in a Bilbao undergoing industrialization, population shifts and political awakening. The choice of genre emphasises modernity because the structure of melodrama with its sudden reversals and startling contrasts lends itself to the representation of the rhythms and anxieties of modern urban life. The conventions of melodrama also provide an ideal context for protagonists confounded by a lack of rational explanations for their changing circumstances and troubled by the seeming absence of a panacean divinity. That is to say, in lieu of God, melodrama attributes public disaster and private suffering to the malign operation of evil in the world as it seeks to overcome goodness, which lends itself to a simplistic remapping along political lines.8 Furthermore, even if melodrama’s moral structure appears to offer a consoling vision, its affective structure is marked by alternation between sympathetic identification and defensive rejection, thereby creating a pattern of consumption based upon collective recognition and communal action and identity.9 Melodramatizing the nation therefore presents itself as a strategy designed to inculcate Basque citizens with a unifying sentiment. Un drama en Bilbao tells of Ricardo, a well-to-do young man who receives a note urging him to visit his sick mother and hurries in his chauffeur-driven car to Bilbao, only to be ambushed by Malaentra˜na and his accomplice before reaching the city. Ricardo is stabbed and his driver is incapacitated but manages to break his bonds and rush Ricardo to hospital, where his girlfriend arrives in time to witness his death. Malaentra˜na is arrested and his accomplice drowns while trying to escape from the police. The composition of the film subscribes to melodramatic excess and features sudden reversals, such as the urgent note that instantly motivates

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Conference of Basque Studies was held in O˜nati in Gipuzkoa and had the cinema as a topic of discussion. The resultant establishment of Eusko Ikaskuntza (Society of Basque Studies) supported the ethnographic worth of filming Basque folk dances in order to study and preserve their custom and the task of safeguarding rural arcadia from the ravages of progress was given to Manuel Inchausti, whose short films made between 1923 and 1928 are known as Eusko Ikasgayak (Basque Topics). The conflict between long-standing rural traditions and invading urban innovations would inform and typify the beginnings of both Basque nationalism and Basque cinema.

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Figure 3. Ricardo’s deathbed in Un drama en Bilbao (A Drama in Bilbao, Alejandro Olavarr´ıa, 1924) (Hispania Film).

the action and the surprise attack by Malaentra˜na. In addition, all the driving fast and shooting evokes the accelerated pace of modern life and associates this with threat. In this 40-minute film, the antagonist is explicitly branded by the name Malaentra˜na, which literally translates as ‘bad guts’ and is an expression used to describe a malicious person, as well as his slovenly appearance and suggestions of physical degeneracy. The devoted expression of the dying Ricardo is juxtaposed with the grimacing of Malaentra˜na, who embodies a new and malignant force that acts like a cancer upon the Basque Country. As might be expected, exaggerated facial gestures convey the bad intentions of the criminals and the good deeds of the innocents, who are martyred by greedy, avaricious, lustful, jealous villains with an overriding determination to bring misfortune to honest, upstanding Basques. The villain, it may be supposed, seeks to alter the social and economic structure of Basque society by killing its privileged and promising youth. However, exemplary moral retribution is achieved by the arrest of Malaentra˜na, whose characterization suggests he is a non-Basque whose violent attack on the class order does not subscribe to any explicit political purpose. Indeed, what can still be seen of the film in the few remaining fragments does not provide any causality for his actions, 26

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which appear brutal and unmotivated. The ending increases the pathos by placing Ricardo’s girlfriend at his death bed, inviting the audience to both mourn the loss of a decent Basque and resolve to defend themselves against dangers from elsewhere. There is no finesse or subtlety here; the Basques were just learning to make films. Yet this rudimentary pantomime still calls forth a sentiment of justifiable protectionism that serves the Basque middle class as it clings to its traditional values. The film’s discourse is flavoured with nationalist sentiment in its demonization of the non-Basque in the figure of Malaentra˜na, whose punishment for his attack on the elite is what passes for a happy ending. Because it derived from the theatre, the genre of melodrama on film made the cinema respectable at the same time as it endangered its protagonists in order to rouse the emotions. If it squandered any potential for complexity or realism on stereotypical characters, this was entirely in the line of appealing to a sentiment of safeguarding Basque traditions and their extant value system. The sifting and supposition continues with Lolita la hu´erfana, of which only ten minutes have been preserved. However, Alberto L´opez Echevarrieta offers an approximation of the plot in which Nelo, the ailing captain of the Volute, which works the port of Bilbao, encounters the eponymous stowaway.10 What remains of the film shows the first scenes of Lolita aboard the ship, her discovery and telling of her past life, which occasions a flashback that ends after her step-parents take her home after buying her a new dress. The script continues with Lolita selling newspapers in the street until she comes up against a boy-seller determined to protect his territory, who pushes Lolita to the ground and destroys her wares. When Lolita returns home her stepfather hits her with a shoe and she runs away to seek refuge on the boat. Nelo takes pity on her and resolves to keep her as his daughter. From what can be seen, there is no potential risk of sexual exploitation to this relationship; rather the new family arrangement formed by Lolita and Nelo suggests acceptable transformations in social structures that, rather than re-connect ties that were artificial anyway, restore the rituals of conventional families. The film therefore exalts the resourcefulness of those who create new and meaningful relationships in times of distress and dislocation. This is a call for solidarity no less, one that is sealed with sentiment. Despite his heart condition, Nelo is a tall and attractive man with a compassionate nature that the melodrama duly juxtaposes with the short, mean spirited and abusive stepfather. Moreover, by having Lolita struggle to sell newspapers, the film describes the urban context as subject to a violent contest between mass media from which the little Basque girl is effectively orphaned, thereby playing on the compassion of the audience for another victim of the rampant progress and indifferent modernity of the wicked step-citizens of the Basque Country. Again, only fragments of Edurne, modista en Bilbao remain but most of the script is available. It begins with panoramic views of the Basque Country and

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an inter-title: ‘Which country is the one offered to our avid view of beautiful landscapes and splendid scenery?’ The question is not rhetorical: ‘It looks like the Basque Country, the fatherland of Elcano, Iparraguirre, Trueba . . . Yes, it is Euzkalerr´ıa, the Basque land.’ This kind of introduction which feigns lyricism and then pronounces nationhood would prove common to documentaries on the Basque Country, including Around the World with Orson Welles (Orson Welles, 1955), Ama Lur (Motherland, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1968), El proceso de Burgos (The Burgos Trial, Imanol Uribe, 1979) and Barrura begiratzeko leihoak (Windows Looking Inwards, Mireia Gabilondo, Enara Goikoetxea, Txaber Larreategi, Josu Mart´ınez & Eneko Olasagasti, 2012). Here the ruse is extended by a prologue that introduces Jos´e Mendiz´abal, a worker in an iron mine in Biscay, his wife Marta and their infant twins, Josetxu and Edurne, who Marta has to leave with a friend following the death of her husband while she works as a wet nurse for the son of a widower named Aldasoro in San Sebastian. The melodramatic discourse of the inter-titles invites the audience to cry along: ‘Marta went to help another child born in opulence, but even more miserable than her own, since he lost his mother when he was born.’ Josetxu and Edurne grow up to build locomotives and become a seamstress respectively, but still live with their mother in an apartment in Bilbao that they rent from Don Bruno, whose attempt to force himself upon Edurne is repulsed by Alberto, the grown-up son of Aldasoro. Alberto and Edurne fall in love, of course, but face opposition to their courtship from Josetxu, who adopts the paternal role that is both protective of his sister and informed by an inherited class-based conscience. Edurne protests, nevertheless, with a revolutionary gesture that fulfils the potential of melodrama as a platform for feminist ideology and selfdetermination: ‘I believe that you are abusing your rights. You cannot forbid me to do what I feel like in my own business.’ Thwarted in his affections, Alberto leaves Bilbao for Madrid to study mine engineering and the third available section of the film focuses on the effects of industrialization, competition, the obsoletion of certain trades and the threat of economic crisis. Thus, although the film begins with and often conveys spectacular views of Basque landscapes, it shifts focus to provide an illustrated commentary on the negative effects of industrialization: ‘The industrial crisis hovers over the humble households as a plague of extermination and devastation. [. . .] Inactive workers due to lack of employment; warehouses crammed with goods which cannot be exported. It is the crisis.’ Josetxu, like many of his fellow workers, is made redundant and Don Bruno takes revenge and advantage of the situation by slandering Edurne and evicting the family: ‘Yes, they pay, but there lives a young woman whose deplorable conduct cannot be tolerated by a decent conscience.’ In the fourth extant part, the authorities arrive to enforce the eviction but are repelled by the protest of solidarity from the neighbours. Josetxu finds a job in a mine and his mother and sister leave Bilbao with him. The fifth and final part of those available ends when Alberto appears as an engineer in

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the same mine and Marta encounters his father, her former employer. The ending has not survived but ‘with the incorporation of the odd melodramatic element so typical of the era, the film closed with a happy ending that included a cross-class wedding’ of Alberto and Edurne.11 In sum, Edurne, modista en Bilbao exhibits a typically melodramatic narrative that is redirected by reversals and coincidences. Archetypes are served too with the evil Don Bruno being physically and morally juxtaposed with the well-meaning and honourable Alberto, while the ending posits interclass marriage as an innovative means of resolving conflict, confirming solidarity and erasing stagnant social practices. All early silent films can be classified as melodramas for their exaggeration of performative gestures and emphasis on emotional upheaval. Yet the common understanding of the genre as a vehicle for structured and contained family dramas incorporating duress and fortitude, some romance and occasional violence in a particular, often oppressive context of economic depression or social oppression is illustrated by Edurne, modista en Bilbao too. Melodrama has often been disparaged for its emotional vulgarity and emphasis on feminine concerns that a phallocentric society and critical apparatus derides as trivial and exaggerated; but recent studies by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams drew on the writing of Peter Brooks to identify and rehabilitate underlying themes of nobility in relation to its heightened but unembarrassed gestures and to reclassify melodrama as a mode rather than a genre.12 Gledhill argues that in melodrama ‘aesthetic, cultural and ideological features coalesce into a modality which organises the disparate sensory phenomena, experiences and contradictions of a newly emerging secular and atomizing society in visceral, affective and morally exploratory terms.’13 Thus the newly emerging Euskadi, the nationalist-minded Basque Country, found its ideal vehicle in melodrama, whose appeal to the sentiment of its audience was designed to reflect and explain their experiences of living in a society that was, like melodrama itself, ‘a tremendously protean, evolving and modernizing form’.14 Moreover, just as Williams contends that ‘melodrama begins and wants to end in a space of innocence’ so this use of the mode in early Basque cinema corresponds to the nationalist idea of a pure and unspoilt utopia that had been lost to industrialization, immigration and avarice but might be regained by adherence to nationalist policies.15 By such means is the putative cinema of sentiment radicalized to a point where the emotional response it both illustrates and evokes is in the service of a cinema of citizens. Edurne, her brother and mother are what Williams defines as classic ‘victimheroes’ given to an emotionalism that borrows its causality from the realism that is emphasized in the sequence dedicated to the industrial crisis.16 The film deploys this emotionalism as part of ‘a dialectic of pathos and action’ that is continually redirected by the typical narrative coincidences that Williams describes as ‘a give and take of “too late” and “in the nick of time”.’17 Where the nationalist

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sentiment is most exalted and potentially radicalised in these melodramas is in the organization of ‘characters who embody primary psychic roles organized in Manichean conflicts between good and evil.’18 Psychological reactions are flattened in silent melodramas, where subtlety is the first victim of the need to express everything through physical and facial contortions, but the risk of characters becoming merely symbolic does not diminish their political and cultural propaganda. On the contrary, the focus on the family unity invites metaphorical, even allegorical readings that simplify and amplify the message for largely illiterate audiences while underlining the respectable theatrical origins of melodrama for the more educated middle classes who saw these films too. Edurne, modista en Bilbao was enthusiastically received by audiences and critics. El Pueblo Vasco reported the ‘grandiose success’ of a premiere that was interrupted by frequent applause and it enjoyed wide distribution and acceptance from audiences who appreciated a film that focused on Basque concerns instead of Spanish ones.19 The legacy of these films is incalculable in terms of their political persuasion, but quantifiable in relation to the elliptical evolution of Basque cinema, where films such as Ama Lur recycle familiar iconography in order to redirect the sentiment of Basque melodrama towards the more explicit cause of citizenship.

Nostalgic Nationalism: El mayorazgo de Basterretxe Whereas the previous films reflect urban experiences in a contemporary setting, El mayorazgo de Basterretxe (The Basterretxe Estate, V´ıctor Azcona & Mauro Azcona, 1928) depicts the rural Basque Country of the mid-nineteenth century in the period between two Carlist Wars. Like them it was financed by prototypical crowdfunding from a cooperative composed of those involved in its making.20 Despite basic technical facilities, the Azcona brothers achieved an estimable visual flow and narrative rhythm by virtue of an efficient structure, rapid editing and the evolution of film grammar from the simple succession of mid-shots to include long establishing shots for scenes that emphasize the rural context and wide shots for the dances and depictions of other customs. The lack of close-ups does not detract from a dynamic viewing experience that is enhanced by the authenticity of the film’s period detail, which was copied and reconstructed from museum exhibitions of clothes and paraphernalia. The film is an adaptation of the novel Mirentxu (1917) by Pierre Lhande, which tells of Josetxu, heir to the grand Basterretxe estate who nonetheless longs to become a sailor. His sister Mirentxu is romantically involved with the kind-hearted but naive Txomin and against these three are pitted three evil villians. The first, Don Timoteo, is a non-Basque who has profited from the Spanish colonies in Latin America and returned to lord it over acquired lands with his sights set on owning the estate. Lagarto is a vicious character whose name means lizard and Paquito is a city-dweller infatuated with Mirentxu. Don Timoteo and his accomplices get Txomin drunk on txakol´ı and introduce him 30

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MELODRAMATIC BEGINNINGS: EARLY BASQUE CINEMA Figure 4. The foregrounding of Basque customs and traditional dress in El mayorazgo de Basterretxe (The Basterretxe Estate, V´ıctor Azcona & Mauro Azcona, 1929) (Producciones Azcona).

to city prostitutes on the same night that Lagarto kills Josetxu’s father on Don Timoteo’s orders. Due to his unexplainable absence all night, Txomin is accused of the murder and takes refuge far from the village. Meanwhile, Don Timoteo convinces Josetxu to go to sea and Paquito tries to seduce Mirentxu. However, Don Timoteo holds a document signed by Josetxu’s father giving him the right to the family estate if the debt he has incurred by going to sea is not paid within the week. The drama is resolved when Txomin’s uncle gives him the money and Txomin manages to pay the debt seconds before the deadline. Lagarto confesses to the murder and blames Don Timoteo and the lovers are reunited. El mayorazgo de Basterretxe thus resembles the melodrama of modernity, which Mathew S. Buckley describes as moving, ‘from its quickly predominating reliance upon breathtaking opening tableaux of idealized community and initial actions of intrusive violence, to its soon-typical adherence to an accelerating, rhythmic alternation between scenes of fracture and reconciliation, flight and refuge, horror and comedic relief, and exilic loss and restorative justice.’21 Its happy ending cements compassionate identification with a moral and political view that exalts adherence to traditions that unify action, awareness and resistance and prompts the rejection of invasive elements and pernicious influences. 31

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To explore the function of melodrama in relation to El mayorazgo de Basterretxe it is necessary to contextualise the film in the contemporary political situation and note the influence of Basque nationalism as formulated by Sabino Arana. This ideologist was born in Abando, a district of Bilbao, on 26 January 1865 and from a very early age became passionately interested in Basque history.22 His family had supported the liberals in the Carlist wars that had ended with the abolition of the Basque laws called fueros and their exile in France. On his return to Bilbao, Arana experienced many of the social problems that affected Biscay at the end of the nineteenth century such as rampant population growth, massive immigration and unchecked industrialisation which, for many inhabitants of Bilbao ‘had turned their world upside down in a matter of years with the dismantlement of pre-industrial and agricultural modes of production, the dissolution of traditional social relations, and the decline of religious beliefs and the use of Euskara.’23 The 28 year-old Arana distanced himself from the Carlist ideology and zealously converted to a nationalist faith: ‘The shadows that hid my knowledge of the motherland disappeared, and offering my heart to God, eternal lord of Biscay, I offered all I am and all I have for the restoration of the motherland.’24 Such declarations point to Benedict Anderson’s identification of ‘the strong affinity with religious imaginings’25 in fledgling nationalisms and lead to Arana’s Bizkaya por su independencia (Biscay for its Independence, 1892). This fulfilled the role of ‘print as commodity’26 by establishing the ideology of modern Basque nationalism in rhetorical prose that proclaims the eternal independence of the Basques, warns against espa˜nolizaci´on (Spanishification) and urges the use of Euskara and fidelity to the two principles that make up his motto Jaungoikoa eta Lege Zarra (God and Old Law). Arana’s strategy may thus be aligned with Anderson’s contention that nationalism should be treated ‘as if it belonged with “kinship” or “religion” rather than with “liberalism” or “fascism”.’27 These commandments duly became the statutes of the EAJ/PNV that Arana founded and dressed in nationalist iconography that included the invention of the term Euskadi to collate the Basque territories and a green, red and white flag called the ikurrina that he modelled on the Union Jack. He also nominated the self-penned Gora ta Gora (Onwards and Upwards) as a rousing song to replace the popular but formal and rather dour anthem Gernikako arbola (The Tree of Guernica). Beneath the pomp, however, his writing confronted the problems of industrialization and immigration and championed a strict ethnic separation between Basques and non-Basques that he claimed was an urgent measure to avoid any ethnic, linguistic and moral contagion. Underpinning his argument, moreover, was a strategy that robed his rhetoric in the particular notion of nostalgia that is a common feature of nationalisms, one that ‘has to be understood by aligning it, not with self-consciously held political ideologues, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it.’28 For Arana, the myth of the Golden Age represented a glorious past of a free Basque nation that had preserved its own customs, laws

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and institutions in rural and mountainous bliss until the nineteenth century.29 His brand of nationalism was solipsistic and exclusive, a ‘shrunken imagining’30 aimed at a return to independence through the regeneration of Basque purity and the concomitant repatriation of Spaniards and foreigners. In times of uncertainty, threat and change, the appeal to nostalgic sentiment by the EAJ/PNV linked the popular perception of the past with the project of collective action for its restoration. The respondent surge in Basque nationalism occurred at a time when, as Henri Lefebvre describes, ‘the period which sees and calls itself entirely new is overcome by an obsession with the past: memory, history. [. . .] Historical becoming is immediately upon us, and immediately it becomes history, known and recognised historicity, historical consciousness, chained to a vaguely distant past according to which the present vainly attempts to situate itself.’31 The Basque nationalist interplay of nostalgia, ethnicity, violence, tradition and cultural symbols that included the use of Euskara, divisive archetypes and recourse to emotionally-charged rhetoric would play a prominent role in the political and cultural history of the Basque Country throughout the twentieth century as well as the evolution of Basque cinema. This discourse resembles one of sentiment, but when radicalized becomes a rigid criteria of citizenship. The Azcona brothers had already declared their ambition to fashion ‘a rural melodrama in which the virtues of the Basque people were reflected.’32 Thus, the opening titles of El mayorazgo de Basterretxe declared: Basque land. Nest of love and freedom and of an eternal people whose steely soul has endured the stormy blasts of history. It is a people whose existence stands as eloquent testimony to its reverence for the past and its tenacious defense of traditional laws, language, and folkways over the course of centuries in the face of foreign invasion.

This florid introduction presents nothing less than the imagined community via recourse to that which Benedict Anderson terms the ‘profound emotional legitimacy’ that results from the ‘subjective antiquity [of nations] in the eyes of nationalists.’33 As Anderson explains, ‘the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members’ but this only makes the effective dissemination of ideas by means other than conversation more crucial.34 For Anderson, this means was print technology, but the cinema was a potent force for estranged and anonymous Basques to imagine their community too, which makes a film like El mayorazgo de Basterretxe into a representational text that provides the images that ensure that ‘in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.’35 Crucially, this communion was temporal as well as geographical, uniting presentday Basques with their pasts via the nostalgia induced by a viewing of the film. Indeed, because, as Anderson advises, ‘communities are to be distinguished, not 33

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by falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined,’ so the style or mode of melodrama, for reasons previously discussed, is an ideal vehicle for imagining the Basque community.36 The printed programme that accompanied screenings of El mayorazgo de Basterretxe insists upon its Basque identity, declaring it ‘a national film with a Basque atmosphere, Basque actors and actresses, Basque landscapes, Basque production. Everything is Basque in this film.’37 Its idealized Basque nation is situated between the Carlist wars of the mid-nineteenth century, which effects a contrast with the time the film was made during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–30), when Basque nationalism was derided and its symbols forbidden. This resulted in the filmmakers’ use of the ikurrina in an early scene featuring the ikurrin-dantza, a traditional dance in which the flag is swung and held over the performers’ heads, meeting with prohibition and the substitution of a white flag.38 Another shot of the protagonists in folk-dress prompted the civil governor to issue a decree prohibiting the display of such outfits without prior authorization. Nevertheless, the programme conveys the filmmakers’ intention explicitly by describing the plot as ‘love for the caser´ıo (farmhouse), passion for the sea, sweet romance; all against greed and vileness. In this film the simple and patriarchal Basque customs of the last century are portrayed.’39 The function and appropriateness of melodrama is then emphasized by the characters’ correspondence to those that Buckley lists as most recurrent in the melodrama of modernity: ‘the orphan, the mute witness to crime, the dispossessed heir, the exiled aristocratic villain, the suffering young woman seeking the solace of a lost world of domestic stability.’40 Each one represents an aspect of dislocation in the Basque Country subject to social unrest and invasive dangers that corrupt the morals, pervert the laws and erase the inherited practices of its citizens. In contrast to the purity of the countryside, the city is associated with prostitution, which opposes Mirentxu’s virtue and loyalty, and alcohol, which is the cause of Txomin’s disastrous fall from grace and innocence. In relation to modernity, the film tallies with Singer because it also ‘triggers another variety of agitation as well: the agitation that comes from observing extreme moral injustice, the feeling of distress, of being profoundly disturbed or outraged when we see vicious power victimizing the weak, usually involving some kind of bodily violence.’41 Moreover, the film’s resolution provides the audience with a cathartic experience when punishment is imposed upon non-Basque evil-doers such as the reptilian Lagarto, who an inter-title describes as ‘the miser who is always thinking about gold, always at the service of evil.’ Most importantly, the noble protagonists all have Basque names (Josetxu, Txomin, Edurne) and wear Basque costumes, whereas the villains are all Castilian and dress accordingly, with Don Timoteo cast and costumed to embody the dangers of modernity as an avaricious representative of the nouveau riche set on the corruption and exploitation of the Basques as his introductory inter-title declares: ‘Don Timoteo, previously poor, became rich

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through adventure. From his arrival in Aizgorri, the claws of usury were trapping that village of peace and work.’ His plan to usurp the inheritance is also described as transgressing morality and its equivalent in Basque law: ‘In the Basterretxe farmhouse, all its inhabitants practiced, with religious devotion, their love for the caser´ıo. All its first borns had been loyal to the tradition by inheriting, along with the entailed estate, the love for that fertile property, pride of Aizgorri.’ The defeat and punishment of Don Timoteo therefore not only counters a threat to law-abiding traditions but also serves as a warning against any future attempts to interfere in the social order that they sustain. In sum, the moral and affective structure of this melodrama is marked by an alternation between sympathetic identification with some characters and defensive rejection of others, thereby reinforcing the sentiment associated with Basque citizenship. Santiago de Pablo explains that El mayorazgo de Basterretxe reflects Basque traditionalist literature of the era as well as the propaganda of the EAJ/PNV.42 Its paradigmatic parable of threatened Basque identity and its overcoming of narrative obstacles via recourse to traditional values was a common trope in early Basque cinema, which, though not quite an industry, still aspired to a new model of community that used film to express a sense of loss as well as the ambition to alleviate contemporary problems by fixating upon the myth of a previously idyllic existence that might be restored in the future. Thus, the melodrama of El mayorazgo de Basterretxe, as well as Un drama en Bilbao, Lolita la hu´erfana and Edurne, modista en Bilbao, displays a pattern of moral retribution and a sense of a restored community that is illustrated by the repetition of symbols associated with Basque nationalism. In addition, El mayorazgo de Basterretxe includes a supernatural element whose Gothic nature is affined with the aesthetics of melodrama and which points to the ghostly but supportive presence of the past in the troubled present. When Josetxu’s father is dying, the image of the Virgin of Bego˜na leaves a painting to become a spectral human figure that consoles the dying man by assuring him that his family will be taken care of. Similarly, when Txomin is in hiding the ghost-like image of Mirentxu materialises, urging him to restore his honour. Both spectres confirm the sense of Basque nationalism as religion, offering reassuring evidence of a past that is capable of returning at times of conflict and upheaval. These spectral occurrences are spirit guides that realign the history of the protagonists and relocate them in their rightful territory. Their temporary exile is a foundational obsession of melodrama, which often illustrates experiences of dislocation and displacement, loss, fracture and the longing to return, because, as Buckley explains, ‘its heroes and heroines, its suffering children, lost mothers, and despairing fathers, even its monstrous villains, are all exiles – actors somehow swept away from their proper place, their right and natural home and family.’43 Exile is thus a familiar theme in these early films in which the fates of characters point to a symbolic displacement of the Basque country: Lolita runs from one temporary home to another, Edurne and her mother

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Marta are evicted, Josetxu goes away to sea, Txomin goes into hiding and the entire plot of El mayorazgo de Basterretxe revolves around the attempt to steal an entailed estate, that is, to render the true heir an exile in his own Basque homeland.

Ethnographic Models: Euzkadi, Euzko ikusgayak, Au Pays des Basques and Sinfon´ıa vasca Alongside fictions that illustrated the ideology of Basque nationalism through metaphor and allegory came ethnographic films that catalogued and displayed its iconography. No copy of Euzkadi (Teodoro Hernandorena, 1933) survives but perusal of the script and Santos Zunzunegui’s interviews with its director, who died in 1994, reveal that the film originated in the participation of members of Catalan nationalist parties in Aberri Eguna (Basque National Day) in May 1933.44 The Catalan delegation’s filmed record of the spectacle gave Hernandorena, who was president of the San Sebastian youth wing of the EAJ/PNV, the idea of personally adding new scenes and a soundtrack to the existing footage at his own expense. Euzkadi was incinerated by Franco’s nationalist forces after they entered San Sebastian in September 1936 and found the reels abandoned in the offices of the EAJ/PNV; but Zunzunegui’s reconstruction of an idea of the film suggests that it began with images of Basque landscapes – San Sebastian, Orio, Zumaya, Hondarribia – overlaid with the following voiceover: ‘Coasts, mountains and plains shelter this singular people of notable nationality and remarkable civilization from remote Paleolithic times. Its history can be summarized as a secular fight for the independence of the fatherland.’ The commentary continues in this vein over images of a baserri (traditional farmhouse) described as ‘the oyster that shelters and protects the Basque pearl’ where an idyllic life is maintained in the kitchen, where several generations of the ‘stable, tightly-connected and robust’ family gather ‘far from the annoying vicinity of other men.’45 The structuralist equation that results in Basque difference is then extended with images of aizkolariak (woodsmen), segalariak (reapers), stone lifters and jai-alai (Basque ball) offering an ‘artistic exhibition of ordinary labour offered in honest rivalry.’46 Religious elements are presented as signifiers of Basque identity as are images of Basque youth, which the film explains ‘has embraced the patriotic cause in an overwhelming majority. These young men are worthy successors of former Basques willing to endure all kind of sacrifices and vexations to achieve their ideals and to reach national redemption.’47 Thus, the connection to the utopian past is once more established in relation to the task ahead, which is prefigured in this representation of a community whose history, Euzkadi contends, ‘can be reduced to its fight for an independent fatherland.’ Euzkadi premiered commercially in San Sebastian on 22 December 1933 and was received enthusiastically by audiences and the nationalist newspaper El D´ıa, which, ‘associating documentary with reality, summed it up thus: “Euzkadi is Euzkadi”.’48 As the first full-length propaganda feature of any political party in 36

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Spain, Euzkadi also confirmed ‘the importance the Basque nationalists assigned to the cinema at a time when far more powerful political parties, such as the PSOE, were not engaged in similar efforts.’49 A desire to see onscreen the performance of Basque identity that confirmed the imagined community as one that conformed to nationalist ideology also inspired the production of Euzko ikusgayak (Basque Scenes, Manuel Ynchausti, 1924), Au Pays des Basques (In the Basque Country, Jean Faugeres & Maurice Champreux, 1930) and Sinfon´ıa vasca (Basque Symphony, Adolf Trotz, 1936). Each displays Basque dances, sports and people with typical physiognomy dressed in representative costumes, as well as classic and commonplace rural and urban landscapes. Euzko ikusgayak, which provides inter-titles in Euskara first and in a larger font than the Castilian or French ones below, catalogues folk dances such as the espatadantza, mascarada, mutxikonak, branle jaustia and trikitixa in its several episodes because, as de Pablo explains, following Romantic ideas of such traditions, nationalists had exalted such performative rituals as the ‘remnant of the Basque soul.’50 In addition to the dancers and the sportsmen, moreover, the immutable figure of the Basque shepherd is celebrated along with his inimitable high-pitched cry called irrintzi, which was originally meant to communicate across mountain ranges but became a potent and piercing symbol of Basque identity. Au Pays des Basques portrays a similarly traditional idyll but from the viewpoint of an outsider and the French inter-titles refer to the Basque Country as Other: ‘The Basque soul has a simple, brave and vigorous line, similar to their mountains.’ It is the first film in which Euskara is heard, spoken by a man describing burial practices, and is also notable for narrating the departure of a young man to America: the youth visits his girlfriend to say goodbye and instead of any tragic or melodramatic gesture they hold hands and look at each other in long takes before he withdraws. Sinfon´ıa vasca was made on the eve of the Spanish Civil War by Producciones Hisp´anicas, a company in Madrid associated with right-wing monarchist groups, and directed by Adolf Trotz, a German resident of the city. It was believed lost until Andoni Elezcano discovered a copy in the Filmoteca Espa˜nola (Spanish Film Archive) in 2013. Its iconographic display of an idealized, traditional Basque Country is typical, but alongside scenes of dances and sports, farming and fishing, Sinfon´ıa vasca incorporates a view of modernity in a sequence portraying iron casting and other foundry work that recalls Eisensteinian modes of composition: the rhythm of the editing accelerates and the precise composition of music and images is complemented by the quality of the cinematography and lighting. A later series of panoramic views taken from a ship exploits the juxtaposition of angles to create a near-abstract reverie of criss-crossing vertical lines and ropes that results in an almost avant-garde aesthetic. These instances of ambition are not typical of the whole, however, and neither are they indicative of any revolutionary aesthetic or sense of Basque difference. The film has music by the Navarrese composer Jes´us Garc´ıa Leoz but no dialogue or inter-titles and only an instance of Euskara when

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a man tells his grandson to ‘learn to love our old, strong and noble Gernika oak tree, because this is the way of the Basque people.’51 Consequently, the film and its footage were commodified in the propaganda from all points on the political spectrum during the Civil War because ‘its apolitical, folkloric and uniquely Basque perspective allowed it to later be used as propaganda by supporters of Franco, Republicans, and even the Basque Nationalist Party.’52 The community, it seemed, could be imagined not just by the breakaway Basques but also by those who would now fight to make it part of a Spanish whole.

Firm Foundations or a False Start? These early Basque films reveal the imagination and practical efforts that went into the construction of a modern Basque nation and its concomitant film industry. This process involved the instructional representation of audiences that could conceive of a collective Basque identity as a subject with its own historical, cultural and even linguistic identity that might withstand industrialization, immigration and moral corruption from elsewhere. This imagined community was partly an aspirational cultural construction. Nevertheless, it is imagined precisely as a community because it is conceived as ‘a deep, horizontal comradeship [. . .] that makes it possible [for] people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.’53 Fraternity is herein formulated in terms of sentiment and citizenship, as firstly the need to preserve the land, traditions and language, and secondly as the collective identity that is essential to maintain ethnic characteristics in the face of increasing Spanish threats. Thus, the factors that enhance national identity in terms of sentiment and citizenship as described by Georg Sorenson are all present in these films.54 Language, laws and bloodlines are identified as essential to the Basque middle class that is depicted as threatened by both the immigrant proletariat with its underlying criminal class, and a non-Basque oligarchy. The projection of a resistant Basque nationalism that illustrates the ideology of Sabino Arana offers a plethora of nostalgic, idyllic symbols to awaken sentiment before proceeding to structure a view of Basque citizenship that exhibits restrictive terms of race, language and social practices. Yet in the fictions this remains a flexible and permeable discourse that permits the transfer of sentiment to political ideas while also attaching universal values associated with melodrama such as self-determination, true love and the importance of family to the parables of Basques. In the ethnographic films, although the imagined community is often pre-industrialized, rural and traditional, the footage offers pleasure in looking at elements of progress too. The question of reception, of who these films were intended to entertain or educate, is answered by the status of the cinema, which was still an amusement for the masses rather than art for an elite. Yet the medium was the ideal accompaniment to the modern Basque Country and the incipient nationalism that grew within it, and the propagandist potential of the cinema would only increase in the years 38

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leading up to the Spanish Civil War. At this pupal stage of Basque cinema, however, the iconography of its fictions and the footage of its factual films does not exhibit exclusively nationalist DNA and is able to resist the imposition of any particular or exclusive vision because the iconography it presents is not yet coded in a rigid system. Dances, landscapes, costumes, sports and sounds of languages, songs and labourers are free and fluid activities in this prewar period and the look of the audience is therefore not so fixated that they have become fetishized as happens to some extent in 1968 with Ama Lur. Although its community is imagined, the Basque Country is not yet an objectified Other. It is not yet extinct, as it would seem to some by the time of Ama Lur, which appeared after three decades of oppression that included the outlawing of Euskara and many Basque traditions and customs and played to Basque audiences that, to borrow Laura Mulvey’s theory of visual pleasure, had to repress their exhibitionism and project their repressed desire onto the image.55 Instead, these early films reflected a Basque Country that could still exude inclusive rather than exclusive sentiment, one that might illustrate nationalist rhetoric but could still invite a less extreme emotional response to the idea of home and the community as represented in melodrama, which was the ideal mode for transmitting the tensions associated with modernity. Indeed, it is even possible to posit the narrative of nationhood as a melodrama that features oscillation between a fierce defence of tradition against the dangers of modernity in El mayorazgo de Basterretxe and the possibility of creating new forms of social configurations in works such as Lolita la hu´erfana and Edurne, modista en Bilbao. Emotional attachment to the idea of a nation is, to a greater or lesser extent, perceptible in all these films, while nationalism is explored in ways that demonstrate a discursive formation that is not an invalid illusion. Nationalism may obtain support from an appeal to primordial traditions but must also emphasize the potential for change and progress that is latent in nation-building. Moreover, the kind of critical thinking advocated by Craig Calhoun involves approaching nationalism as something that may be described by its limits and excesses but at the same time should not be avoided or dismissed because it has great importance as a source of identification and solidarity and as a structuring principle of loyalty and sentiment.56 From its inception, Basque cinema establishes a dialogue with the political and social context that is complicated by nationalism and even weighted towards nostalgia that cannot conceive of the future without looking backwards. Yet its imagined community does not forego a narrative oriented towards a modern Basque nation and progress. Rather, its fictions tend to subscribe to melodrama as a mode of overcoming oppression via self-determination, while its ethnographic films catalogue and display all the signs of Basqueness without defining them solely as signifiers of anti-Spanish intent. Not quite a cinema of citizens and not yet a cinema of sentiment, the few early Basque films are self-contained without being experimental in anything but the sense of learning how they might be made. The narratives and iconography of these real and imagined fragments and films are

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arguably the building blocks of the imaginary of a modern Basque nation, but whether they provide firm foundations for what would come after the dictatorship or a false start that would be disqualified by the Spanish Civil War remains a matter of conjecture. Nevertheless, what we see in early Basque cinema is citizenship presented as sentiment and hoping to be confirmed by it in films that deal in emotive subjects and observe peculiar objects, whose novelty might appeal to audiences elsewhere but whose tradition is freshly Basque.

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3 Taking The Initiative: The San Sebastian Film Festival and the Transition The Donostia Zinemaldia or San Sebastian International Film Festival is rather like a carnival as described by Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘a social institution’ that annually revives ‘the second life of the people, who for a time enter the utopian realm of community, freedom, equality and abundance.’1 Held each year at the end of September, the festival lets locals go on a movie bender while filmmakers binge on pintxos and txakoli. It is the sole category A festival (competitive, non-specialized) in Spain, one of only seven in Europe and just 13 in the world. Thomas Elsaesser categorizes European film festivals according to whether they applaud the auteur, oppose or connect with Hollywood, or display national cinemas, seeing them as clusters combining ‘economic, cultural, political, artistic and personality based factors, which communicate with and irrigate each other in a unique kind of arena.’2 He adds that national cinemas cannot avoid becoming post-national because they are generally mediated through the legislative and economic measures taken by the European Union.3 But he allows that there is ‘another way of transcending the national for European films, while at the same time reinstating it as a secondorder category, and thus becoming post-national’ and that is the international film festival, which has become ‘the key force and power grid in the film business, with wide-reaching consequences for the respective functioning of the other elements (authorship, production, exhibition, cultural prestige and recognition) pertaining to the cinema and to film culture.’4 Following Elsaesser, this chapter documents the most relevant developments in the festival (hereafter SSFF) since its creation in 1953, paying special attention to the ebb and flow of tensions between the local, the national and the transnational. From its basic conception as a ‘film week’ to its complex current programming, the evolution of the SSFF reveals 41

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the interaction of art, commerce, politics and nationalism in three periods. The first follows the evolution of the SSFF until the end of the Francoist dictatorship. The second covers the transition to democracy and culminates in the declaration of autonomy for the Basque Country in 1979 that prompted a cinema of such radical sentiment that it became a cinema of citizens. The final section examines the evolution of the SSFF until the present and assesses its current role. Throughout, the clusters of festival conventions identified by Marijke de Valck & Skadi Loist as time (awards, juries and critics), space (host city, tourism and public spheres), the red carpet (spectacle, stars and glamour), business matters (industries, distribution and marketing), programming, associated publications, and reception by audiences and communities will be examined for their relevance to Basque cinema.5

1953–75: Push and Pull The annual international film festival is a European institution that reached economic and artistic maturity in the 1950s, since when, as Elsaesser states, ‘the names of Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Oberhausen and San Sebastian have spelled the roll call of regular watering holes for the world’s film lovers, critics and journalists, as well as being the marketplaces for producers, directors, distributors, television acquisition heads, and studio bosses.’6 Several are hosted by resorts that compete with each other for cultural tourism and place their film festivals shortly before or just after high season as a way of guaranteeing its extension. The SSFF originated in October 1952 when a group of ten local merchants and their friends met in Caf´e Madrid on San Sebastian’s main avenue with the intention of finding a creative solution for their city’s late summer doldrums. After electing Dionisio P´erez Villar as their general secretary and Jos´e S´anchez Eceiza as his assistant, they discussed the viability of a song contest, a fashion show and a motor race before welcoming P´erez Villar’s suggestion of a film festival. However, the C´amara de Comercio, Industria y Navegaci´on (Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Navigation) told the group to ‘forget such fantasies; merchants are not the ones to organize such things’ and this rejection was echoed by the Federaci´on Mercantil de Guip´uzcoa (Gipuzkoan Merchants Association) and the Centro de Atracci´on y Turismo (Tourism Office).7 Finally, the Delegaci´on Provincial de Sindicatos (Regional Delegation of Unions) offered the businessmen two offices with phones, secretaries and the promise of a subsidy of 100,000 pesetas after the film week took place. Three emboldened members of the group then travelled to Madrid at their own expense to meet Manuel Casanova, the President of the Sindicato Nacional del Espect´aculo (National Federation for the Arts), who accepted the terms, wangled another 150,000 pesetas from Joaqu´ın Argamasilla, the General Director of Cinematography, pencilled in the event for the week of 21–27 September 1953 and offered official guidance in the unknown territory of selecting worthy films and inviting desirable film folk. 42

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TAKING THE INITIATIVE: THE SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL AND THE TRANSITION

However, such encouragement disguised the wish of the centralizing government in Madrid, which had already prohibited Euskara and turned Basque universities into trade schools, to influence and even control the event, which Argamasilla argued should be a Catholic film week instead. Regardless, the First International Film Week hosted 19 films from Argentina, France, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, Spain, the UK and the USA and was promptly followed by the decision from Madrid that the 1954 edition would take place in the middle of high season and be extended from seven days to ten, thereby initiating a prolonged tug-of-war between the interests and wishes of the local merchants and the powers-that-be in Madrid.8 On 1 December 1953 the F´ed´eration Internationale des Associations de Producteurs de Films (International Federation of Film Producers Associations, hereafter FIAPF), which regulates international film festivals, held a meeting in London at which its Spanish vice president negotiated the official recognition of the fledgling SSFF as a B category international festival (non-competitive). Representing Spanish producers at the FIAPF was the lawyer Miguel de Echarri, who assumed directorship of the festival and announced that the 1954 edition was set for mid-July, thereby overriding the original local remit to extend the summer season set by the local Basque businessmen, who were excluded from its organising committee on the grounds that official recognition required more professional management.9 From 1954 onwards the SSFF took place in either June or July and it was not until 1973, when its shift to September was propitiated by the movement of the Venice Film Festival that year, that it resumed its original mission of extending the season, a role it has effectively performed ever since. Challenges to the developing pre-eminence of the SSFF were made by Palma de Mallorca and other places in Spain, but the festival’s success was partly maintained by the swift modifications of the host city, such as the construction of nearby Fuenterrabia Airport in 1955 to facilitate the arrival of high-profile guests and that of the Hotel Monte Igueldo in 1967 to provide their accommodation. Elsaesser admits that European film festivals were initially ‘highly political and nationalistic affairs’10 and the SSFF was no exception, its creation exemplifying the tensions between regional identity and the centralist Francoist regime that opposed it. In 1953, however, the Franco regime was officially recognized by both the Vatican and the USA for its resistance to communism and throughout its first decade the SSFF would display Francoist iconography and bury any restant Basqueness beneath a sideshow cavalcade of bullfights, fashion shows and flamenco concerts that all served as tropes of a united Spain, which was topped off by the annual visit of Franco’s wife, Carmen Polo de Franco. Any Basqueness which did seep out in a few sporting contests or dances in folk costumes resembled merely a regional flavour of this particular brand of Spanishness that was only partly assuaged by the integration of a few prominent Basques on the organizing committee such as Pilar Olascoaga (festival secretary from 1961) and Antonio Zulueta (filmmaker Iv´an Zulueta’s father), who directed the SSFF from 1957 until 1960. In addition, the

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most insidious imposition of the Francoist regime on the SSFF was the censorship meted out to all films taking part in an effort to manage the cultural influence of foreign films on peripheral nationalist movements and also to ‘Spanishify’ any Basque or Catalan cultural elements.11 Thus, even if the logistics of the event were delegated to the San Sebastian town council and other local institutions, the selection and programming of films was withheld to the extent that when Zulueta sought to exert greater control over the festival’s content he received a written warning stipulating that all such matters were exclusively the decision of the authorities in Madrid.12 This question of the programming is not incidental to the contribution of the SSFF to Basque culture and difference because as de Valck has stated: ‘The cultural value added by festival selection and programming reaches beyond the level of personal preference and becomes more or less – according to the festival’s prestige on the international film circuit – globally acknowledged as evidence of quality. The process is similar to the way in which museums and art galleries add cultural capital to the artefacts they exhibit.’13 During the dictatorship this meant the SSFF was severely limited in what could be shown and who could attend or participate in its organization. Any risk of offending the regime was annulled with the collaboration of foreign distributors who, as Tuduri explains, were requested to send ‘to San Sebastian “white films”, without any political, social or moral implications to secure free exportation. Therefore, each country sent superficial, insipid and na¨ıve films; otherwise they would have lost the opportunity to sell them tax-free in the Spanish market.’14 However, in 1955 the FIAPF noted the bland, commercial programming of the festival and issued a damning report that recommended rescinding the official recognition of the SSFF and its ability to award official prizes in 1956 without the agreement of the FIAPF. This report cited jury tampering and corruption, the screening of foreign films with incomplete or even misleading subtitles and contradictions of FIAPF rules that included the screening of films that had been previously released such as Giorni di amori (Days of Love, Giuseppe Desantis, 1954) and Disney’s Toot, Whistle, Punk and Boom (Tom Oreb, 1953), which won the SSFF award for best short film after already having won two prizes in Cannes. Other problems such as the lack of an official pre-approved programme, sudden changes in the schedule, late or non-arrivals of some films and last-minute ‘surprises’ such as the impromptu appearance of filmmakers and stars could be attributed to a steep learning curve in the early years, but the absence of a strong film industry in Spain was also a factor, as was deficient communication between San Sebastian and Madrid, which embodied the paradox of constantly interfering while simultaneously not giving the SSFF enough attention. Nevertheless, these teething problems passed and in 1957 the SSFF was awarded the maximum category A by the FIAPF. Antonio Zulueta, a Basque who enjoyed an international profile and was a prominent local figure, was appointed its director but his tenure only lasted until the surge in status of the SSFF and its boon

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to the Basque Country’s self-image provoked such resentment in the authorities in Madrid that he was obliged to resign in 1960. Upon Echarri’s return as director of the SSFF in 1967 and throughout his decade-long tenure there was an overwhelming presence of North American films and stars and little change in the bland, commercial nature of the festival. However, by the early 1970s the SSFF was so blinkered in regard to contemporary film trends and movements that Echarri was moved to protest against the prohibition or censorship of any films with erotic content, which by then included many from the Hollywood mainstream as well as the international art house circuit. Nevertheless, the SSFF could claim success in attracting such internationally recognised artists as Federico Fellini in 1957, Alfred Hitchcock, Kirk Douglas, Anthony Mann and King Vidor in 1958, Ren´e Clair in 1959, Franc¸ois Truffaut in 1960, Arthur Penn and Anne Bancroft in 1962, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer, Deborah Kerr and Cantinflas in 1964, Kim Novak in 1965, Anouk Aim´ee and Pierre Barouh in 1966, Vittorio Gassman, Eleanor Parker and Jiri Weiss in 1967, Sidney Poitier, Ernest Borgnine and Peter Finch in 1968, Francis Ford Coppola in 1969, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Altman and Orson Welles in 1973, Sophia Loren and Richard Burton in 1974 and Steven Spielberg in 1975. Their visits rallied the local population and ensured international coverage in the media. The SSFF could also call on prestigious directors to chair the official jury, such as Jean Negulesco, Howard Hawks, Joseph von Sternberg, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang, King Vidor, Rouben Mamoulian and Volker Schlondorff. Yet the recollections of the SSFF from 1972 by American critic Jonathan Rosenbaum evoke the gloom behind the glamour: The San Sebastian bash, held back then in July, was by far the glitziest – an event that incorporated not only a good many midnight banquets at country clubs, but also a trip to Pamplona to attend the bullfight, with Howard Hawks [. . .] holding court. This was of course during the Franco period – I can recall buying the International Herald Tribune there daily, and discovering on occasion that articles had been scissored out of every copy. And the degree to which the festival hospitality served as propaganda for a repressive regime became most apparent to me on the last day of the festival, when my passport was stolen (a frequent occurrence, I heard, due to San Sebastian’s relative proximity to the French border). This actually proved to be a stroke of good fortune for me, because during the day it took me to acquire a replacement passport at the US embassy in Bilbao, the sweetness of the festival staff in helping me out included at least two or three trips to the local police station, where I wound up getting to witness a lot of what the festival for the previous ten days had successfully strived to keep invisible.15

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in plain sight too, because it was not until 1965 that a Basque film was screened as part of the SSFF. Then, on the closing night, Pelotari (Basque Ball Player, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1964), a 12 minute documentary depicting the game of jai-alai, was screened to rapturous applause in the Victoria Eugenia Theatre, despite (and because of) already having obtained the silver medal in the VI Certamen Internacional de Cine Documental de Bilbao (Sixth International Documentary Contest of Bilbao). The response to Pelotari supports the conclusion of de Valck and Loist that beyond all the glitz the primary activity and function of a film festival is to screen films and that despite all the hype its environment is temporarily defined by the eventful nature of the festival itself, which gives local audiences an opportunity to see something new, or something that cannot be seen elsewhere, or something unexpected, which in this case was Basqueness.16 Indeed, de Valck and Loist add that for specialized festivals, such as those on specific genres or associated with a particular social group, the general feeling of belonging to a community can be heightened by such identity cues.17 Thus, it is pertinent to connect this notion to the Basque community of citizens and to further extend the concept in order to understand how even a short film could trigger the sentiment that overrides limitations on identity from elsewhere and defines its own community from within. Local audiences were so eager to see onscreen what had been absent or invisible for so long that even a short film constituted a declaration of identity for the Basques in the audience. Moreover, the film’s avant-garde aesthetic of canted angles, repeated frames, abrupt fade-outs, ellipses and dissonant soundtrack was a different and possibly uniquely politicized film grammar that eluded censorship, opposed the linear narratives of the rest of the festival and suggested a visual metaphor for the otherwise forbidden language of Euskara. Three years later on 10 July 1968, the SSFF hosted the premiere of Ama Lur (Motherland, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1968), the first fulllength film made in the Basque Country since before the Civil War and a collage of Basque customs, landscapes and heritage. Its content, structure and meaning is analysed in Chapter Four, but attention must also be paid to the problematic process that led to and almost prevented its screening at the SSFF. This was outside the competitive Official Section of the SSFF due to its documentary nature but still subject to three rounds of rigorous censorship. First, it was screened for Felipe de Ugarte, who was a member of the SSFF executive committee on which he represented the Ministerio de Informaci´on y Turismo (Ministry of Information and Tourism). He subsequently affirmed in a meeting in Madrid: ‘This film will never come through without my authorization, because it has been made by Commie-separatists.’18 Second, Basterretxea and Larruquert endured a series of discussions with representatives of the authorities in Madrid, which resulted in several ‘corrections’ (the official term for cuts) being demanded. Thus it was decreed that the weighty symbol of the Tree of Guernica, the icon par excellence of

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Both directors received the unanimous applause of a fervent audience, which leapt to its feet cheering the extraordinary cinematographic document. The applause in the cinema Astoria, to which people came en masse, lasted almost ten minutes. The projection was interrupted several times by the clapping. People were moved when they left the cinema. They had lived a long hour of emotion, of fervent passion for the land in which they were born.21

TAKING THE INITIATIVE: THE SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL AND THE TRANSITION

Basque heritage, which appeared bare of leaves, should be replaced by an image of it in full bloom. This was carried out as ordered by the filmmakers although they re-shot the tree against the sun so that it flared into abstraction and allowed them to end the film on an even more potent freeze-frame. In addition, the censor demanded that the word Espa˜na (Spain) should be heard at least three times and that images of the painting Guernica by Picasso were eliminated. In addition, references to Basque intellectuals and writers such as P´ıo Baroja and Miguel de Unamuno were to be framed in the context of Spanish literature and as products of the Spanish university system. These ‘corrections’ and attempts at reworking Basque iconography into signifiers of Spanishness resulted from the belief that ‘they would cancel out any of the promoters’ hidden nationalist intentions.’19 Nevertheless, after Ama Lur was presented to the Junta de Calificaci´on y Censura (Committee for Classification and Censorship) in 1967 a telegram was issued with the following response: ‘The film Ama Lur has not been authorized and we urge you not to make a rallying cry out of this decision.’20 Negotiations ensued and resulted in the decision that the film could be neutralized by being ‘Spanishified’, that is, the occasion of is screening could be spun by the centralising regime to indicate its tolerance of regional culture. However, a newspaper report by J. A. P´erez in Hierro (Iron) describes the true impact of the occasion:

Ama Lur followed its success in the SSFF with excellent box-office in the Basque provinces of Gipuzcoa and Biscay, which resulted in a modest profit and return for those who had contributed to its crowdfunding, although it failed everywhere else it was screened.22 Thus, Ama Lur confirms the Basque audience as one that aspired to be a community of citizens, whose brief glimpse of a Basque community of sentiment in the film was enough to release them momentarily from the truth of the situation, which was that ‘their’ film was subject to censorship and the conditions of Spanish citizenship. The sentiment that fuelled ideas of Basque citizenship was similarly invigorated by the short documentary on Basque rowing races Arraunketa! (Row!, Francisco Bernab´e, Jaime Meaurio & Rafael Treku, 1967), whose screening in the 1968 SSFF also provoked great emotion. Subsequently, in 1973 the producer El´ıas Querejeta presented what would become one the most acclaimed films in world cinema, El esp´ıritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive, V´ıctor Erice, 1973), which won the festival’s most prestigious award, the Gran Concha de Oro (Golden Shell). 47

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This was the first time that a Spanish, and arguably Basque film had received the honour and it prompted requests for copies by numerous international festivals. El esp´ıritu de la colmena actually received a mixed response from audiences and critics at the SSFF, due in part to its elliptical narrative, elusive symbolism, multi-layered meaning, slow tempo, unusual mise-en-sc`ene and uncanny atmosphere. In an interview in 2000, Querejeta recalled the audience at its premiere offering him their condolences although it has since reached far beyond its time and any geographical borders to be recognized, studied and critically respected.23 Thus, despite the festival’s tortuous beginnings and the limited presence of Basque cinema throughout the dictatorship, the significance and resonance of its screenings of Ama Lur and El esp´ıritu de la colmena were crucial signifiers of latent Basque sentiment and the community they represented. Consequently, when the Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca (Basque Film Archive, hereafter EF/FV) commemorated its 35th anniversary in May 2013, it did so by screening these two films.24 The intertwined history of these films, the festival and the city that hosts it demonstrates that the local people remain eager to contemplate reflections on their past and celebrate their historical identity on screen. This dual demand would fuel a proliferation of Basque films that would be screened in the SSFF in the years following the dictatorship.

1975–80: Transition and Volition The death of Franco and the end of the dictatorship brought on a transition to democracy and new opportunities for self-determination in the Basque Country, but also social unrest and an increase in terrorist violence that was countered, sometimes illegally, by Spanish security forces. This period also saw several radical and moderate parties emerge in response to Spain’s new constitution and the Statute of Autonomy for the Comunidad Aut´onoma de Euskadi (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, hereafter CAE). An economic downturn accompanied the transition but so did amnesty for many Basque militants and a surge in filmmaking, which ‘served, along with other cultural activities, to galvanize Basque nationalism during the transition.’25 In 1974 the SSFF had awarded the Perla del Cant´abrico (Cantabrian Pearl), which goes to the best Spanish language film, to Tormento (Torment, aka. The Bewitcher, 1974), which was directed by the Bilbao-born Pedro Olea; but in the years 1975–80, when debate on the nature of Basque cinema intensified, many of those with the ambition to realize films held positions close to the radical nationalist left and therefore aimed to create a ‘revolutionary cinema [. . .] tied to traditional Basque nationalism’.26 As a result of the Primeras Jornadas de Cine Vasco (First Symposium on Basque Film) in Bilbao in 1976, a document containing its conclusions was published that resembled a manifesto of intent to create a cinema committed to the Basque nation and its working class. Documentaries were favoured for their realism and potential role 48

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in the class, social and political struggles; but also important was the need to create a Basque aesthetic associated with the resurgent language of Euskara. At no other time has Basque cinema been marked by such a forceful and radical ideological vindication of the Basque language and the role of Basque cinema in the cause of self-determination and ultimate independence. If, as Sorensen affirms, the community of sentiment is one of relations between citizens as a group, defined by a common language, cultural and historical identity based on myths, symbols, music, art, sport and assorted iconography, then the Basque cinema of the late 1970s demonstrates an extraordinary effort to create a functional and representative national cinema based on the three major components of the ideological, visual and narrative discourse of a cinema of radical sentiment: Basque cinema should be in Euskara, Basque cinema should reflect national identity and culture, and Basque cinema should be by and for the Basque working class. The preference for documentary resulted in Basque-language features aimed at recovering and promoting Basque traditions such as folk music in Euskal herri musika (Music of the Basque People, Fernando Larruquert, 1978), trades in Arrantzale (Fisherman, Antton Merikaetxebarria, 1975), sports in Euskara eta kirola (Basque Language and Sports, Antxon Eceiza & Koldo Izagirre, 1980), and landscapes in A Martintxo (To Martintxo, I˜naki Aizpuru, 1978) and Gipuzkoa (P´ıo Caro Baroja, 1979), as well as nationalist iconography in experimental films such as Ikurrinaz filmea (Basque Flag Film, Juan Bernardo Heinink, 1977) and Axut (Jos´e Luis Zabala, 1977). Several pointed to contemporary problems such as the abstention from the referendum on autonomy by so many Basques in Betiko borroka (Never-Ending Fight, Xabier Zelaiaundi, 1979) or the actual and potential environmental damage wrought by the construction of the nuclear power station at Lemoniz that was also a target for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom, hereafter ETA) in Ez: centrales nucleares (No: Nuclear Power Stations, Imanol Uribe, 1977). Many looked closely at recent history such as Toque de queda (Curfew, I˜naki N´un˜ ez, 1978) but the most representative examples were those made for the Ikuska (Inspection) documentary series (1978–85) under the overall supervision of Antxon Eceiza and Irrintzi (Mirentxu Loyarte, 1978), which are analysed below, as well as Estado de excepci´on (State of Emergency, I˜naki N´un˜ ez, 1977) and El proceso de Burgos (The Burgos Trial, Imanol Uribe, 1979) which are examined in Chapter Five. In every one of them, the construction of the community of radical sentiment is linked to portrayals of the repression experienced by the Basques during the dictatorship and Euskara is featured (though not exclusively in El proceso de Burgos) as an essential element of the new Basque cinema that was beginning to be theorized and put into practice. Each of these films also refers to torture by Spanish security forces and persecution for political, ideological or linguistic reasons experienced by those who defended or fought for the cause of Basque independence. In the words of Santiago de Pablo, these films become ‘metaphors of an oppressed people’ in a context that reflects ‘a transition to democracy that had not yet been completed and continuing

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violence that was often viewed as more of a conditioned response to the previous dictatorship than as something provoked by the ongoing internal problems in the Basque Country.’27 They contain no references to ETA’s victims or to any other kind of violence, however, and in their insistence on creating a radicalised Basque community of sentiment they risked propounding or even declaring the existence of an exclusionist community of citizens instead. That is to say, the rigidity of their views and the resultant inviolable definition of Basqueness as well as the lack of any dialogue that might countenance contradictory or even opposing viewpoints resulted in a separatist sense of citizenship and a rigid idea of Basque cinema that calcified sentiment. Many of these films featured protest songs such as Eusko gudariak (Basque Fighters), which warrants the status of unofficial anthem amongst supporters of ETA. Thus, at least for a large part of the Basque population at the time, these films reflected an ideological, political and militant tendency that was prevalent in the late 1970s, one that was still marked by identification with the cause of ETA and support for its campaign against the Spanish security forces and their methods. The creator of the Ikuska series, Antxon Eceiza, had returned to the Basque Country from exile in Mexico following the political amnesty of 1977 in order to, in his own words, ‘create, by whatever means, a Basque Cinema, spoken in our language, which will be a memory and a vanguard of our expression, a testimony of our history and a tool in our path toward the full realization of our identity, towards the Basque Country that we long for: one that is independent, socialist, reunified and Basque-speaking.’28 To his mind, therefore, Basque cinema resembled an equivalent but alternative campaign to that of ETA. As head of the production company Bertan Filmeak, Eceiza set about the elaboration of 20 documentaries under the umbrella title of Ikuska that essayed the reality of the Basque Country in Euskara. Although the directors of the episodes included Jos´e Luis Egea, Pedro Olea, Antton Merikaetxebarria, Xabier Elorriaga, Koldo Izagirre, Juanba Berasategi, Koldo Larra˜naga, Juan Jos´e Bakedano, I˜naki Eizmendi, Montxo Armend´ariz, Mirentxu Loyarte, Imanol Uribe, Juan Miguel Guti´errez, Pedro Sota and Eceiza himself, a certain homogeneity was achieved by deploying the same technical team, which included cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe and Jos´e Luis Zabala as sound director, and an ideological position that unmistakably brands each episode. The Ikuska project was undertaken in 1978 at a time when there was no Basque film industry and no contributing institutions such as Basque television (Euskal Telebista was created in 1982), nor any technical infrastructure or formal filmmaking training worth noting. Although no explicit political position is stated in any of the episodes, a sympathy and enthusiasm for a radical community of sentiment and a radical cinema of sentiment is omnipresent. In similar terms, de Pablo observes that ‘in reality, bias is indeed evident in some of the episodes of Ikuska, although the nature of the bias has more to do with the creation of a generic national sentiment than with propaganda in favor of a particular political

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party.’29 The first episode Erreferenduma (Referendum, 1978) is considered the series’ prologue and was directed by Eceiza. It is the only one with a clear political subject, that of the referendum held in Spain on 6 December 1978 to decide on the adoption of the new constitution. However, many episodes are concerned with Euskara in their depiction of ikastolas (Basque schools) and euskaldunberriak (students of Euskara). Others portray the cities and landscapes and present sociological, anthropological and artistic developments in terms of a resurgent Basque community.30 This Basque cinema of radical sentiment is well illustrated by the final episode of the Ikuska series, Laburpena (Summary, 1984), which was also directed by Eceiza, because it exposes and reflects upon the development of the entire series. It opens with an allusion to the fog (literal and allegorical) of a Basque landscape in 1978, three years after Franco’s death, when ‘people were trying to dissipate the fog.’ The statement is supported by a montage sequence of protest signs in the streets and meetings in which people call for independence and freedom for the Basque Country, whereupon the documentary marks a significant distinction between those who had always known what the Basque Country needed – therefore, the true fighters for its independence – and those who pretended to know but did not. To this last group of the supposedly mistaken belong Carlos Garaikoetxea of the EAJ/PNV and the first lehendakari (president) of the CAE from 1980 to 1986, and Felipe Gonz´alez, general secretary of the PSOE (1974–97) and prime minister of Spain from 1982 to 1996, whose pictures are shown at this point. The connection between the past and the present is then established by the images and words of Telesforo Monz´on, one of the founders of Herri Batasuna (Popular Unity, hereafter HB, the left-wing separatist party), who links the radicalism of his party to Sabino Arana (1865–1903), the founder of modern Basque nationalism, because both heralded the notion of utopikoak, that is, the utopian people that would eventually bring freedom to the Basque Country. Following this – and accompanied on the soundtrack by the quintessential Basque song by Mikel Laboa Txoria Txori (Bird), in which Laboa justifies the bird’s freedom to fly rather than owning it by cutting its wings – there is a transposition to the contemporary political situation in which the film identifies those in charge of this mission-led utopikoak in the present. Building on connections to past gudaris (soldiers or fighters), the film contends that the struggle has to be carried out today by the present workers and the ‘ones who fight to recover our identity’. At this point a picture of Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida confirms the allusion to the Carta abierta de ETA a los intelectuales (Open Letter from ETA to Intellectuals) that demanded the same thing in 1964. Both workers and artists, it is claimed, should form a common, solid foundation to carry forward the ongoing struggle to recover Basque identity and to achieve freedom. Thus, meanings converge because it is in this precise place that Eceiza and his collaborators on the Ikuska series locate their efforts. As the voiceover then states in its self-regarding testimony: ‘Among them and together with them, those of us

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who believed that Basque cinema was a piece of the fog that had to be dissipated by us started our work.’ In the final section of Laburpena a precise definition of a radical Basque cinema is provided, one that suggests a cinema of sentiment but exposes a cinema of citizens: ‘The Basque Country is a nation and therefore Basque cinema must be part of the national culture.’ However, the premise that it was essential to shoot in the Basque Country, which mostly resulted in lengthy shots of idyllic rural landscapes or montages of the conditions of the workers in urban or industrial locations, was already giving way to the realization that very similar landscapes could also be found in Spanish and French films. Therefore, what prevailed was the notion of getting closer to the people in the belief that the proletariat should be heard: ‘Their voices were heard for the first time in film, and not only singing or yelling. No, now they were speaking about their problems and about their worries and preoccupations, about their present life, their anxieties and their good times with their friends.’ In this connection to the Basque people and in the reaffirmation of realism in the representation of daily life as the filmic material for a national cinema, these declarations may be connected to the sense of the nation exposed by Homi K. Bhabha, when he lists the narratives and discourses that signify a sense of ‘nationness’. These include: The heimlich pleasures of the hearth, the unheimlich terror of the space or race of the Other, the comfort of social belonging, the hidden injuries of class; the customs of taste, the powers of political affiliation; the sense of social order, the sensibility of sexuality; [. . .] the langue of the law and the parole of the people.31

Ikuska is clearly invested in giving a voice to the Basque people, in reaffirming the community of sentiment; but it is no less transparent that such inclusion was restricted to the elements dear to the political affiliation that the series supports. The film (and so the series) concludes with a firm definition of what is intended for and meant by Basque cinema: Basque cinema is the one made in the Basque Country by Basque People. It is in Basque or it is not. If we were asked what we wanted to pass on to future generations, we would make ours, without a doubt, the answer given by this grandmother: Euskara. Yes, to make film in the Basque language is the baton that we can now pass on after finishing the Ikuska series.

The episode closes with a reference to the present year (1984) and an indication that even though there was then ‘a good deal less fog’ than at the start of the series in 1978, the remaining problems are similar. This affirmation is heard over images of a funeral of a member of ETA, thus providing a vivid image of the sacrifice of the aforementioned gudaris. As de Pablo notes: ‘Eceiza thus implicitly dismissed the democratic process that had been made in the intervening years, 52

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as well as the approval of the autonomy statute and the formation of the Basque government in 1980.’32 Ultimately, however, the absolute prominence given to Euskara as the essential backbone of the new Basque cinema must be questioned because, as Carlos Rold´an Larreta has noted, this imposition marginalizes a considerable part of the Basque population who do not speak the language.33 It is thus a criterion more suited to an exclusionist community and cinema of citizens. Moreover, as will be seen in Chapter Four, after 1981 the newly autonomous Basque government created a policy of subsidies dedicated to the revival of Basque cinema that required as part of its criteria for funding only that a Basque-language version of the film (either filmed in Euskara or in Castilian and later dubbed) should be made available. This marked a transition towards the use of Castilian in Basque cinema and resulted in the first wave of modern Basque cinema; but this transitional phase in which both languages co-exist had already been confirmed by the establishment of the ‘bilingual’ EF/FV on 1 May 1978 by Juan Jos´e Almuedo, Jos´e Luis Basoco, N´estor Basterretxea, Jos´e Manuel Gorospe and Peio Aldazabal, who assumed its presidency. The EF/FV has been an associate member of the FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives) since 1994 and was officially declared a public institution by the Basque government on 20 May 1997. In November 2004 it became a foundation and, although several public institutions make up its board of trustees, the government still finances its archive and in-house Kimuak initiative.34 The practical co-existence of Euskara and Castilian was also signalled by the short film Irrintzi (1978) directed by Mirentxu Loyarte, who had also made the twelfth episode of the Ikuska series, Emakumeak (Women, 1981). The irrintzi is a kind of ululation, a high-pitched, rapid yodel that resembles a traditional prolonged scream of joy, but is used in battles, as a means of communication across hillsides, in several rites and many kinds of celebrations. Irrintzi runs barely 12 minutes and invokes a similar denunciation of repression against the Basque people while proposing and demonstrating that Basque cinema should be a weapon of cultural resistance. It opens on an almost naked man dancing and jumping in the mountains followed by images of the Spanish police hitting Basque protesters. However, the credits offer a curious alternation of Castilian and Euskara: those for cinematography (Fotoa: Javier Aguirresarobe), sound and montage (Soinu eta Muntaketa: Fernando Larruquert) and script and direction (Gidoia eta Zuzendaria: Mirentxu Loyarte) are in Euskara but information on locations and literary sources are in Castilian (Rodada en Guip´uzcoa, Navarra y Vizcaya [Filmed in Gipuzcoa, Navarre and Biscay]; Trabajo libremente inspirado en ‘Irrintzi’ de Luis Iturri sobre textos de Aresti, Celaya y Otero [A work freely inspired by ‘Irrintzi’ by Luis Iturri and the writings of Aresti, Celaya and Otero]). Basing itself upon the works of these Basque poets (Gabriel Aresti, Gabriel Celaya and Blas de Otero), Irrintzi uses both Castilian and Euskara simultaneously and alternatively. In that sense, rather than exclusively advocating Euskara as the language of the new Basque cinema, the film

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creates a site of linguistic co-habitation. The film’s mise-en-sc`ene appears dated in its combination of dance and theatrical representations in a natural setting that recalls the representation of traditional and semiotically-charged Basque landscapes, but it received the Premio Especial de Calidad (Special Quality Award) from the Direcci´on General de Cinematograf´ıa Espa˜nola (Spanish General Office of Cinematography), which seemingly ignored the film’s practical and no less radical proposal for an independent Basque country. Taking as its leitmotif a line from Aresti’s poem ‘Nire aitaren etxea defendituko dut’ (I Will Defend My Father’s House), the film communicates an obvious political transposition of the Basque Country into the metaphorical father’s house worth defending against the Spanish police. Shots of dances representing torture in which one of the dancers is repeatedly hit by two other characters with a long stick alternate with photographs of police persecutions. Scenes evoking torture and death through performance are combined with newsreel footage of calls for amnesty and street demonstrations demanding freedom for the Basque Country both in Spain and abroad (one of the most prominent signs is in French: ‘Pays Basque contre le fascisme’ [Basque Country against Fascism]). Parallel to the ascending rhythm of the txalaparta (the outsize Basque xylophone) the voiceover recites Aresti’s poem, thereby insisting upon the cause of Basque independence: They will take my weapons and I will defend my father’s house with my hands. They will cut off my hands and I will defend my father’s house with my arms.

Thus, although made two years after the death of Franco, Irrintzi supposes that the fight against the dictatorship still haunts and informs the present-day condition of the Basque people. Nevertheless, the film ends on an optimistic note in which the struggle that was represented in the montage of dancers and riot police is replaced by an embrace on the seashore of a naked couple overlaid with a line from Otero: ‘Hitza geratzen zait’ (I still have my word). This is repeated over and over in Euskara, becoming both a meta-filmic reflection on the role of Basque filmmakers in these years and an expression of hope for Basque cinema’s intervention in the construction of a national and political identity.

1980–Present: Business and Pleasure The early 1980s were marked by a convoluted political situation in the Basque Country, which inevitably impacted on the festival. Luis Gasca Burges became director of the SSFF for a tenure of four years in 1981 but the period 1984–89 54

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under Diego Gal´an was particularly turbulent, beginning with the extradition by French authorities of numerous Basque refugees and violent demonstrations in San Sebastian that prompted a massive police presence. French cars were burned and during the SSFF, ‘the Boulevard [the city’s elegant main street] was taken by demonstrators and policemen, shots, shouts and fires [formed] the anticlimax for a film convention.’35 In 1985 four Basque refugees were assassinated by the illegal government-funded hit squads known as Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberaci´on (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups, hereafter GAL) three days before the end of the SSFF.36 HB demanded its immediate suspension and called a general strike. However, the Official Section had to take place in order to fulfil the requirements of the FIAPF, although it was duly interrupted by several protestors who invaded the stage to sing Eusko gudariak. Variety ran the headline ‘Terror Hits San Sebastian Fest’ and described three days of street disturbances and rioting.37 In 1986 the French film L’inspecteur Lavardin (Inspector Lavardin, Claude Chabrol, 1986) was stolen as part of a boycott against French products. In 1987 there was a bomb threat at an open-air screening on the beach with more than 7,000 spectators present, but the SSFF organisers ignored it and continued with the schedule. In 1988 there was another bomb scare and the killing of ETA member Mikel Kastresana Razkin by the police in the city on 23 September sparked violent demonstrations and clashes with the police. However, reflecting upon all this in comparison with his aforementioned first visit to the SSFF in an article entitled ‘Then and Now’, Rosenbaum remarks upon the prominence of Euskara, once outlawed under Franco, and other indications of change: One now sees it on street signs and hears it on TV. One of the many sidebars of the 36th International Film Festival at San Sebastian was even devoted to Basque films. [. . .] All of the sidebar events were held in a cozy multiplex cinema in the old section of town, an area surrounded by relatively cheap restaurants and frequented mainly by students. Shortly before the end of the festival, after a Basque terrorist was killed in a skirmish with the local police, a burning bus was ignited in protest, blocking one of the nearby streets. A couple of miles away and a few hours later, at the festival’s swank closing night party held at the Palacio de Miramar, San Sebastian glittered with a very different kind of light, sound, and fury.38

In truth, the atmosphere in San Sebastian throughout these years suggested a tacit or implicit support for ETA that also affected the development of the SSFF. One key and telling moment was the screening of El proceso de Burgos (The Burgos Trial, Imanol Uribe, 1979), a feature-length documentary that recounts and partially reconstructs the arrest and military trial of 16 members of ETA in 1970, six of whom received death sentences that were commuted to prison terms following an international outcry. The film consists of interviews with those convicted in 55

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the trial and begins with a brief introduction by Francisco Letamendia, who offers a discourse in which ETA appears as the culmination of a historical process of oppression and is presented as the legitimate representative of the Basque people in its fight for freedom and national liberation. After finding out about the film’s inclusion in the SSFF, General Milans del Bosch in Madrid set in motion a process to try to stop the projection by influencing Marcelino Oreja Aguirre, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs; but Uribe brought the film to the city concealed in the boot of his car and managed to hide it in a cupboard until it could be recovered and projected. Basque protestors removed the Spanish, French and North American flags from the Victoria Eugenia screening venue and another bomb threat underlined the fact that by this point the film was perceived as symbol and prize in an ongoing fight for political freedom that was under threat from the Spanish government of the Uni´on de Centro Democr´atico (Union of the Democratic Centre, hereafter UCD). As de Pablo notes: While the festival organizers expressed their unconditional solidarity with those who had died as a result of police repression, ETA’s victims remained forgotten and unmourned, even though two terrorist attacks occurred during the event itself. One photograph from the 1979 Donostia–San Sebasti´an Festival shows the protagonists of El proceso de Burgos with upraised fists, a blatant use of the event as a propaganda stage. This is a clear indication of how the social milieu of the times influenced not only the contents of the film but also their reception.39

This perspective would change in the 1990s and 2000s; but back then El proceso de Burgos received the Perla del Cant´abrico, which was something of an ironic or even back-handed compliment for this was the prize awarded to the best Castilianlanguage feature. Other key films associated with Basque cinema that were screened at the SSFF before 1990 include Un hombre llamado Flor de Oto˜no (A Man Called Autumn Flower, Pedro Olea, 1978), whose star, Jos´e Sacrist´an, was awarded the Concha de Plata for best actor, Tasio (Montxo Armend´ariz, 1984) and Las cartas de Alou (Letters from Alou, Montxo Armend´ariz, 1990). In 1985 Juan Bautista Berasategi received a special mention in the New Directors section for his animated film Kalabaza tripontzia (The Magic Pumpkin) and Ke arteko egunak (Days of Smoke, Antxon Eceiza, 1989) was screened in 1989 alongside two more films by Basque directors in the Zabaltegi section: El mar es azul (The Sea is Blue, Juan Ortuoste, 1989) and Cr´onica de la Guerra Carlista (Chronicle of the Carlist War, Jos´e Mar´ıa Tuduri, 1989). In addition, the Day of Basque Film that year offered four fulllength films and five shorts and there was even a retrospective of Basque cinema 1981–89 in the 1990 SSFF. The increase in Basque filmmaking activity was marked in 1991 by a moment of transition when the SSFF became a public limited company that combined the participation of the town council, the Basque 56

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TAKING THE INITIATIVE: THE SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL AND THE TRANSITION Figure 5. Imanol Uribe receives the Premio Perla del Cant´abrico a la Mejor Pel´ıcula de Habla Hispana for El proceso de Burgos (The Burgos Trial, 1979) at the 27th San Sebastian Film Festival (8–19 September 1979).

government, the Diputaci´on (council) of Gipuzcoa and Spain’s ICAA (Institute for the Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts). Since then the award for best film has carried a substantial monetary award and Basque cinema has maintained its prominence in the SSFF. In 1991 the SSFF recognized the beginning of the second wave of Basque cinema by awarding the Concha de Oro to Alas de mariposa (Butterfly Wings, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, 1991) and in 1993 the non-competitive Zabaltegi showcase section featured Los a˜nos oscuros (The Dark Years, Arantxa Lazcano, 1993) and Julio Medem sat on the official jury. D´ıas contados (Running out of Time, Imanol Uribe, 1994) received the Concha de Oro in 1994 and in 1996 composer Alberto Iglesias joined the official jury for an edition of the festival that also hosted a 21-film retrospective of the work of Gipuzcoa-born director Eloy de la Iglesia. 57

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The profound change of attitude amongst the local audience towards ETA was notable in the 1996 edition of the SSFF when the inauguration ceremony was interrupted by a group of activists wielding a banner that demanded the transfer of Basque prisoners to prisons in the Basque Country, only to be booed and forced offstage. There were still demonstrations in the streets of San Sebastian, only this time they were against ETA and their kidnapping of prison official Jos´e Antonio Ortega Lara eight months previously. That year’s edition of the Made in ´ Spain sidebar featured Tierra (Earth, Julio Medem, 1996), Africa (Alfonso Ungr´ıa, ´ 1996) and El d´ıa de la bestia (The Day of the Beast, Alex de la Iglesia, 1996) and Montxo Armend´ariz was present again the following year with Secretos del coraz´on (Secrets of the Heart, 1997) alongside Imanol Uribe with Extra˜nos (Strangers, 1997). Thus a confluence was starting to take shape, wherein and whereby directors like Armend´ariz and Uribe of the first wave of Basque cinema continued screening their new films alongside those of the second wave such as Bajo Ulloa, Medem and ´ de la Iglesia. In 2000 La comunidad (Common Wealth, Alex de la Iglesia, 2000) was part of the official section and three films by Basque directors were included in the section Made in Spain, which selects films from the previous year that may have already premiered: Yoyes (Helena Taberna, 2000), El viaje de Ari´an (Ari´an’s Trip, Xabier Gil, 2000) and Asfalto (Asphalt, Daniel Calparsoro, 2000). The following year, this section featured Silencio roto (Broken Silence, Montxo Armend´ariz, 2001) and Guerreros (Warriors, Daniel Calparsoro, 2001) and this mix of both generations continued in 2005 when the official section included Obaba (Montxo Armendariz, ´ 2005) and Made in Spain included Crimen ferpecto (The Perfect Crime, Alex de la Iglesia, 2005). More recently, representatives of the third wave of Basque filmmakers associated with the Kimuak initiative, which is described in Chapter Seven, have found their place in the SSFF. Bertsolari (Asier Altuna, 2011) opened in the most important category of the Official Section during the 59th edition of the SSFF, when its illustration of the Basque community of sentiment was evident in its appropriation and modernization of the traditional Basque cultural practice of the bertsolaritza, which is the art of combining poetry, rhythm, tonality, a response to a given topic and a connection to the person performing before you, while improvising verses in Euskara. The documentary includes several segments of the 2009 national competition of performers known as bertsolariak, which is held every four years, and which took place in the BEC (Bilbao Exhibition Center) in front of an audience of 15,000 attuned to the structure and spontaneity of this extemporaneous oral tradition. Experts interviewed for the film herald the inclusivity of the event and its audience, which is captured in the jury’s final award to a contestant who is not only the youngest competitor but also the only female. Maialen Lujanbio thus became the first woman to wear the champion’s txapela (Basque beret), which signalled a change towards a younger, more progressive and inclusive version of the

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Figure 6. Press panel at the 59th San Sebastian Film Festival (16–24 September 2011) featuring the director and protagonists of Bertsolari in the Official Section: Miren Amuritza, Amets Arzallus, Maialen Lujanbio, Asier Altuna, Andoni Ega˜na, Jon Sarassua.

art itself. As the empathetic and evocative visual composition of the documentary makes clear, both the improvisation of verse and the construction of the film have the potential to move audiences and provoke identification with the performers. The film’s affined focus on the modernization, popularity and social function of the bertsolariak both within the Basque Country as keepers of the flame and beyond it as cultural ambassadors thus claims a similarly relevant role for Basque cinema, one that mirrors the oral tradition of the featured performers charged with preserving Basque history and culture. Bertsolari emphasises how the Basque community of sentiment is closely connected to the use of Euskara, but it also describes a communal gathering that is much like the SSFF in the way it both derives and exhibits pleasure, emotion and excitement via and throughout an increasingly international public-facing competition. At the same time, of course, Spanish filmmakers have also been well represented in the SSFF, particularly Pedro Almod´ovar with Pepi, Luci Bom y otras chicas del mont´on (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap, 1980), La flor de mi secreto (The Flower of My Secret, 1995) and Volver (Return, 2006). Thus, from its first steps in 1953 as a ‘film week’ with little to show for it to the 62nd edition 59

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in 2014 and beyond, the SSFF has experienced considerable contractions and expansions in its ideology, scope and organization. The 62nd edition of the SSFF in 2014 hosted 169,010 spectators and 3,398 journalists and researchers and boasted 223 films from 45 countries and a total of 670 screenings.40 The official web page of the SSFF attracted more than three million visits in September 2014 and provided a quarter of a million downloads.41 The Official Section of the festival now offers the Concha de Oro for best film, which goes to the producer and Conchas de Plata (silver) for director, actress and actor as well as jury prizes for cinematography and screenplay. The jury is also able to grant a special prize to a film it considers worthy, for whatever reason, although it must state the reason for its decision. The Zabaltegi section now has three sub-categories: Pearls from Other Festivals, New Directors, who compete for a €50,000 award, and Zabaltegi Specials. Other sections include the Velodrome, which projects films oriented towards younger viewers on huge screens to massive audiences, the Movies for Kids category that frames two retrospectives every year, the International Film Students Meeting, and a series of original sidebars each year, such as Culinary Cinema: Film and Gastronomy, and Savage Cinema: Adventure and Action Sports Films in 2012. Even though film festivals are showcases that provide opportunities to see films that would not normally reach local cinemas, they also screen works with which the community might have or sense an affiliation. In this case, it is not surprising that the SSFF boasts a strong connection with Latin America in its Horizontes Latinos (Latin Horizons) section, which offers a selection of films not yet released in Spain but produced totally or partially in Latin America, directed by filmmakers of Latin American origin, and on the subject of Latin communities throughout the world. These compete for the Premio Horizontes (horizons award) of €35,000 for the film’s director that usually guarantees distribution in Spain. However the sentiment is clearly strongest in the Zinemira (Overview of Basque Cinema) section, which has provided a tangible sense of a community audience for contemporary Basque films since 2009, when it replaced the day dedicated to Basque Cinema that had featured since 1989. Zinemira is organized by the SSFF, the EF/FV and the Basque government with sponsorship from EiTB. The SSFF and the producers’ associations present the Zinemira award to an ‘outstanding’ Basque film personality and recipients have so far included director ´ Imanol Uribe (2009), actor Alex Angulo (2010), producer El´ıas Querejeta (2011) and screenwriter Michel Gaztambide (2012). The shifts in focus of the SSFF reflect developments in the film industry and transitions between festival directors whose tenures in the cases of N´estor Basterretxea, Jes´us Idoeta, Peio Aldazabal, Koldo Anasagasti, and Manuel P´erez Estremera lasted only a few years. In recent years, Diego Gal´an (1986–89 and 1995–2000), Mikel Olaciregui (2001–10) and Jos´e Luis Rebordinos (2010–present) have each catalysed particular projects by combining their deep knowledge of film history and a true sense of cinephilia with vast

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experience in the industry. Each had participated in the festival in various capacities prior to their appointment as festival director and had held administrative positions elsewhere, which has assured their long tenures and the enduring coherence of the event. Nevertheless, controversy still accompanies the festival when it highlights the differences between the Basque community of sentiment and the idea of a ‘national’ audience of Spanish citizens. The 2003 edition of the SSFF, for example, hosted the premiere of La pelota vasca: la piel contra la piedra (Basque Ball, Julio Medem, 2003) and the controversy began even before the screening took place.42 I˜naki Ezkerra and Gotzone Mora had been interviewed for the documentary as representatives of two small regional parties in the Basque Country that were allied to the national right-wing Partido Popular (People’s Party, hereafter PP); but following a private screening they threatened legal action if their contributions were not removed from the film. Local, national and international media reported that the PP asked the organizers of the SSFF to remove the film and ‘a political and media controversy was thus ignited that would not be extinguished for several months.’43 However, not a single protest was heard on the inaugural day of the 2003 SSFF in San Sebastian and when the film was screened in the packed Kursaal it received a lengthy standing ovation. Nevertheless, by the time the film was nominated for a Goya for best documentary in 2004, furious protests against the film had been organized in Madrid in a campaign that followed its director to London for its UK premiere at London’s National Film Theatre in March 2004, when Spanish television crews hounded Medem on account of his being denounced as persona non grata by the Spanish embassy in London. Trends and policies change, however, and further controversy would accompany the 2012 SSFF because of the non-selection of Barrura begiratzeko leihoak (Windows Looking Inward, Josu Mart´ınez, Txaber Larreategi, Mireia Gabilondo, Enara Goikoetxea & Eneko Olsagasti, 2012), which is overtly sympathetic to militants and imprisoned members of ETA. As a festival with an enduring concern for Basque cinema, the SSFF must inevitably deal in the complexity of sentiment in order to provide a carnivalesque display of that which Bakhtin described as ‘ritual spectacles, carnival pageants [and] shows of the marketplace [that do] not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators.’44 The SSFF is an international festival that thrives on a communitarianism that assures the participation of those who live in the Basque Country and attend screenings (ritual spectacles), prize-giving (carnival pageants) and interviews and parties (shows of the marketplace). The lack of any distinction between actors (as well as directors and crew) and spectators is precisely because Basque filmmakers of any trade are often part of the community that attends their premieres and applauds their home-grown endeavour. Bakhtin’s concern for the folk culture that was under threat from an increasing totalitarianism in the Soviet Union certainly has its echo in the concerns of the organizers of the SSFF during and immediately following the Francoist dictatorship. Since then, however,

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the revelry that consumes San Sebastian every September has become an annual milestone for measuring the progress, relevance and impact of Basque cinema. The official SSFF journal Festival, which provides all pertinent information for the festival-goer, reached its 60th edition in 2012 and marked the anniversary with the following eulogy: ‘Age, in short, is more a mental state than a physical one: the spirit of the San Sebastian Film Festival, at the age of 60, is still active, lively, and full of enthusiasm and teeming with new projects.’ From its tense and tentative beginning through years marked by uncertainties and improvisation, the SSFF has consolidated all its citizens and sentiments and is currently securely placed among the most relevant European film festivals. Tradition and innovation go hand in hand in an event that keeps attracting the local population to its yearly gathering alongside an ever-increasing panoply of international artists, audiences and critics. Indeed, so tangible at times can be Bakhtin’s ‘utopian realm of community, freedom, equality and abundance’45 that on the closing night of the 1999 SSFF Bertrand Tavernier declared to rapturous applause ‘I propose that, from now on, all film festivals in the world take place in San Sebastian.’46

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4 Past Tense, Present Tensions: History, Heritage and the First Basque Wave A community is placed inside a box. The box is sealed for 40 years. The government prohibits the language of this community, obliterates its cultural expression and cuts off any means of self-determination. After a while, the unseen community is simultaneously both alive and dead, with Francoism favouring the latter. It was only upon opening the box and granting it autonomy in the postdictatorship era that it could be determined whether the community had survived; whether it was in fact alive or dead. For three decades of quantum superimposition, the Basque Country lived what Erwin Schr¨odinger diagnosed as ‘macroscopic indeterminacy’ that could only be resolved by observation.1 Nevertheless, the politicization of boxed-in Basque artists, who opposed the propaganda of the dictatorship with their cinematic abstraction, resulted in a confluence of aesthetics and activism that contradicted the assumption of their community’s demise in three key films that represented Basqueness in different ways in different eras. The first is Ama Lur (Motherland, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1968), a mnemonic-like manifesto made during the dictatorship that imagined a resurgent Basque Country while providing a catalogue of ethnographic details and a manual of cultural and aesthetic concerns for Basque filmmakers. The second is El esp´ıritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive, V´ıctor Erice, 1973), which effects an elusive and elliptical consideration of the power of the imagination to heal and to hurt that sets the timelessness of infancy against the lethargy brought on by exile in the stillmedieval region of Castile in central Spain in the immediate postwar period. The third is Tasio (Montxo Armend´ariz, 1984), which describes the life of a carbonero (charcoal-burner) and the tensions that arise between rural and urban ways of life in a village in the Navarrese mountains, ultimately essaying liberty as solitude and 63

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tradition as routine that desecrates the eponymous protagonist at the same time as it consecrates him. By way of contrast, expectations of a unified Basque Country were offered by examples of the heritage cinema that was part of the first Basque wave sponsored by a Basque government set on nation-building following the declaration of autonomy for the Comunidad Aut´onoma de Euskadi (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, hereafter CAE) in 1979, although, as shall be seen, a singularity of purpose was lacking here too.

The Desired Nation: Ama Lur Several short films exhibited an aesthetic response to the plight of the Basque language and culture in response to the sculptor Jorge Oteiza’s 1963 essaymanifesto Quousque tandem . . . ! Ensayo de interpretaci´on est´etica del alma vasca (How long will you abuse our patience! Essay on the Interpretation of the Basque Soul) and the invocational Carta abierta de ETA a los intelectuales (Open Letter from ETA to Intellectuals) published in 1964 calling on intellectuals to ‘inform themselves about the causes and effects of this phenomenon that is developing in our occupied homeland, which can be termed the new Basque nationalism, [and] to open up a sincere dialogue wth us.’2 Painter and designer N´estor Basterretxea set to work with musician Fernando Larruquert on Operaci´on H (Operation H, 1964) and Pelotari (Basque Ball Player, 1964), which both sought to express a unique sense of Basqueness via a structuralist vision of industrial and sporting processes. To this end, their approach adopted the performance system of the bertsolari, the improvising Basque-language poet, and thereby approximated a symbolic visual grammar in the framing and editing of subjects that expressed equivalence with the forbidden language of Euskara. Ambition was thus ignited and directed towards a cinematic project that would entail the collation of numerous ethnographic films of Basque customs and landscapes under the single heading Euskalerria (Land of the Basque People) but this collapsed and the filmmakers regrouped to consider the purpose of their project in relation to the idea of the community as a collective that it was meant to represent. They thus trialled crowdfunding for the production of Ama Lur. Their first attempt at inspiring subscriptions via a letter that described the project as a ‘canto l´ırico al Pa´ıs Vasco’ (ode to the Basque Country) asked for donations of 1,000, 5,000 and 25,000 pesetas from 4,000 potential investors but only 45 replied.3 Ama Lur was then re-floated by Frontera Films on the advice of producer Andoni Esparza and businessman Jose Luis Etxegarai, with bonds priced at only 100 pesetas being offered to all-comers. Over two thousand individuals responded to this strategy and became stakeholders in the newly founded Ama Lur, S.A. (Motherland, Ltd.). This strategy did more than simply raise a budget, it also indicated there was an audience for the film that corresponded to a community of sentiment and its ambition towards self-expression. The budget of 6,252,000 pesetas still exceeded the 5 million raised, but because the film was declared to be of ‘Special Interest’ 64

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(a new category introduced by Jos´e Mar´ıa Garc´ıa Escudero as Spain’s General Director of Cinematography and Theatre), it stood to reclaim 40 per cent of its cost until problems with the censor upon completion saw that return rescinded.4 Santiago de Pablo affirms that ‘the film was made without a prior script.’5 Ama Lur was therefore structured in the editing by which its makers sought to transpose the strategy of Basque sculptors such as Remigio Mendiburu when faced with a block of wood or Eduardo Chillida when wrestling with iron and ‘call forth’ the art from the raw material. In the 103-minute film the ethnographic material is framed by the typical nationalist iconography of crashing waves and green landscapes, and punctuated by the sounds of the txalaparta (xylophone), txistu (flute) and tamboril (tambourine). Where possible, shots of such things as fishing boats are given prominence for being painted in the Basque colours of green, red and white. The filmmakers use some direct address in Euskara for commentary and even suture this to freeze-frames of people looking directly at the camera that have first-person declarations overlaid, thereby eluding the crime of anyone actually speaking the language onscreen while also indicating the gagging of the Basque people by Francoism. Most decisive in the structure of the film was the influence of the bertsolari, who is ‘often equated with Basque patriotism’ and whose role as Basque poet in Euskara is heralded in Ama Lur as a seer of the Basque community.6 The performance of the bertsolari is based on improvisation and first imagining the end of a song before building the verses towards it. Thus ‘a bertsolari performing during the Francoist era could imagine the end of the dictatorship as his topic and then mark or plot the way to freedom in his prophet-like incantation.’7 This inspired the filmmakers to construct their film in similar terms by imagining its final meaning and then developing associative links between sounds and images of the Basque Country rendered in pans, tilts, bumpy tracking shots from moving vehicles and zooms that punctuate and redirect the reverie until a similar meaning is realized. As the voiceover declares, the intention of Ama Lur is ‘la recuperaci´on del poeta, del bertsolari que hay en cada uno de nosotros’ (The recovery of the poet, of the bertsolari that exists in each one of us). This inspired the film’s grammar, which was a structuralist gambit linking the linguistic structure of the Basque language and the verse form of the kopla zaharrak of the bertsolari in order to stimulate the associative links of memory necessary for the film itself to ‘remember’ the history, landscapes, customs and values of the Basque Country and therefore also act as a mnemonic for present and future generations of Basques.8 That footage of music in one village should cut to dancing in another, for example, is not unusual in an ethnographic documentary. However, Ama Lur takes this strategy much further, showing that the figures in totemic fancy dress enacting pagan-like pantomimes of conflict and seasonal labour with rhythmic bells and tambourines are an incantation of the collective sentiment that is carried via associative links from one intra-community or village to another. This ‘carrying’ collage shows the lighting of bonfires and figures leaping through the flames and

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then cuts to a fire in a forest fed by workers clearing the land. The smoke rises in a tilt up, which cuts to a shot panning right over grey clouds that drift across the Basque landscape until returning as flames out of the darkness in another cut to penitents carrying candles. This then cuts to another procession and then a religious play and so on, where ‘what comes next‘ is determined by edits like synaptic links whose resultant collage of the Basque Country instills in those who see it the way it should be remembered. Thus, shots of landscapes cut to trees, which cut to competing aizkolariak (woodsmen), which cut to wooden sculptures by the aforementioned Mendiburu made of massive blocks that slot together, which cut to huge, intricate works of geometric iron knots by Chillida, which are made in forges, which are fuelled by wood, which is all tied up in a structure and aesthetic (and a commentary by Chillida describing ‘my work and I’) that signifies the language that makes the claim of difference that sustains the memory of the Basque community and becomes increasingly reiterative towards this end. The similarity between the structuring of this film and the process of remembering points to the construction of a myth of the Basque Counry in Ama Lur that follows Roland Barthes in approaching all the visual and aural elements of the collage as signifiers of something greater than any individual sign. Ama Lur resembles and is perhaps only comparable to Sans soleil (Sunless, Chris Marker, 1983), which also essays the overlap of memory with film, but whereas Sans soleil meditates so deeply on the process, act and context of remembering that it ultimately challenges the associative links between image, sound, time, the gaze and ostensible narrative, Ama Lur disallows fissures and juxtapositions, seeing only repetition, increasing rigidity and consequent unity in its manifesto of a historical memory of Basqueness. Ama Lur is the memory-bank of an imagined community that broaches no contradiction within its ethnographical details in staging events either, such as that of a coffin being transported through a snowy landscape.9 The only direct image of Francoism that intrudes is a suggestive one-second long shot of a civil guard watching a Holy Week procession of a man in leg-chains. Otherwise, landscapes, subjects and even faces recur as memory spirals inwards and the film becomes intensely solipsistic and hermetic. Consequently, that which Barthes describes as the ‘imperative, buttonholing character’ of myth emerges from this process of repetition to the point where the myth is ‘defined by its intention’ and so passes from semiology to ideology.10 The semiological system that the Basques inhabit thereby fulfils what Barthes diagnoses as ‘the pretension of transcending itself into a factual system.’11 Thus is the community imagined. The cause of all this, Oteiza’s inspirational Quousque tandem . . . !, is essentially a philosophical treatise on the e´lan vital of Basqueness, a 300 page document that is linguistically-oriented and draws its title from the Roman orator Cicero’s exclamation of frustration against his oppressors. Dense and allusive, it too resembles a collage by association, one of art history, existential philosophy, nationalist rhetoric and aesthetic questions rendered in sculpted blocks of text

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in which ‘Oteiza shows little faith in historical, linear time.’12 Above all, it sees Basqueness as a ‘question, for us, in which it is only possible to delve aesthetically’ in order to recover ‘a fortune of conviction and energy to achieve this sentimental (instinctive) education that is so lost from us.’13 Its debt to the existential and phenomenological musings of Martin Heidegger and the performance system of the bertsolari resulted in Oteiza’s conclusion that ‘Basque art and Basque language have mutually constructed each other.’14 This inspired his call for a structuralist approach to the realisation of a unique and distinctive Basque cinema that was politically motivated and aesthetically enabled. The catalogue of sounds and images in Ama Lur, however, was so rigid in its representation of difference from Francoist Spain that it did not allow for that which Jacques Derrida terms diff´erance, that is the pursuit of elusive meanings through synonyms and signifiers, because the film insisted from the start that there was nothing similar or identical to the Basque Country. Instead, it posited Basque identity as unique, fixed and immutable, anchored by tradition and resolute in the face of yet another period of oppression. However, as shall be seen, the way that Ama Lur historicises the radical politics of Basque difference actualises this in relation to the dictatorship, forcing a stand-off between hegemonic structures, one real (Francoism) and one temporarily imagined (a once and future Euskadi) that was currently suppressed by the regime. By these means Ama Lur does connect with the play on words of Derrida (first published in 1963) by which difference and its deferral (of Basqueness to a time beyond the dictatorship) subvert the language and system of the oppressor. Ama Lur is a cinematic text constructed to signify Basque identity and therefore appears to bear equivalence to that which Saussure defines as ‘a linguistic system [that] is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.’15 Transposed to the aural and visual system of the grammar of Ama Lur, the series of shots of Basque costumes, customs, language, music, art and spirituality tend towards signifying difference from Francoist Spain because Christian Metz’s symbolic order (the organisation of the signifiers) is what permits the imaginary order that here enables the imagined community.16 However, just as Oteiza and his group were adamant that Castilian should not be used as an external metalanguage beyond Euskara with which to discuss the Basque Country and its language, so the symbolic order of Ama Lur could not be rendered or governed by the conventional film grammar of linear narratives because this was also the language of Francoist Spanish cinema. Thus it was supposed that by means of an original Basque aesthetic the shots and sounds of a sportsman engaged in the peculiarly Basque task of competitively hefting a giant boulder, for example, is both of and described by the symbolic order that is quintessentially Basque and patently un-Spanish at the same time. In this way, the filmmakers constructed their imagined community via their attempt at the organization of Basque cinema as a unique signifying language that they used to insist that what the Basque Country is not (Spain) is also part of what it is (Basque). The strategy is aligned with the response to Ferdinand de Saussure by

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Derrida, who supposes that a text contains implicit tensions that are implicated in the suggestion of opposition to another, that it is in this interaction of differences that expression derives its own meaning, and that the same is true of identity. These tensions fuel the extension of this chain of signifiers throughout the film and suggest a visual equivalency of this tension between that which is on-screen and Basque and that which is off-screen and un-Basque, thereby resulting in ‘a system of values’17 . As shall be seen, this system falters in relation to the representation of gender, while the challenge of finding equivalency between the visual and aural grammar of Ama Lur, which includes a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic sound within its associative collage of Basque customs, symbols of heritage and ethnographic details, is exacerbated because commentary is purposefully limited by the filmmakers in Castilian and mostly disallowed in Euskara by the film’s context. The fact that Ama Lur includes snatches of Euskara in its commentary and in instances of extant rituals such as recitations and songs points to an elemental opposition with Francoism, which attempted to incorporate this difference into its own symbolic order as a regional flavour of Spanishness via censorship and a display of tolerance for its screening at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Its subsequent release occurred in a year of many destabilizing events that included the Paris riots in May, the murder of student demonstrators in Mexico City in July, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in August and the military coup in Peru in October as well as labour conflicts in the Basque Country following the killing of militant activist Txabi Etxebarrieta in Tolosa in June 1968, which also prompted ETA’s first premeditated killing, that of police commissioner Melit´on Manzanas in August. Nevertheless, the triumph of Ama Lur is the pure possibility of a new and different language of film, one whose meaning was derived from the way its distinct signs, codes and values constructed an imagined community of Basque sentiment. The basic grammar of this new film language is exhaustively plotted by Juan Miguel Guti´errez in relation to poetry, geometry, pre-history and dance but its rules are schematic and its deployment impractical.18 In constructing his thesis, Guti´errez seeks confirmation of Basque innovation and superiority by frequent reference to the apparently kindred aesthetic gambits of auteurist European art house cinema, which therefore suggests that the space between a Basque cinema of sentiment and Francoist Spain’s cinema of citizenship could be widened by educating the Basque audience in two vital things. First, that the extent of their heritage that was evident in the full display of Basque customs, sports, cultural expression, trades, rituals, dress, dance, music, language and now even cinema had the potential to signify difference. Second, that this new film language invented by Basque artists turned these visual and aural elements into a system of signifiers that promoted an ethics of responsibility and the dissemination of values pertinent to the self-determination of a Basque community of sentiment beyond the restrictions of retrograde Francoist Spain and more affined with progressive contemporary

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Europe. Indeed, this sentiment could even be radicalized in the cause of a Basque community of citizens whose criteria for inclusion and exclusion might be based on the ability to participate in the same display of customs, sports, cultural expression and language that Ama Lur presented. In opposing other film grammars, Ama Lur rejected the system of signs of the oppressor (Francoist Spain) and made of Basqueness something that was present, albeit so rigid in its construction that it already illustrated radical nationalist ideas of Basque citizenship. Thus, like Schr¨odinger’s cat, the Basque Country during the dictatorship could be shown to be simultaneously alive to the Basques while it was dead to Francoism. Only by opening the box after the dictatorship would the truth be known as to whether the Basque Country could survive the dictatorship. Yet the absolute purpose of Ama Lur was to demonstrate that the essence of the signified (Basqueness) that it contained was formally prior to the sign (Basque difference under Francoism) and that fulfilment of this concept of a free and autonomous Basque Country could not be claimed except by making recourse ‘in favour of the presence of a value or a meaning supposedly antecedent to diff´erance, more original than it, exceeding and governing it in the last analysis. That is [. . .] the presence of [. . .] the “transcendental signified”.’19 In sum, Ama Lur was an encyclopaedia of Basqueness ordered not by any alien alphabetisation but by the associative links between indigenous visual and aural signifiers whereby meaning came to rest on an idea of the Basque Country as something that transcended oppression and was, in addition to being dead to Francoism, also very much alive. It thus fulfilled the desire for an aesthetic form that satisfied a craving for a concept of the Basque Country and it turned Basque cinema into the theoretical and practical purveyor of a desire for the unity of the sign itself that was as yet unfulfilled, pending the end of the dictatorship. Wimal Dissayanake echoes Derrida in supposing that nationhood ‘revolves around the question of difference, with how the uniqueness of one nation differs from the uniqueness of other comparable nations.’20 However, Ama Lur does not seek comparison; it simply holds that no other nation is quite as unique as that of the Basques. Following Benedict Anderson, it allows that under Francoism this community must be imagined, but it also insists that it is by no means imaginary. As Anderson states, communities are imagined because ‘the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.’21 Ama Lur was in effect a guide to ‘get-to-know your Basque Country’ centred upon ‘the values of the traditional world [and] a physical and spiritual identity.’22 In the ongoing history of the Basque Country, the dictatorship was not an end nor an ellipsis nor a discontinuation but a condition in which the Basque community had neglected to remember itself and therefore failed to imagine itself as anything other than an occupied territory. The censor interceded, of course, with demands aimed at disabling the differences that fuelled separatism; but some surprising

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images and lines of commentary survived, including the insistence that this is ‘a strong people born with the need to live in freedom, [. . .] a sovereign people.’ In addition, Ama Lur looks away from Spain in order to present an ancient and extant community of sentiment that is not at all imaginary and thus includes a sequence dedicated to diasporic communities in North America that appears to thrive beyond any restrictions of Spanish citizenship. It ends with the song Agur jaunak (Greetings/Farewell, Dear Friends) that in screenings recalled by Mikel Insausti ‘was effusively joined by hundreds of voices overwhelmed by emotion.’23 Carlos Rold´an Larreta describes Ama Lur as ‘the foundation stone’ of not only Basque cinema but of nation-building that prompted the realization ‘that it was not impossible to create a full-length film in Euskal Herria based on themes belonging to it.’24 As a fusion of aesthetics and politics, the film gives a unique form and voice to a nationalist consciousness that affected artistic, cinematic, cultural and political thought and endeavour. Yet it also brings into focus two of the most problematic areas of definition and enquiry into Basque cinema and nation: the radicalization of sentiment and the retrograde representation of gender. Even for some Basques, Ama Lur’s portrait of ‘a simplistic, reactionary, ruralist and anti-industrial Basque Country’25 was so monumental and monolithic that instead of representing an imagined community as a cinema of sentiment, it actually encouraged the radicalization of this sentiment towards a more exclusive cinema of citizens. Indeed, the film’s fusion of aesthetics, language and nationalist sentiment constructed a vision of the Basque Country based on an essential difference that was not simply a binary opposition with Francoist Spain but also a declaration of incomparable uniqueness on which the argument of separatism could be based. For this reason, the penultimate section of the film examines the cave paintings found in the seven Basque provinces on either side of the frontier between France and Spain, countries that, of course, did not exist when they were painted by what the film claims to be Basques in prehistoric Basque territory, whose artistic expression is dogmatically historicised as an antecedent of Ama Lur. This sequence thereby reveals its ambition to claim the origins of the Western world in which everyone else and particularly Francoist Spain have become estranged from the purity and nobility of the ancient Basque Country. Thus, as this sermon congeals into dogma, the sentiment is radicalised into a nationalist manifesto that is so exclusifying in its criteria for citizenship that it creates an archetypical template demanding, for instance, Euskara as mother tongue, Basque ancestry, participation in community festivals, collaborative rituals and collective labour. This radicalization of sentiment was aligned with resurgent Basque nationalism following the dictatorship but then fractured by right-wing and extant Francoist influences in Navarre that swung the dealings over the draft statute of autonomy away from a community made from the four provinces in Spain and left the inclusion of Navarre subject to referendum. Many Basque nationalists therefore derided the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country of 1978 and boycotted the referendum intended to ratify

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it in 1979. This meant that the difference of Basqueness that had been celebrated in Ama Lur was transformed from something that was both unique and common to the seven provinces into something that was now subject to considerations of diff´erance within its own contested territory. Subsequently, the evolution of the CAE as separate from Navarre and Le Pays Basque, its more moderate politics, and its more expansive and receptive culture underpinned a gradual re-interpretation of Basque difference as diff´erance that allowed for political and cultural dialogue with Spain, Navarre and other regions and nations, particularly those that evoked elements of a kindred community of sentiment, such as Cuba and Northern Ireland. Ama Lur was thus one step forward and one step backward because, while it aided the collective realization of the potential of a Basque community of sentiment, its radical view of a Basque community of citizens only played well in the provinces of Biscay and Gipuzcoa and was ignored elsewhere.26 Finally, it is vital to consider the retrograde depiction of gender roles in the imagined Basque community of Ama Lur. Despite the titular evocation of a motherland, females rarely appear in the film to the extent that the gender’s total screen time amounts to a few brief shots depicting women carrying water, tilling soil, cooking cod and serving wine to tables of menfolk. Only one old woman emerges briefly from this domestic invisibility in a shot that shows her bent double from decades of work in the fields, unable to look up from the ground. It is not just that the female is denied any subjectivity in Ama Lur, but that unlike the male she is almost never objectified either. The film allows only two fleeting shots of women in glamorous make-up to feature in extensive collages of carnival parades, while the bawdy musing on isolation of two exiled shepherds in North America is illustrated by the insertion of freeze-framed portraits of young women in traditional Basque costume. Otherwise, for the film’s entire running time females are only occasionally glimpsed in wide shots of dances or male-dominated audiences for manly sporting prowess while a lengthy montage celebrating machismo at bull-running includes just a five-second shot of young women playing with a harmless, trotting calf that parodies any attempt at female equality. Finally, to be thorough, one scene lingers on the staging of a pastoral drama in which all the female roles are taken by men in drag and a celebratory montage of Basque folk dance is performed entirely by male dancers except for one brief insert shot that focusses exclusively on the dainty footwork of female feet. Thus, as previously mentioned, the binary opposition of the Basque Country and Francoist Spain that forms the spine of the film is complicated by this other opposition between a surfeit of males and a lack of females as the Saussurean system of Basque values divides internally between gender roles, between those that are on-screen and championed and those that are off-screen and ignored. In contrast to the absence of women, the film’s depiction of masculinity is turgid and rampant and so devoid of subtlety, so that the crudity of its nationalist iconography can resemble jingoistic pornography. This is underlined by a sequence

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Figure 7. Celebrations of Basqueness in Ama Lur (Motherland, Fernando Larruquert & N´estor Basterretxea, 1968).

in which typical shots of crashing waves become a collage of jump cuts displaying spurting foam that is cut to shots of foundry sparks in ejaculatory excess. A collage of male power in Basque sports includes shots from the viewpoint of the cox in an estropadak (rowing race) that frames lengthy shots of males thrusting forwards to the camera and rearing back in orgiastic spasms. A display of impassioned aizkora proba (wood-chopping) concludes with a low angle shot of the triumphant aizkolari with tumescent muscles and sweat literally pouring from his ecstatic face, and a sequence of monochrome photos depicting the movement of a harrijasotzaile (stone-lifter) is over-dubbed with onanistic grunting. Although no direct link is evident, appreciation of the possible emotional and intellectual reasoning of this aspect of Ama Lur might be informed by the posthumous exhibition in the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (Valencian Institute of Modern Art) in 2013 of pornographic drawings by Oteiza, who also ‘lent sculptures and shared his ideas for the structure and the editing’ of Ama Lur.27 Because Oteiza had struggled with the resolution of empty space in his art, the revelation of his obsession with monstrous phalli, ejaculation and political targets ranging from Franco, who in one sketch is sodomized by a satyr with a tree-sized penis and Oteiza’s face, to the lehendakari (president of the CAE), who has an arrow inscribed with ETA penetrating his proffered anus, suggested that the enormous vagina of the pliant female figure in a drawing titled La gran puta vasca (The Great Basque Whore) was finally filled by this scatalogical and pornographic art that was ‘directly inspired by the GrecoRoman sexual fetishes and the tribal use of the phallus as a weapon (battering-ram) of defense or attack.’28 Indeed, the debt to such ancient symbolism is such that when Ama Lur is not observing men at work and play in a ‘motherland’ where the women are almost invisible, the frustrated fecundity and consequent propensity for violence of the males is rendered metaphorically via animal imagery of ahari topeka (butting rams), bull-running (for which the bull is even granted a point-of-view 72

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shot denied any woman) and idi probak (oxen dragging blocks of stone) as well as repetitive shots of guns firing upwards in onanistic display. This fixation on phallocentrism in the Basque Country is also a construct, a masquerade that opposes the patriarchal dictatorship of Francoism and as such it denotes a resistant, aggressive, uncowed and potentially powerful community, but also one that is male-dominated, vain, arrogant, chauvinist, intolerant and given to brutality. This will be ironized and subverted in later films such as La muerte de Mikel (Mikel’s Death, Imanol Uribe, 1984) and Vacas (Cows, Julio Medem, 1992), but Ama Lur fails to notice that its depiction of the Basque Country as a ‘motherland’ under the supposed duress of the Spanish patria or ‘fatherland’ could be seen as misogynistic. The filmmakers were pursued by the censor, working with basic filmmaking apparatus and trying to render onscreen something so old that it was new, that was nothing less than the e´lan vital of the Basque people. Gender-awareness is, perhaps, a hostage to the initiative of reclaiming this spirit, which requires militancy and therefore disallows irony in the film’s rendering of their supposedly oppressed community as a delightful enclave, at least for Basque men, whose Arcadian bliss and coastal frolics, non-stop festivals, rousing sporting competitions and ritualistic celebrations of their chivalrous heritage denote ancient and extant bloodlines forged in competition, triumph and fearlessness. Simply put, as an emotional, intellectual and aesthetic response to Francoism, Ama Lur is Basque cinema with its cock out.

The spirit of Basque cinema: El esp´ıritu de la colmena El esp´ıritu de la colmena observes a 16 year old girl, Ana (Ana Torrent), who lives with her sister Isabel (Isabel Teller´ıa) and her parents Teresa (Teresa Gimpera) and Fernando (Fernando Fern´an G´omez) in the small provincial town of Hoyuelos in Castile in the year following the Spanish Civil War. The sisters watch Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) in their local, makeshift cinema and the film leaves such a profound impression on Ana that, as Robin Fiddian describes, ‘she will come to interpret the wider world of family, politics and social relations through the prism of a monstrous fiction and excited imagination.’29 Shortly thereafter, Ana finds a fugitive maqui (resistance fighter) and brings him food, clothes and her father’s musical pocket-watch. As he is hunted and killed by the Civil Guard, the film focuses on the tentative interactions and stunted disconnections in Ana’s family, often privileging their inner thoughts through subjective camera and fragments of voiceover. The symbolism of the film is elusive – the spirit of these people is dulled at times and defiant in others – and so is its nationality. From its divisive premiere at the SSFF on 18 September 1973, when it was awarded the Concha de Oro, it has been ‘regarded universally as a classic of Spanish art-house cinema [and] has attracted a wealth of critical attention which has focused on [its] political, historical, psychological and formal aspects.’30 Scholarship has often explored intertextuality 73

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in the film and revealed international presences or echoes. Fiddian examines connections with To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) and notes that Fernando Savater establishes links with Mary Shelley’s original novel Frankenstein, Peter William Evans recognises the film’s debts to German Expressionism, Marsha Kinder analyses the film’s intertextuality with the 1931 film Frankenstein, and Stone links it to the Belgian philosopher Maurice Maeterlinck’s essay ‘La vie des abeilles’ (The Life of the Bees, 1901).31 Such writing expands the intellectual and moral resonance of El esp´ıritu de la colmena beyond its characterization as hermetically Spanish; yet the critical neglect of the local (the city of San Sebastian) and the personal (Erice’s and Ana’s first experiences as spectators) in relation to the film must be corrected in order to clarify the film’s role in the Basque cinema of sentiment. The link between the film and the Basque Country is made explicit by La morte rouge (The Red Death, V´ıctor Erice, 2006), a 33 minute film made for an exhibition at the Centre de Cultura Contempor`ania de Barcelona (Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona) entitled Correspond`encies (Correspondence), which displayed Erice’s written and filmed exchanges with Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. In La morte rouge, Erice narrates and retraces his first experience as a film spectator at the age of five, when his sister took him to the Gran Kursaal cinema in San Sebastian. There he saw The Scarlet Claw (Roy William Neill, 1944) starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Sherlock Holmes and Watson in which Holmes investigates the terror of the supernatural that grips a town near Quebec called La Mort Rouge where a woman is found savagely murdered. In addition to matching obvious symmetry between Hoyuelos in El esp´ıritu de la colmena and La Mort Rouge as towns defined by fear and an unworldly or spiritual presence, the third city to feature in this remapping of El esp´ıritu de la colmena is that of San Sebastian. In La morte rouge, Erice includes archive photographs and footage of the Gran Kursaal, which was an elegant palace built in 1921 that included a casino, restaurant and cinema, but which was torn down in 1973 (the year of El esp´ıritu de la colmena’s release) and rebuilt as a modern cultural building designed by Rafael Moneo in 1999. Today, the opening and closing galas of the SSFF take place there as do the most important screenings, which means that if it had been standing in late 1973, El esp´ıritu de la colmena would have been seen there by the local audience first. Significantly, La morte rouge recreates the essential moment in El esp´ıritu de la colmena in which Ana confronts the monster onscreen, her jaw drops and her eyes widen because, as Erice has described, the infant actress simply forgot she was being filmed and lost herself in the film she was watching, thereby creating a fissure through which reality breaks through the screen watched by audiences of El esp´ıritu de la colmena.32 As a child in The Scarlet Claw is terrified by a postman called Potts (who Holmes reveals to be the true murderer), so the Ana onscreen becomes fearfully obsessed with the figure of Frankenstein’s monster. However, the point of La morte rouge is that it connects this representation of childhood awe to Erice’s

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recreation of his own experience of San Sebastian in 1946, when he first saw the Sherlock Holmes film. Although born in Karranza in Biscay, Erice’s family moved to San Sebastian when he was a few months old and, as Carmen Arocena has explained, in that first moment of contemplation of the monster onscreen there is a convergence of autobiography, socio-historical references, the real moment of contemplation along with the rest of the audience, and the myth that is in the act of being created.33 The socio-historical references are clarified in La morte rouge in which Erice explains that his first experience of film-watching crystallized the horror and fear that he sensed outside the cinema: ‘But in this case fear was displayed beyond the screen, prolonging its echo in the atmosphere of a devastated society. This is how the child discovered that people died; even more, that men could kill other men.’ La morte rouge then proceeds to illustrate the poverty and repression that marked the immediate postwar years of Franco’s dictatorship at the time of this formative experience. Thus, like Ana in El esp´ıritu de la colmena, who cannot distinguish between reality and fiction, and like the child in La morte rouge who observes passivity and lack of emotion in the faces of the audience, Erice thereby reveals his empathy for Ana and concludes that there exists ‘a pact to keep silent and keep watching.’ It is in this context marked by fear – that of the Basque Country during the dictatorship – that the child Ana develops an ambiguous identification with the monster, sensing its ‘spirit’ in the resistance fighter that she befriends. Imagination and solidarity is thus valued over dogmatism in this world of silences, murmurs, ellipses and open endings opposing closed narrative practices and dictatorial interpretations. In sum, both films by Erice offer insights into periods marked by authoritarian rule and a lack of affective involvement in the family. Both El esp´ıritu de la colmena and La morte rouge are visually and thematically immersed in a community that searches for meaning via sentiment, one that transcends the terror of the political and social atmosphere of the time and its consequences for the lives of children. Moreover, the fact that San Sebastian is the privileged site for both the inaugural moment of Erice’s discovery of this sentiment in his infancy and the premiere of his adult work of reflection upon this sentiment underpins the director’s insistence on an intrinsic link between cinema and sensibility: ‘Film has been, for me, a means of knowledge. Cinema, in my childhood, did not provide me with an alternative society model but with something much more precious, the whole world.’34 El esp´ıritu de la colmena remains an elusive and ambiguous work that in no way resembles the amalgam of Basque nationalist iconography of Ama Lur. Blatant symbolism in El esp´ıritu de la colmena is limited to (and circumscribed by) a single, initial image of the Falangist yoke and arrows painted on a house wall, thereby establishing time and place but leaving the rest of the film to transcend the limitations on sentiment that result from totalitarianism. Ana and the young boy (Erice’s alter-ego) in La morte rouge thus appear as lines of flight, attempting to find in the films they watch and the films they will go on to make a means of escape

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from the excessive forces of repression and stratification of their contemporary societies. Whereas in Ama Lur ebullience is essential to locating life and illustrating the potential of a Basque community of citizens, El esp´ıritu de la colmena privileges silences, gazes, narrative ellipses and a slow tempo to convey the sentiment of a community marked by fear in which the imagination must supply the truths denied to children and, by extension, to the infantilized adults that Francoism tried to maintain in the Basque Country. Unlike Ama Lur, which explores the Basque Country in order to catalogue all that is unique, El esp´ıritu de la colmena looks deep inside itself in order to find something that is universal. This is why the community of sentiment that it embodies is not one of explicit political bias, but rather one resulting from awareness of the consequences of a lack of affection, an absence of freedom and broken ties at all levels. Both films represent high points in the political and cultural history of Basque cinema, which is why the EF/FV commemorated its 35th anniversary in May 2013 by inviting Erice to ‘close the circle’ by presenting La morte rouge in San Sebastian.35 As the international trajectory and reputation of El esp´ıritu de la colmena proves and the lack of same for Ama Lur perhaps corroborates, whereas the semiotic chains of Ama Lur are exclusifying and thereby geared to replacing one hegemony with another, the ambiguity of El esp´ıritu de la colmena extends an invitation to think freely and feel connections with film in a way that is universal and inclusive.

Basic Truths: Tasio As a setting for foreign films, Rold´an Larreta notes that the Basque Country had already pretended to be Belgium for The Battle of the Bulge (Ken Annakin, 1965) and England for Cromwell (Ken Hughes, 1970), while tanks had torn through the mountains of Navarre in Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1969) and the coastal village of Hondarribia had been turned into Devil’s Island for Papillon (Franklin J, Schaffner, 1973).36 However, as a setting for stories about itself, by the 1980s Basque cinema had largely moved away from rural romanticism towards urban realism, thereby shifting films about Basque identity from the metaphorical preservation of the countryside to survival in the cities. Bilbao became Scorsesian with its mean streets of rain, rust and neon providing the dystopian setting for films dealings with terrorist pasts, drug addiction, corruption, juvenile delinquency and disruptive sexualities in films associated with the first wave such as La muerte de Mikel, El pico (The Fix, Eloy de la Iglesia, 1983), El pico 2 (The Fix 2, Eloy de la Iglesia, 1984) and El amor de ahora (Present Day Love, Ernesto del R´ıo, 1987) that only slightly predated those of the second such as Todo por la pasta (Everything for the Bread, Enrique Urbizu, 1991) and Salto al vac´ıo (Jump into the Void, Daniel Calparsoro, 1995). Just as many Basques had moved to the cities in search of work and stimulation, so Basque cinema turned away from longing looks at its pre-industrial past to urgent concern about the post-industrial present. 76

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Furthermore, the referendum that separated Navarre from the three provinces included in the CAE exacerbated the sense of the Basque Country’s fragmentation and allowed the more reactionary to claim that the clash of urban alienation and anonymous cosmopolitanism was a consequence of losing contact with the values of rural life. This misshapen and maladjusted Basque community of citizens is an underlying theme in Tasio (Montxo Armend´ariz, 1984), which observes the eponymous character as he grows up to become a poacher and charcoal-burner in the mountains of Navarre. Based on the real life of Anastasio Ochoa Ruiz (1916– 89), who Armend´ariz had met while making his documentary short Nafarrroako ikazkinak (Charcoal Burners of Navarre, 1981), Tasio displays a simplicity and conviction in its elliptical narrative of an unpolluted life rendered via a realist aesthetic that resists romanticism, nationalism and modern life in its portrait of a man who refuses to be moulded. In her account of Italian Neorealism, Simona Monticelli contends that it ‘provided an immediate response to the desire to wipe out the material and ideological legacies of Fascism.’37 Realism re-defined the coordinates of national and cultural identity by an aesthetic strategy of representing authenticity in a way that revealed anything else to be the opposite of truth. Casting non-professional actors and favouring wide shots that situated protagonists within their environment aided a naturalistic focus on the lower classes that incorporated documentary norms and emphasized ‘the power of landscape – and the human presence within it – to act as signifiers of [. . .] cultural identity.’38 The aesthetics of Neorealism thus illustrated socialist ideas that carried moral values which opposed other forms of film entertainment. Following Andr´e Bazin, realism allowed for a phenomenological approach and response to what was real and rendered as such via long takes and wide shots. There are thus few close-ups in Tasio, which drew on the indigenous Basque tradition of documentary seen in ethnographic films such as the Ikuska series to which Armend´ariz contributed episode 11 on the trades and landscapes of La Ribera region of Navarre. Yet the focus on repetition, routine and elisions of time in Tasio’s elliptical narrative, which passes the titular role to three actors of different ages, means that the metaphysical act of bee-keeping and its invitation to interpretation in El esp´ıritu de la colmena is pushed aside by hard graft and psychological reality. Ian Aitken points out that ‘Italian neorealism provided an aesthetic model for Spanish filmmakers opposed to the normative superficiality and aesthetic redundancy of the Francoist cinema’39 and still, in post-dictatorship Spain, Tasio declares its difference from nationalist, commercial or heritage cinema via realism and the accumulation of documentary-like footage, albeit by frequent crane shots, of the life of its main character. The film’s observational viewpoint signals that the organization of the material is naturally occurring in a way that is prior to any imposition of meaning and therefore suggests a distinction between sentiment, which is a product of the film’s authenticity, and sentimentality, which is absent from a film that takes desolation as its dramatic substance and derives

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authentic sentiment from the experience of alienation. As Santiago de Pablo has concluded, ‘the life of this protagonist – Basque, but of universal character for his sentiments – represents freedom, solidarity, self-determination and a bond with his land.’40 Nevertheless, the question of whether Navarre should be included in a survey of Basque cinema is, like much else, debatable. Navarre is officially the Comunidad Foral de Navarra (Chartered Community of Navarre) and a third of its population lives in its capital Pamplona. It derives from the Kingdom of Navarre that existed until 1841 and has Castilian as official language alongside Euskara in the northern areas. Yet its separation from the CAE in the Statute of Autonomy of 1982 was compounded by the lack of referendum, the passage of time and the province’s almost unique responsibility for taxation within its borders. Navarre is heralded as part of the Basque Country in Ama Lur, which emphasizes the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona and the feast of joaldunak (cowbells) in Ituren and Zubieta as indicators of a commonality that allows for the Kingdom of Sancho III of Navarre (c.992–1035), which included most of Christian Iberia, to be posited as a heyday of Basque nationalism. That Navarre is not part of the CAE remains a deep thorn in the sides of Basque nationalists. However, Tasio does not broach the subject of political arguments and territorial divisions, which are irrelevant to the eponymous character, who simply gets on with his life in the mountains. Nevertheless, the sentiments of independence, tradition, community and loyalty that the film observes are, to invert the conclusion of Santiago de Pablo, universal, but of Basque character. Tasio is not about predestination but life-governing choices, which are signalled in the first dialogue in this Spanish-language film between two schoolboys: ‘Tasio, ¿d´onde vas?’ ‘Al monte’ (Tasio, where are you going? To the mountain). At the same time, however, the ‘authentic hymn to human freedom’ that Unsain sees in the film might also be interpreted as an essay in stubbornness and anti-progressive isolationism.41 Rather than confront Francoism, whose decades pass Tasio by, the film inculpates capitalism in the privatisation of the mountains via restrictions on hunting designed to serve rich hobbyist shooters from the city who encroach upon the balance of life in the mountains. As Tasio reveals its narrative to be elliptical, so a sentiment of endurance and resistance bridges the spaces between playing and working in the mountain, between marriage and the birth of a daughter, between the terminal illness of Tasio’s wife and his farewell to his grown daughter several years later. Tasio offers much in the way of ethnographical detail including instruction in robbing nests, playing jai-alai, setting snares, stoking a charcoal bonfire, courtship at the local dance and caring for one’s family, but this description of life in Navarre does not highlight any apparent difference with the CAE. Thus, although the inclusion of Navarre in the CAE is, like the referendum that might decide it, eternally deferred, one meaning offered by Tasio is that there is no diff´erance between these areas. The inclusion of films such as Tasio and El esp´ıritu de la colmena may not comply with any

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Marking Territory: Basque Heritage Cinema When plotting Ama Lur, its makers concurred that ‘it was considered indispensable that the film be framed within a Spanish ‘epic’ (i.e., within an epoch characterised by Spanish colonising and missionary work) which would make clear the fundamental participation of the Basques in the making of Spanish unity.’42 Its epic sweep aids the construction of sentiment in response to myth-inflected history intended to inspire nation-building, yet its poetic style was rejected as an obstacle to narrative coherence when the time came to nurture a narrative of nationhood in the early 1980s. Then, the criteria for Basque cinema approved by the government of the CAE was aimed exclusively at Basque production companies wanting to film in 35mm in Basque locations with at least 75 per cent of crew and cast being Basque (with exceptions made for star actors). Films could be shot in Euskara, or in Castilian on condition that a copy of the film was made available dubbed into Euskara, in return for 25 per cent of a film’s budget being awarded a fondo perdido (as non-returnable or sunken funds) in exchange for ‘exportable material’.43 The strategy attracted Basque filmmakers who had left for Madrid such as Imanol Uribe and Pedro Olea and Madrid-born Alfonso Ungr´ıa, prompted agreements between the Asociaci´on Independiente de Productores Vascos (Independent Association of Basque Producers), which was founded in 1984, and the Basque television network EiTB that determined broadcast rights, and thus gave rise to the first wave of Basque cinema. As Olea recalls: ‘The policy of subsidies initiated by the Basque government together with the grants from the Spanish government favoured the financing of a series of projects [. . .] and kicked off the careers of technicians, scriptwriters, actors, etc. in what was beginning to be an indigenous film industry with its own features and almost self-sufficient.’44 Seeking and exploiting the funding available, producers developed the kind of films that Ian Aitken describes as ‘look[ing] to the heroic past as a source of ideological verification.’45 Yet they pointedly also downgraded the importance of Euskara as an indicator of a difference that might be off-putting to non-Euskara speaking audiences and therefore financially ruinous. Key works of the first wave of Basque cinema are analysed in Chapter Five, but the focus here is on the attempt at heritage cinema, which offers ‘through an appeal to memory and identification, a special form of address, at once highly individual and capable of fostering a sense of belonging.’46 Previously it was ‘scholarly books and museums, civil rituals and political discourse [that] were for a long time the elements with which the Identity (with a capital “I”) was formulated and its rhetorical narrative constructed.’47 In the CAE of the early 1980s, however, it was an attempt at heritage cinema that resulted in Akelarre (Witches’ Sabbath, Pedro Olea, 1983), La conquista de Albania (The Conquest

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rigid criteria for inclusion in the Basque cinema of citizens, whether it be political or academic, but they occupy important spaces in the Basque cinema of sentiment.

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´ of Albania, Alfonso Ungr´ıa, 1983) and Fuego eterno (Eternal Fire, Jos´e Angel 48 Rebolledo, 1985). These ‘foundational films’ all managed allegorical connections with the present, but they were also contradictory and conflictive as well as commercial failures that continue to be critically derided. For example, Santiago de Pablo describes them respectively as ‘monotonous and obvious’, ‘tedious and incoherent’ and ‘long-winded and poorly performed.’49 However, each represents the past tense and present tensions in ways that highlight contradictions in how the Basque people imagined itself, or how the Basque government wished the Basque people would have imagined itself. Moreover, despite reputations to the contrary, each film resists in different ways the elision of these tensions in a wash of readily consumable spectacle. Although at first sight these explicit attempts to reclaim the ancient and modern Basque past that was deleted or rewritten by the dictatorship seem to directly oppose that which Frederic Jameson describes as ‘the disappearance of a sense of history’, they each tell allegorical stories of the past that illustrate present cultural and political strategies, thereby indicating that the past is a part of the present and therefore changing too.50 Akelarre reenacts the witchcraft trials that took place in the Navarrese town of Zugarramurdi in 1595 as a conflict between an ancient, matriarchal, Basque culture with its own language and customs and the oppressive, invasive, patriarchal culture of non-Basque, Christian Spain. Indeed, the accusations of witchcraft are partly in response to growing claims for independence as the trials allow for the repression of incipient militancy and scenes of torture that bring to mind that allegedly carried out on members of ETA by Spanish security forces at the time of the film’s making.51 Yet because the demonized Basques resist, band together and rise up to overthrow their oppressors, Akelarre provides a partisan definition of Basque citizenship that reorders the past from a radical, heroic perspective in order to justify a present-day response to an age-old conflict. The ruse of allegory is typical of heritage films, which are ‘first and foremost symptomatic of the contemporary imagination, offering unfamiliar takes on familiar myths.’52 As one of the foundational films largely funded by the newly autonomous Basque government, Akelarre presents its audience with enough points of comparison between recent and mythic Basque history that it conflates the context of events that take place 500 years apart, thereby illustrating Jameson’s concept of ‘the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents.’53 The space between the time of the events depicted and that of the contemporary audience thus folds up like a concertina until the past almost touches the present, requiring only the slightest of glances to move from one to the other. Accused of witchcraft, Garazi (Silvia Munt) is starved, manacled, waterboarded, stripped naked and suspended as her limbs are stretched apart on racks. Despite or because of its sadism, this Mario Bava-like sequence is one of very few in Basque cinema to claim some degree of eroticism and, the films of Julio Medem apart, might even be the exception that proves the rule of a curiously sexless Basque cinema. Here, the symbolic Garazi stifles her cries

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and trembles as her sacrifice becomes a martyrdom that galvanizes her lover Unai (Patxi Bisquert) and the Basques to revolution in a way that illustrates how heritage films can provide ‘a space for marginalised social groups, a sense of putting such people back into history.’54 In the final scene, the rescued but traumatized Garazi leaves the cave where the Basque rebels are hiding as if she is the embodiment of Mari, the pre-Christian, cave-dwelling, weather-controlling Basque goddess, and howls a crazed, lycanthropic irrintzi as an advocation of sorcerous militancy that continues over a freeze frame and slowly fades to black. As heritage cinema, Akelarre is a prism that presupposes that the relationship of its audience to this spectacular past may be understood in terms of an allegorical reading that casts new light on the present while also positing it as a palimpsest of the past. However, this is also a partial view of the past that positions the audience in a way that conceals the question of ownership beneath spectacle. It also means that the victims of Basque terrorism, who were killed, silenced or forced into exile, are only represented by an absence in Basque cinema, a cinematic void that does not begin to generate an alternative history until a series of documentaries, which are examined in Chapter Five, were made in the first decade of the twenty-first century. By contrast, La conquista de Albania sees the contemporary campaign for nationbuilding as a repeat of misguided and mismanaged military excursions from the fourteenth century. Compelled to retake Albania after his brother’s marriage to Juana de Anjou, King Carlos II of Navarre crosses the Mediterranean with what

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Figure 8. Garazi (Silvia Munt) endures torture in Akelarre (Witches’ Sabbath, Pedro Olea, 1984).

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he heralds as noble warriors but the quest results in a bitter allegory of frustration, jealousy, corruption, fractiousness and self-deception. Allegorical comparison with the endeavour of the CAE is served because the object of their desire is an imagined country that they intend to construct as a Basque kingdom without any clear strategy. The film even has an unreliable narrator in a decrepit blind man, who the telling reveals did not even begin to participate in the events depicted until half an hour into the film. The film thus imagines the past in a manner calculated to evoke nostalgia before revealing that the disastrous expedition does not corroborate the myth.55 While British heritage films tended to stage their performances of the bourgeois heritage canon within the safe confines of the country house, this attempt at Basque heritage cinema sought to evoke a nation greater than the CAE that funded it because in trying to expand audience perception of space in both the historical and the cultural sense it resorted to stories from Navarre. However, the incursion into Albania sickens with melancholia. The mission is derailed by madness as the campaign to build a nation stumbles into dream-like stagnancy and the knights succumb to nostalgia for their own imagined past – ‘Who made us forget our gods?’ – in a manner that blends the epic delusionality of Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981) with the psychological implosion of Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Werner Herzog, 1972). As a vision of nationbuilding, La conquista de Albania could hardly be more critical: a governmentfunded spectacle of an empire-building adventure that becomes a pointless trudge through a barren land. ‘Where the hell is our enemy?’ exclaims one soldier as mutiny occurs within a film about confused, squabbling, deluded and doomed Basque nationalists failing to build or justify a new nation. Indeed, the old blind man’s comment over the final shot of a burning Navarrese castle leaves little doubt as to the contemporary relevance of this diatribe: ‘I returned [. . .] trying to understand why sometimes the result of logical things leads to such absurd situations. But it seems to me that the people of this country are like that.’ This recourse to the past as a malleable text that may be realigned and subverted to suit strategies in the present is taken to absurd and logical extremes in Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) in which Adolf Hitler is killed by a crack group of American soldiers, thereby provoking nostalgia in the audience for an imagined past in which the Holocaust never happened. Yet Inglourious Basterds remains within the confines of its sub-genre by testing (albeit to breaking point) its potential for rewriting history and the film is a lot more honest about being untruthful than Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993). In her analysis of the reimagining of the past in British cinema, Bel´en Vidal has observed that rather than construct an escapist model oriented towards internationalization, British heritage films pursued a national model in films such as A Room with a View (James Ivory, 1985) that were so hermetic in their modes of address that they arguably constructed rather than reconstructed an idea of English heritage that suited Thatcherism. The nostalgia for an imagined past that they fostered drew a line

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of heritage from the time of the film to the present and therefore enabled ideas of nation-building to posit the past as the foundation of a utopian present. However, whereas the uniqueness, literary basis, mise-en-sc`ene and critical approbation of these films appealed to international audiences, the Basque brand of heritage film was not exported beyond various international festivals, where their nationality was sometimes contested.56 As a vehicle for revisionist histories, Basque heritage cinema was not able to murder Franco, but its brief sponsoring by the government of the CAE did show that Basque history could be dismantled in a way that was ripe for reassembly. The problem was that government funding for the first Basque wave came with instructions disguised as conditions for constructing a rigid definition of citizenship rather than enabling the ongoing evolution of a community and cinema of sentiment that moves in its continuous present tense towards a unifying e´lan vital. Conversely, this e´lan vital might have echoed Henri Bergson in the manner in which it posits knowledge of the past as crucial to progress but does not seek a return to fixity composed of previous values, systems or a ‘strategy [. . .] of using knowledge in the service of power.’57 As the second wave would prove, it is the lack of access to, reduction of, and move away from state funding that allows for the distinctiveness of a cinema of sentiment because it severs indebtedness to any prevailing ideology or criteria for funding that conceals hegemony. Finally, therefore, Fuego eterno ends this chapter with a warning, one that returns us to Schr¨odinger’s box and finds that after decades of confinement for the Basque Country, in which its history was confiscated and its evolution was suspended, simply opening it was a delicate matter. Many of the main ingredients of the first wave of Basque cinema are evident in this storm-tossed and candle-lit Bront¨e-esque film, including funding from the Basque government and EiTB, dramatic rural locations, a soundtrack by Alberto Iglesias, cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe and recourse to a non-Basque star. Set in 1660, the film employs the same framing device as La conquista de Albania as a child asks an old blind man to tell him a story, once more identifying Basque heritage cinema as an unreliable narrator. This time the story is that of a young cleric sent to investigate the fate of the last lady ´ of Azkubia, Gabrielle de Loithegui (Angela Molina), held prisoner and possibly possessed despite several exorcisms in the dungeons of a convent. Within the old blind man’s tale, the cleric’s study of her testimony prompts a flashback to her trial of twenty years ago, within which her declarations open another flashback into the events of seven years previously that led to her arrest. These stories and histories are thus Schr¨odingerian boxes within Schr¨odingerian boxes, the smallest of which reveals that Gabrielle’s love for a Basque nobleman named Pierre de Irigarai (Imanol Arias) did not end when he died on their wedding day but continued in secret, crazed, necrophiliac abandon for many years. In addition to the framing device and the flashbacks within flashbacks, the film also appropriates the subjectivity of Gabrielle in reconstructing that past by rendering Pierre as a living participant in her passion instead of the mouldering corpse seen by others. Thus, like the Basque

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Country coveted by nationalists during the dictatorship, her object of desire is both alive and dead. As Schr¨odinger resolved his argument over indeterminacy via observation, so close analysis of Ama Lur, El esp´ıritu de la colmena, Tasio, Akelarre and La conquista de Albania is concluded by recognition of the complex temporal structure of Fuego eterno as a metaphor that signals the dangers faced by Basque cinema when attempting to unlock the past.

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5 Broken Windows: Representations of Terrorism This chapter is almost finished. In a statement released to the BBC on 2 January 2011, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom, hereafter ETA) declared a ‘permanent and general ceasefire which will be verifiable by the international community.’1 Previous ceasefires had timed out without progress in negotiations or been broken by violence, but this was supported by imprisoned, long-time members of ETA and demonstrated by the disbanding of the illegal support group EKIN (meaning ‘to act’ in Euskara). Yet the acronym ETA also spells ‘and’ in Euskara and thus disconcertingly punctuates headlines, stands out in billboards and features constantly in overheard conversations, holding things together and setting them apart. Sorting pieces of history and fact, memory and myth, atrocity and guilt, sacrifice and renewal, grief and haunting, this chapter explores Basque cinema as one resolved to tell stories about itself and therefore subject to the protagonism of ETA. In its attempt to piece together incompatible fragments, however, this chapter tracks a shift in focus from the perpetrators of violence to their victims and assesses a pull back from fiction towards documentary, while noting that a tendency to make terrorists into martyrs and victims into saints has turned this thematic territory into a battleground for the dead, not the living.

A History of Violence Even more than the ill-fitting synonyms of community, nation, country and homeland, the word-pool of terrorist, guerrilla, radical, militant, extremist and socialist revolutionary organization for national liberation that ETA describes itself as demands a choice. Writing on terrorism in Italian cinema, Alan O’Leary warns of liability when entering into ‘a manifest complicity with the interests of power present in the pejorative connotations of “terrorism” which taints any academic 85

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employment of the term, and renders elusive its objective use as a rubric of enquiry. [. . .] For a researcher to employ the term “terrorism” is, therefore, to risk serving a political agenda that may be unsavoury and certainly demagogic.’2 Nevertheless, in order to analyse films about terrorism as ‘the output of a nexus of social relations and productive functions [. . .] comprising a range of discourses, events and their representations’, some account of the history of ETA is required.3 Modern Basque nationalism emerged alongside rapid industrialization at the end of the nineteenth century. Responding to an influx of immigrants to the Basque Country and a leak of profits elsewhere, Sabino Arana, the son of a Bilbao shipbuilder, founded the Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea/Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party, hereafter, EAJ/PNV) in 1896. As Paddy Woodworth comments, ‘most nations look more than a little ridiculous in the first phase of construction, when the raw mortar of rhetoric and myth is most apparent.’4 Nevertheless, the racist ramblings of Arana led to tension between nationalist and non-nationalist citizens that Arana mapped upon the rural-urban divide that had marked the Carlist wars of the nineteenth century, when the peasantry had fought for King Ferdinand’s brother Carlos against the cities that supported liberalism and the King’s infant daughter Isabella. Defeat for the Carlists was followed by the expansion of urban centres housing an immigrant proletariat and an oligarchy that looked to Madrid. Between the two, the struggling middle class was neither immigrant nor wealthy and its resentment found cause and expression in the EAJ/PNV. At the ignominious end of the Spanish Empire, the EAJ/PNV’s Catholicism attracted the peasantry, repulsed the new Partido Socialista Obrero Espa˜nol (Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party, hereafter PSOE) and separated itself from the nacionalcatolicismo of the Spanish Falange and its anti-communist crusade. However, the move towards Basque self-government was stalled by Franco’s career-making suppression of the Asturian miners’ uprising in 1934, the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) and decades of vengeful cultural, economic and political oppression during the dictatorship (1939–75) that outlawed Euskara and ‘turned the nationalist thesis of an occupied homeland into a kind of lived reality.’5 By the early 1950s, student members of the EAJ/PNV had turned their questioning of their parents’ generation into a manifesto of Basque resistance that led to the foundation of the more radical EKIN, which split from the EAJ/PNV in 1958 and in 1959 re-named itself ETA, which sprouted a militant wing in 1960. Influenced by existentialism, Marx and Mao, Castro’s victory over colonial forces in Cuba, and the appeal of martyrdom, ETA defined itself as the Basque socialist movement of national liberation and deployed the iconography of nationalism in its campaign for a cultural policy that drew popular support for its cause of a selfdetermining Basque community of sentiment based on relations between citizens as a group, defined by a common language, cultural and historical identity that justified the rejection of a community of citizens subject to Spanish law and its enforcement. This sentiment would become increasingly radical until the cause was

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transformed into a community of Basque citizens in which rigid criteria of inclusion and exclusion opposed the inflexibility of the Spanish government. Modern Basque cinema also shifted from one of radical sentiment in the late 1970s to one of citizenship in the 1980s, when government funding carried conditions, but evolved through a period of transition in the 1990s to become a cinema of sentiment by the new millennium, when Basque elements were also subject to influence, transnationalism and empathy from and for elsewhere. This sentiment allows for entry into an understanding with another nation that is just the same, or similar, or different, but which has some points of connection that may be called universal. There is a place for partisan films in any community of sentiment, but when their absolutist views dominate, then the cinema of this community becomes radicalized and performs only to itself. Consequently, if hardline nationalist extremism were to carry the vast majority of the popular vote and thus control filmmaking in the Basque Country, the resulting autonomous cinema would illustrate hardline, nationalist views with airtight cultural specificity too, because this is what the government would finance and audiences of voters would pay to see. The overlaps of cinemas of citizens and sentiment are thus especially complex in relation to representations of terrorism in Basque cinema. The radicalisation of sentiment evident in the Ikuska series of documentaries in the 1970s, for example, illustrates a revolutionary mindset that also fuelled violence against the Spanish police in the Basque Country, which would not have its own autonomous Basque police – the Ertzaintza – until 1982, and an increasing number of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations. However, these tactics were more difficult to justify by the 1980s, when Europe expected the end of the dictatorship to have prompted the end of ETA. So why did terrorism continue into democracy, long past the end of the dictatorship and the constitutional recognition of a substantial degree of autonomy? In the 1978 referendum over the Spanish constitution, the Basque Country had a high rate of abstentions and negations prompted by the EAJ/PNV and the radical left-wing Herri Batasuna (Popular Unity, hereafter HB), which objected to its terms, particularly the exclusion of Navarre from the Comunidad Aut´onoma de Euskadi (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, hereafter CAE). The Statute of Autonomy that was welcomed in other regions of Spain was thus dismissed by those who continued their campaign for independence and selfdetermination, radicalizing the idea of a Basque community of sentiment until it resembled a more hardline community of citizens that could seemingly only be achieved by violence. In sum, ETA was responsible for 2005 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2010 and 810 fatalities, 650 of which occurred before 1992. Some of these were specific targets: Franco’s prime minister and dictator-in-waiting Carrero Blanco in 1973, for example, and numerous police chiefs, councillors, and businesses since then. Others were arbitrary: shoppers at a Barcelona supermarket in 1987 and travellers in Madrid’s Barajas airport in 2006. All were arguably symbolic, for that is the aim of terrorism. In turn, the actions of illegal security

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forces funded by Spain’s ruling PSOE, the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberaci´on (Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups, hereafter GAL), established a covert war against ETA that took out 28 specific targets and erased moral clarity. However, whereas the killing of Carrero Blanco was celebrated by many for removing an obstacle to Spain’s post-Franco transition to democracy, public support for the actions of ETA, if not the cause that was still a mainstay of cultural activities, all but ´ disappeared after ETA’s kidnapping and killing of young councillor Miguel Angel Blanco in 1997. In addition, by the end of the century the CAE was now so comparatively self-determining in Europe that absolute independence could be dismissed by opponents of Basque separatism as na¨ıve and unworkable in a global economy driven by post-national neo-liberalism. Ideas of terrorism in the public consciousness were also so affected by the attacks of Islamic extremists on New York’s World Trade Centre in 2001 and commuter trains in Madrid in 2004 that ETA seemed anachronistic. Nevertheless, the present-day near-absence of ETA reveals two groups without closure and prone to political manipulation. Many ex-members of ETA are dispersed throughout Spain’s prisons and campaigns demanding their amnesty or at least their transfer to prisons closer to their families in the Basque Country resound. And there are also numerous victims, survivors and mourners pending recognition and reparations, or simply respite. It is difficult to get a clear view through fractured glass, however. And that is what Basque cinema is in relation to terrorism: a series of broken windows.

Remembrance, Reenactment and Representation The investment of the newly defined CAE in the Basque cinema of the early 1980s resulted in the first Basque wave and several heritage films that tended towards didacticism and the display of tableaux costumbrista and therefore risked becoming what Jean Baudrillard characterized as a ‘dustbin of history [. . .] for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values.’6 However, just as these heritage films, which are analysed in Chapter Four, were warped by allegorical narratives and subversion, so films that dealt in recent events and the activities of ETA avoided being ‘dustbins’ because their revisionist views of Basque history were based on recycling. Urgent nation-building upon the unset foundations of this recent past was indicated in two films about ETA that essayed history as memory, testimony and reconstruction. El proceso de Burgos (The Burgos Trial, Imanol Uribe, 1979) replays the 1970 trial of 16 members of ETA including two priests and three women and foregrounds the accounts of the accused, who re-enact their testimonies, while Segovia-ko ihesa (The Segovia Breakout, Imanol Uribe, 1981) offers a generic reconstruction of the escape from Segovia prison of political prisoners in 1970 with several of them, since amnestied, playing themselves. Baudrillard advised that ‘a degree of slowness (that is, a certain speed, but not too much), a degree of distance, but not too much, and a degree of liberation (an energy for rupture and change), but not too much, 88

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are needed to bring about the kind of condensation or significant crystallisation of events we call history, the kind of coherent unfolding of causes and effects we call reality’7 ; but the haste and proximity of these films renders reality incoherent except from the single invested perspective. The short film Ez: centrales nucleares (No: Nuclear Power Stations, Imanol Uribe, 1977) about the Lemoniz nuclear power station in Biscay, updated the rural-urban divide by juxtaposing its construction, which was targeted by ETA, with Arcadian landscapes and ‘contributed by its dissemination to the project being cancelled.’8 Yet its director claims not to have held ‘any prior political or filmic point of view about the subject’ of El proceso de Burgos, which tells the history of ETA in archive images and voiceover that give way to testimonies of torture by the Civil Guard and the rationalization of increasingly violent actions by the ‘talking heads’ of militants, who tend to be framed against ‘timid contexualizations’ of Basque flags, maps of Euskadi, posters of Lenin and belching industry.9 The accused would be condemned to six death penalties and over 500 years of imprisonment, but the tag-game of their remembrances is the product of their memories being edited together chronologically, whereby present day enmities between the subsequently amnestied prisoners are elided. El proceso de Burgos thus combines the historical and intra-historical in its narrativisation of the trial that culminated in the accused protesting in chambers and singing their nation’s anthem in Euskara over the commands of their jailers, thereby prompting the transformation of this showtrial from a display of Francoist might with extensive dissemination in the press into a hurried verdict behind closed doors. Yet the lack of recordings of the defiant occurrence does not halt the momentum of the film, which switches to reconstruction, editing together interviewees who separately re-enact their protest, thereby re-forming the group that had since acrimoniously dispersed. Faced with appeals by nine governments, including France, Germany and the Vatican, Franco’s commutation of the death penalties to 30 years in jail arguably signalled the beginning of the end of the dictatorship. In addition, the trial inspired a revival of militant fascism amongst right-wing Spaniards and the fracturing of the cause of Basque independence into those who sought changes through political and social actions and those who insisted on violence. A similar choice between the supposedly rationalized argument of documentary and the explicit emotional heft of fiction would be faced by Basque cinema. John Grierson defined the documentary as a compilation of evidence and information about the social and historical construction of the subject for which, as John Izod and Richard Kilborn claim, ‘the documentarist must deploy a whole range of creative skills to fashion the “fragments of reality” into an artefact that has a specific social impact.’10 The shaping of testimony into impassioned reenactment thus has a purpose that rationalizes artifice but which calls into question ‘the status of works bearing the documentary label, when so many are structured in much the same way as the fictional works to which they are said to be

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diametrically opposed.’11 Basque cinema has persistently complicated distinctions between veracity and reenactment.12 However, Izod and Kilborn claim that misleading an audience is only possible when reconstruction and partisanship is not ‘explicitly signalled as such’.13 Thus, the addition of a pre-credit prologue to El proceso de Burgos in which Francisco Letamendia, a radical Basque nationalist lawyer who had defended the accused, delivers a partisan history of the Basque Country, skews and fixes the film’s ideology, thereby dismantling the possibility of an audience being misled. His lecture is elliptical, hagiographic about Arana and the ‘world renowned’ ETA that fights for ‘the Basque revolution [that is] part of the worldwide revolution against imperialism.’ Following Izod and Kilborn, propaganda that proclaims itself as such may disarm affront, allowing for the likes of The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915), Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) and Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) to be studied objectively. However, the online digital archive of Radio Televisi´on Espa˜nola (Spanish National Radio and Television) has only a fragment of the nation-building El proceso de Burgos on its website lasting 27 minutes and 35 seconds of this 135 minute film.14 It includes the aforementioned re-enactment of the trial but elides the prologue. Thus, in this contemporary public-facing artefact Letamend´ıa’s slanted expository is erased and the reconstruction assumes even more problematic historical veracity. The decline of violent activities (ETA killed no-one in 1970–71) encouraged populist support, yet angered hardliners who saw cessation of the armed struggle as tantamount to abandonment of nationalism. ETA’s assassination of Carrero Blanco in 1973 would divert Spain towards democracy following the death of Franco in 1975 but also convinced those who could perceive an imminent end to the dictatorship that ETA’s work was done. A reconstruction of the assassination of Carrero Blanco was staged for Operaci´on Ogro (Ogro, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1979), which has been persuasively ‘read as referring to the Moro kidnapping’15 , while the television series El asesinato de Carrero Blanco (The Assassination of Carrero Blanco, Miguel Bardem, 2011) makes of the deceased despot an indistinct target, hardly the exponent of Francoism. Following this killing, ETA split several times internally and a more extremist military front known as ETA-V (Fifth Assembly) took responsibility for the record number of 118 victims in 1980 that prompted the attempted coup d’´etat of Lieutenant Colonel Tejero, who held Spanish Parliament hostage on 23 February 1981 as part of a right-wing plot to restore order and wreak revenge. The coup was defeated but the so-called Dirty War (1983–87) of the Spanish PSOE government against ETA would follow. Released in a reeling 1981, Segovia-ko ihesa presents itself as a procedural tale of heroism in the guise of the ‘escape movie’ that includes all the ingenuity, setbacks and breakthroughs one might expect of the genre except that the escapees are 27 members of ETA, five of whom are playing themselves. The script by the

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´ producer Angel Amigo, one of the escapees, is based on his autobiography, which drew heavily from ‘the text that summarised the indictment of the escapees, which was made by a military judge, [which] was a work of precision, thoroughness and mechanical logic. I couldn’t improve upon it in my book.’16 Such reenactment is not uncommon: several figures involved in the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 recreate events in United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2003) and survivors of the tsunami that swept South West Asia in 2004 reprise their experiences in Lo imposible (The Impossible, Juan Antonio Bayona, 2012), while The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2013) hands the filmmaking apparatus to Indonesian death squads and enables them to revisit mass murder in various genres. There is perhaps a therapeutical role to be assumed for such films in relation to the participants and/or the audience because role-play and re-living experiences is a naturalistic form of psychotherapy aimed at providing counselling and closure, wherein ‘the degree of success of the role-play simulation depends on the similarity between role-play stimuli and natural events, the client’s inherent ability to roleplay and relate to the scene, and the instructions provided.’17 Documentarists must at times assume and negotiate the role of psychotherapist in their questioning and thereafter convey tensions between remembering and performance, between re-living events, the recovery of memory, and discrepancies between what is remembered, what is imagined and what is imagined as remembered.18 Segoviako ihesa is more about engendering suspense than sympathy for the escapee’s affiliations, yet the spectacle of ETA as prisoners-of war, outlaws on-the-run and amnestied actors re-embodying their own triumph according to ‘the instructions provided’ by the director results in a therapeutical foundational text that reassures old radicals and encourages new ones. The cinematic apparatus thus mediates between the historical event, its reconstruction and the sentiment of spectators because the generic conventions that carry this film forward reduce the cause of ETA to real and symbolic freedom. Furthermore, because the film connects history, memory and reconstruction explicitly in the participation of the actual escapees and makes this a badge of veracity, the generic conventions transform the action into ritualistic myth. The suspenseful tunnel-digging is a motif and a generic ritual that, precisely because it is indebted to films such as Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979) ensures that the political and cultural factors surrounding this representation of ETA now fit easily into the Basque imagination. Segovia-ko ihesa is a very simple metaphor of the highly complex history upon which it is based. Despite the generic platform of Segovia-ko ihesa, it would be wrong to classify films that deal with ETA and conflict over the Basque Country as a genre. There are recurring themes but no overriding positionality, just as there are key texts but no rigid tropes or modes of exposition. Faced with a similar situation, O’Leary writes of ‘a reflexive corpus of films’ in Italian cinema and advises that ‘representational traditions must take time to cohere, and the sense of the important themes and

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experiences of a period must take time to materialise. The point is, though, that such processes of developing coherence and gradual materialisation are not natural but cultural processes, and their outcomes are continually contested.’19 Chris Homewood holds that the same is true of German cinema and its representation of the Baader-Meinhof Group, for example, which has ‘read this terrorism as a violent response to the repressed Nazi past’ although when political scandals in the 1990s brought a revision of the legacy of un-historicised terrorism, ‘an air of the supernatural’ was ascribed to the ‘undead’ terrorist past and explicitly represented as such in the ‘terrorist as vampire’ subtext of Die innere Sicherheit (The State I Am In, Christian Petzold, 2000).20 These cultural processes by which terrorism is metaphorized or rendered in symbolic or archetypical terms is at the same time a simplification of an unmanageable past and an obfuscation of the complexity of the present situation. Representational traditions of dealing with ETA have gestured towards coherence by means of a narrow range of protagonists and three types have emerged as part of this incomplete cultural process: the returning native, the martyr and the biographical subject.

The Return of the Native The return of the native is a potent theme because it explores how differences between a community lost and a community regained are compounded by negotiations of citizenship. This involves the exchange of rights and privileges for duties and responsibilities, and attempts to clarify sentiment, which is concerned with the authenticity of linguistic, cultural and historical bonds.21 Homecoming is a return to reality following the metaphysical experience of exile and, as Rold´an Larreta notes in relation to Basque cinema, is always accompanied by ‘an authentic feeling of existential distress’ that is exacerbated by this heimat never being what the exile either longs for or encounters.22 In El ojo de la tormenta (The Eye of the Storm, Luis Eguiraun & Ernesto del R´ıo, 1984), drifter Mat´ıas (Mario Pardo) returns to Bilbao, where he finds and returns a car to its owner for a reward. However, the twist-in-the tale is a newsflash indicating that a kidnapped businessman was discovered in its boot and any blackly comic effect is secondary to the ruination of Mat´ıas’s ambition to survive quietly in the margins of the city as he finds himself implicated in the all-enveloping conflict at its centre. Another supposedly non-political returnee is Ander (Miguel Munarriz) in Ander eta Yul (Ander and Yul, Ana D´ıez, 1989), whose script was co-authored by the director, producer ´ ´ Angel Amigo and Angel Fern´andez Santos, co-writer of El esp´ıritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive, V´ıctor Erice, 1973) and awarded 1,500,000 pesetas in a competitive bout of screenwriting organised by the Basque government. However, Amigo had recently ‘desligado’ (cut himself loose)23 from the Asociaci´on de Productores Vascos (Association of Basque Producers), whose presidency he had previously held, and the award prompted protest against the government’s support 92

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for private enterprise that was joined by attacks on the film’s representation of ETA as anti-drug enforcers driven by a ‘strong streak of conventional Roman Catholic morality’24 as well as for its grimy images of the Basque Country that D´ıez says caused ‘problems with the crew, who accused us of being Spanish nationalists.’25 Ander is a small-time drug dealer ordered back to his Basque hometown upon leaving prison in Algeciras because of the birthplace indicated on his ID card. Thus the rigidity of the community of citizens re-imprisons him upon release, but any potential for belonging is annulled by him finding an abandoned family home and a letter informing him of his father’s death. Ander’s right to belong to the Basque community of citizens is rescinded, while any sentiment of belonging is withheld by his boyhood friend Yul (Isidoro Fern´andez) having effectively taken his place in the family unit, the community and ETA. Sirens and chanting form the film’s soundscape, but this aural threat is not located in the offscreen Spanish police, whose representation was disallowed by the Spanish government but embodied in visible members of ETA instead.26 The absence of the police adds to the otherworldliness of Ander’s return and the film’s drift towards Surrealism is signposted by Bu˜nuelian motifs in the scene where a rag-and-bone man’s donkey is caught in the bombing of a bank and its mangled head resembles that draped upon the piano in Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog, Luis Bu˜nuel & Salvador Dal´ı, 1929). Later, the rag-and-bone man is seen pulling his own cart, thereby suggesting a reworking of the sight gag in Viridiana (Luis Bu˜nuel, 1961) in which a do-gooder rescues a dog tied to a cart only to see another cart with another dog pass in the opposite direction, because it suggests that ETA’s ‘good deed’ of destroying the bank only makes life worse for the ordinary worker. This criticism of ETA is extrapolated when Yul carries out orders to kill his ‘brother’ Ander because of unfounded suspicions that he has turned police informer. The fratricidal Cain motif that Thomas G. Deveny has analysed in relation to Spanish cinema thus achieves specific meaning in Basque cinema because it posits the conflict as an internal one of Basque against Basque instead of against the external forces of Spanish nationalism.27 In Ander eta Yul the community of citizens is defined by radical, left-wing nationalists: ‘We’re the real police! We’re the state!’ The film therefore flips the notion of exile and homecoming, making prison the home that Ander should never have left and his Basque birthplace into a place of restrictive exile, one that resembles a metaphysical limbo that is recognized as such by the woman he beds, who tells him he looks like a corpse. Jaume Mart´ı-Olivella has written of Basque cinema’s ability ‘to make visible the spectral reality of Basque political violence’ and the ghost-like re-apparition of Ander in his home town is indeed made visible in the headlights of extremist ideology.28 The idea that progress is stymied by the weight of the past and the constant reminders of this in eruptions of repressed violence echo Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology, which finds the present subject to the disturbing intrusion of the past that is neither dead nor alive.29 Violence is an atrocity that begets trauma,

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guilt and grief that never pass because the dosage is maintained in a kind of drip feed of violent events. Joseba Gabilondo connects this everyday spectrality with the Freudian concept of das Unheimliche (the Uncanny), contending that such figures as Ander represent ‘an uncanny questioning of [Basque cinema’s] own identity and existence.’30 He disagrees with Rold´an Larreta when noting that rather than wallow in existential despair, characters in Basque cinema tend to make this questioning visible by ‘a violence that is clearly uncanny: familiar in its affect and frightening’ and further contends that any attempt to erase Basque identity is met by vengeful repercussions that contribute to ‘the violent cycle of negation and resurgence that constitutes Basque cinema’s uncanny as a way of exploring the connection between subject formation and violence in Spain.’31 Thus, the violent deaths of Ander, Yoyes, Mikel (Imanol Arias) in La muerte de Mikel (Mikel’s Death, Imanol Uribe, 1984), Txomin (Carmelo G´omez) in La casa de mi padre (Black Listed, Gorka Merchan, 2008) and Antonio (Carmelo G´omez) in D´ıas contados (Running out of Time, Imanol Uribe, 1995) validate the mythology that needed ‘this uncanny, irreducible recurrence of the other in order to justify [itself ].’32 Following Gabilondo, Mart´ı-Olivella cautions that ‘in the Basque Country the experience of violence corresponds to a different mode of reality, one whose visibility is that of the invisible, a spectral model not unlike that of witchcraft.’33 However, violence is arguably not another reality but a powerful indicator of the true reality of the Basque Country in the Basque cinema of citizens. The shot that kills Ander ends his oneiric limbo and connects an audience with what was visible and audible daily: it is the fissure through which the background of authentic violence moves to the front of the film and the play of spectres conjured by the cinematic apparatus retreats into the dark. Faith and fear play a role in terrorism but it is not akin to witchcraft because bullets and bombs are real. The return journey that Ander sleeps through (and from which he possibly never awakes) also forms the initial sequence of Golfo de Vizcaya (Bay of Biscay, Javier Rebollo, 1985), in which Lucas (played by Italian actor Omero Antonutti) returns from Mexico and takes up the Bilbao-beat on a newspaper, as well as of Ke arteako egunak (Days of Smoke, Antxon Eceiza, 1989) in which Pedro (played by Mexican actor Pedro Armend´ariz Jr.) flies back with a mid-life crisis. The fact that both Basque characters are played by foreign actors implies that exile has rendered them alien to the extent that reinsertion in the community of citizens is bound to fail. Lucas investigates a dock strike supported by ETA but his clumsy indignation fails to impress Olatz (Silvia Munt) and disappoints the proto-GAL vigilante police. The return of Basque exiles is a media event in Ke arteako egunak but Pedro meets similar reproach because, like Lucas, he is a relic not a refugee and his attempts at reintegration with ‘old friends, the Reds of yesteryear’ on a sentimental level are rebuffed by warnings that tend towards the epigrammatic: ‘In prison there are people who enter never to leave it. Personal choice is forbidden.’ In contrast, Pedro’s sentiment is out of time and signalled as such when he persuades a

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middle-aged woman in a bar full of youths to join him on the dance floor, where he hums a slow tune that they can move to despite the pounding beat of the disco music. Reinsertion is not possible in a community of citizens that has developed rigid criteria for inclusion. ‘Are you for independence?’ he asks an old friend. ‘What one wants to be is a Basque citizen with every right!’ is the reply that confounds and confirms him as someone unable to attain inclusion or even understand the new rules of citizenship. His estranged daughter is revealed to be an amnestied member of ETA, but he is excluded from her celebratory homecoming at the airport, whereupon the gap between his outdated sentiment and contemporary citizenship is revealed to be an existential chasm into which he falls, stumbling into a smoke-filled street riot and final freeze frame. The film’s director, Antxon Eceiza, who oversaw the Ikuska series examined in Chapter Three, has spoken of there being ‘two types of Basques: the centrifugal and the centripetal.’34 This suggests that people are either spun off or sucked into the Basque community of citizens because of the criteria for exclusion and inclusion. Sorenson considers terrorism in regard to ‘security challenges to open, liberal societies’ and identifies an ever-present threat of violence that makes any community reinforce its criteria for citizenship because ‘sufficient protection will require [. . .] close monitoring and control.’35 This suggests how difficult it is for a community of sentiment to survive a prolonged threat because ‘openness requires wide-ranging possibilities for transactions, as well as individual freedom of movement, of expression and of organization’ of the kind that protectionism prohibits.36 Indeed, when resolute authoritarianism increases on both sides of any conflict, the community of citizens closes in on itself as ‘centrifugal’ people leave or are expelled and ‘centripetal’ folk either embrace rigid signifiers and roles in a period of conflict or they surrender to their enforcement. Transposed to the Basque cinema of citizens, this rigidity can result in overtly symbolic characters and portentous dialogue as with El amor de ahora (Present Day Love, Ernesto del R´ıo, 1987), for example, which sees married activists give up militancy and return from France to the Basque Country, where their marriage collapses under pressure to reconstruct their lives according to duties and responsibilities dictated by prevailing criteria. Yet, after a period of frustrating unemployment, Pello (Patxi Bisquert) returns to the countryside and takes over the emblematic farm maintained by his widowed father, while Arantxa (Klara Badiola) heads to Bilbao and an allegorical job cleaning up its polluted estuary. The film acknowledges the rigidity of criteria for inclusion in the Basque community of citizens when Pello and Arantxa drive into Bilbao for the first time in many years and are met by a new ‘No Entry’ sign that obliges them to drive out in reverse. As in Ke arteako egunak, characters speak like pamphlets because limitations of sentiment make their speech wary and stunted. Pello and Arantxa become ciphers defined by the chores of citizenship and their self-expression chokes on metaphors, such as when Pello sees a stork separated from its flock and then looks at Arantxa, saying: ‘It’s possible that it’s ill

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Figure 9. Gaizka (Juan Jos´e Ballesta) and Txomin Garay (Carmelo G´omez) explore generational conflict in La casa de mi padre (Black Listed, Gorka Merchan, 2008).

or has lost the ability to fly. Even if they’re in captivity for a time, afterwards they don’t need the flock to orient themselves. They can find their own destiny.’ Yet the film also signals extinction in and of the Basque Country, when Pello finally chooses the rural regression of life in a remote farmhouse with his widowed father, leaving Arantxa to look after herself in the city, where she re-ignites sexual liaisons with previous acquaintances from ETA. The returning native then disappears from Basque cinema until La casa de mi padre in 2008, which takes its original title from the poem ‘Nire aitaren etxea defendituko dut’ (I Will Defend The House of My Father) by Gabriel Aresti. This film tests the evolution from a community and cinema of citizens to those of sentiment and finds extremist criteria for inclusion still extant and imposed via violence. Txomin (Carmelo G´omez) fled the Basque Country because of intimidation by ETA but returns from Argentina to deal with family business that includes the imminent death of his ailing brother. Accompanied by his fearful wife (Emma Su´arez) and wide-eyed daughter (Ver´onica Echegui), Txomin tries to reunite with the community but finds it resistant to reconciliation and is finally murdered by an anonymous young terrorist. Shot mostly in mid-shots, the film’s domestic mise-en-sc`ene signifies universal sentiments but the production came up against such rigid yet contradictory ideas of Basqueness that EiTB, the film’s main backers, protested that a Madrid-born actress should not play a Basque character, while cutting several scenes in Euskara because of doubts about the commercial impact of subtitles. La casa de mi padre suffered weak distribution and was never released on DVD, prompting its director to upload it to YouTube.37 Nevertheless, 96

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The Martyr As Santiago de Pablo writes, ‘the idea of Guernica as a martyred people, which connects with the international Catholic imaginary [. . .] is symbolised in the images of Guernica destroyed by bombing on 26 April 1937.’38 This town near Bilbao had a munitions factory that was the target of the Luftwaffe-in-training, but destruction was such that only part of a church and an oak tree survived. This cemented the town’s role as the defiant, spiritual home of Basque nationalism, for the oak had been venerated since the Middle Ages as the setting for democratic assemblies. The bombing has been the subject of much literature, art and cinema including Lauaxeta (To The Four Winds, Jos´e A. Zorrilla, 1987), the animated ´ short Gernika (Angel Sandimas, 2012) and the television series Gernika bajo las bombas (Guernica under the Bombs, Luis Mar´ıas, 2012) and it still haunts the popular imagination in a Derridean fashion, as a ghostly presence of the past, while its symbolism also underpins the uncontested recollections of torture that punctuate several documentaries. Actual testimonies of torture are tainted by evidence of ETA’s alleged strategy of claiming torture upon arrest39 , but in each of these films, members of ETA describe their experience of humiliation, abuse and torture, turning their subscription to radical Basque nationalism into a faith. A theory of martyrdom suggests that it exemplifies the aforementioned cultural process of creating representational traditions because it is ‘a contested social process [that] depends on both the resources of the martyr’s supporters and the cultural context into which the martyr’s image is introduced. [Martyrs] are polysemous symbols available to reputational entrepreneurs in varied, and often contested, contexts. As such, they operate in spaces of social change and upheaval, typically situated at historical action points.’40 Films that illustrate or feature remembrances of torture maintain the empirical basis of the Greek word martus, meaning a witness who provides knowledge based on observation, because they corroborate violence via its representation, which then enters the national imaginary. Torture is not uncommon as allegory or example of oppression in Spanish period films such as El crimen de Cuenca (The Cuenca Crime, Pilar Mir´o, 1979) and Las 13 rosas (13 Roses, Emilio Mart´ınez L´azaro, 2007). However, whereas Spanish films speak of violence in the past that haunts contemporary Spain, Basque films containing images of torture, even when explicitly allegorical like Akelarre (Witches’ Sabbath, Pedro Olea, 1984), imply that such violence occurs in the present.41 Extremist

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La casa de mi padre is important because it illustrates that the natives who return to the Basque Country are no longer terrorists seeking amnesty and reinsertion, but victims of the violence that enforced extremist criteria of Basque citizenship. Once centrifugal but now centripetal, their return to family homes points to a community and a cinema of sentiment that still has not escaped the legacy of terrorist violence.

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sanctification of martyrs to the cause of Basque independence echoes Saint Cyprian of Carthage and his De ecclesiae catolicae unitate (Treatise on Unity, 251), which declared ‘he cannot be a martyr who is not in the Church; he cannot attain unto the kingdom who forsakes that which shall reign there.’ That is to say, in the Basque community/cinema of citizens, the martyr must subscribe to nationalist beliefs. The 16 minute Estado de excepci´on (State of Emergency, I˜naki N´un˜ ez, 1977) duly enters the discourse of martyrdom because its mission to ‘cross the threshold of political permissiveness in post-Franco Spain’42 resulted in its prohibition and the imprisonment of its director. In the style of La jet´ee (The Pier, Chris Marker, 1962), it offers a succession of posed photographs beginning with pictures of life in a preCivil War farmhouse that resemble Jean-Franc¸ois Millet’s The Angelus (1857–59) in which peasants pause to pray, before the pastoral idyll gives way to fragments of Picasso’s Guernica and archive images of firing squads and piles of corpses. Emphatic zooms editorialise images of record, turning them into propaganda, as the wailing atonality of Mikel Laboa, considered to be the father of modern Basque song, ‘sings’ approximations of strangled speech. The film’s cipher-protagonist is shown learning by rote beneath a portrait of Franco. The next shot catches him vandalizing his text book. The next shows him facing the classroom wall. And the next shows him standing amongst masked men firing guns at an offscreen target. However, the banality of this summary and justification of activism is diverted by Freudian symbolism into abstraction. Successive images show that the cipher is captured, strapped to a chair and beaten, then tied naked and face down on a table. His legs are pulled apart and he is sodomized with an iron bar, whereupon close-ups of this penetration are juxtaposed with reverse shots of his gleeful, lascivious torturer. This metaphorical emasculation corresponds to a traditional demarcation of gender in relation to how radical Basque nationalism is linked to traditional, even sacred ideas of masculinity that inform the final images in which the cipherturned-symbol faces a firing squad in a white shirt, thereby referencing both Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo (The Third of May 1808, 1814) by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, which commemorates Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s forces during the Peninsular War, and Robert Capa’s photograph Death of a Republican Soldier. As Susan Sontag has written in Regarding The Pain of Others: ‘The point of Death of a Republican Soldier is that it is a real moment, captured fortuitously; it loses all value should the falling soldier turn out to have been performing for Capa’s camera.’43 By the same token, Estado de excepci´on should lose value because of its fabrication, yet this artificial martyrdom is a stand-in for an undocumented history of ETA and its appeal to nationalist sympathies replicates what Sontag diagnoses in relation to authentic images sent to Britain by anti-Franco forces during the Spanish Civil War because ‘photographs of victims of war are themselves a species of rhetoric. They reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create the illusion of consensus.’44 Despite its artifice, Estado de excepci´on does all this by directing our gaze towards the formation of the martyr-subject in relation to anti-Basque Spanish nationalism,

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BROKEN WINDOWS: REPRESENTATIONS OF TERRORISM Figure 10. Sacrifice and martyrdom in Estado de excepci´on (State of Emergency, I˜naki N´un˜ ez, 1977).

thereby constructing the same response that Sontag identifies in relation to the authentic and similarly deployed photographs that first shocked Virginia Woolf: Who are ‘we’ at whom such shock-pictures are aimed? That ‘we’ would include not just the sympathisers of a smallish nation or a stateless people fighting for its life, but – a far larger constituency – those only nominally concerned about some nasty war taking place in another country. The photographs are a means of making ‘real’ (or ‘more real’) matters that the privileged and the merely safe might prefer to ignore.45

The ‘we’ at whom Estado de excepci´on is aimed is the Basque community of citizens and the larger constituency of a community of sentiment beyond the Basque Country; that is to say, at both hardliners within the territory and the soft-hearted beyond it. This myth, which is conceived in political terms, both appeals to and articulates the concerns of an audience that is presumed to share in or empathize with the beliefs and communal history of its protagonist and makers. In a similar vein, the recent Lasa eta Zabala (Lasa and Zabala, Pablo Malo, 2014) recounts the kidnapping, torture and killing of Joxean Lasa and Joxi Zabala by the GAL in 1983 and offers protracted scenes of their torment but very little information about 99

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what these ETA militants had done before their suffering. A visceral response to the imagery is thus predicated upon what Jeremy Wisnewski defines as ‘torture’s unique despicability’ where that which is ‘obviously wrong to virtually anyone’ repulses an audience and overrides any consideration of Lasa and Zabala’s previous actions.46 Scenes of torture can emotionally manipulate an audience into taking sides and some films can be blatantly propagandist in their rhetoric of martyrdom. Euskadi hors d’´etat (Euskadi: A Stateless Nation, Arthur MacCaig, 1983) is a documentary that describes Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy from the viewpoint of the Basque separatist movement that was made with the support of the UK’s Channel Four by an American filmmaker who had produced documentaries about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. A soft, female voice provides the commentary for this film, which quickly leans towards the unequivocal martyrdom of the Basque Country. To the nationalist iconography of misty valleys, crashing waves and folk dancing is added graffiti demanding amnesty and figures with hidden faces carrying guns. Testimony and newsreel are collated to represent a familiar pre-Civil War idyll destroyed in the symbolic martyrdom of Guernica and the lack of subtitles for commentary in Euskara creates, if not an audience, at least an idea of an audience. Euskadi hors d’´etat equates ETA with ‘freedom fighters’ in Cuba, Argelia, Vietnam and Northern Ireland in ‘the sixties with their struggles for national freedom’ and its commentary falls to a mournful whisper when explicitly describing the killing of ETA’s leader Txabi Etxebarrieta in 1968 as a martyrdom, only to rouse again when juxtaposing the killing of Carrero Blanco with inserts of the destruction of Guernica that supposedly justified it. Objectivity is then abandoned altogether in describing the spiral of action-retaliation-action that resulted in ‘a long succession of martyrs.’ This ends with a policeman in riot gear charging the camera in slow motion, thereby admitting to an alliance of the filmmaking apparatus with the cause whose side it has taken. The ownership of symbolism, which cinema propagates, is part of the struggle between ideologies, but just as equating the destruction of Guernica with the repression of the Basque people informs the narrative of martyrdom cited by ETA, so allegations and illustrations of torture embed the conflict in a historic context stretching back to the Middle Ages and even Roman times in a way that links present-day terrorism with traditions of sacrifice. Universal and ritualistic signifiers of martyrdom therefore illuminate Basque films such as La muerte de Mikel, which begins with a Catholic funeral wherein the body of Mikel (Imanol Arias) is appropriated as a martyr to Basque nationalism. However, flashbacks reveal that this activist was rejected from a radical nationalist organisation on account of his homosexuality because the criteria for inclusion in its community of citizens sustains retrograde, homophobic chauvinism amongst the radicals who once worked with the closeted Mikel. Straining to fulfil the criteria in the midst of a fight with armed police, Mikel wraps himself in the Basque flag and stands

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his ground in a way that brings to mind Saint Sebastian, the Christian martyr, which is also the name of the town of San Sebastian in the CAE. Place, person and cause are thereby united in all-purpose symbolism. Saint Sebastian was tied to a tree and shot with arrows: Mikel becomes Saint/San Sebastian by binding himself in the Basque flag and facing tear gas, though his martyrdom is ironic because he embodies the cause that rejects him. His sacrifice subverts the martyrdom of ETA because it foregrounds the homo-eroticism with which the saint is commonly depicted in paintings such as those by Andrea Mantegna (1480) and El Greco (1578) and films such as Sebastiane (Derek Jarman, 1976), thereby targeting the prejudice, intolerance and exclusifying ethos of such radicalism. In addition, Mikel also embodies the dual symbolism of Saint Sebastian, who is said to have been martyred twice because he survived the arrows to be later clubbed to death on the orders of the same Roman emperor. Firstly, Mikel is a martyr to the cause of civil rights because he is excluded from the Basque community of citizens on account of his homosexuality and killed by his mother who enacts the judgement of this community. Secondly, in death he is reclaimed by that same community, which proclaims him a martyr to the cause of Basque independence when it manipulates his corpse to protest his murder by the forces of anti-Basque nationalism. Although excluded while alive, Mikel enters into the imagined community upon dying and is relocated at the centre of its ideology. This use of the body as palimpsest points to a cycle of violence in the Basque Country and suggests that one has to enter the realm of the imagined community in order to break the cycle because it is only here that its end might be imagined or reinscribed. A similar fate awaits Antonio (Carmelo G´omez) in D´ıas contados in which the tale of a terrorist falling for a Gypsy-like prostitute named Charo (Ruth Gabriel) is bound up in the myth of Carmen, another martyr to Spanish chauvinism, racism and prejudice. This recourse to universally recognized iconography, whether it be religious, classical or literary, is noted by Gabilondo, who argues that ‘Basque cinematic violence follows an uncanny pattern that defies representation; that is, Basque cinema does not represent violence but rather performs the violence of the process whereby its identity is represented as other.’47 This ‘othering’ is indicated by a ‘representational wink’48 in D´ıas contados that occurs when Antonio in his guise as photo journalist takes shots of buskers performing a version of the opera as a cover for casing the Madrid police station behind them. Thereafter, the film uses Charo/Carmen to build equivalency between M´erim´ee and Bizet’s Don Jos´e being a Basque soldier and Antonio being an ETA terrorist: a Basque ‘soldier’ for the extremist nationalist cause. D´ıas contados relocates Carmen from Andalucia to a sordid, drug-addled, twilit Madrid and ‘restores the original narrative of a fatal romance between the two Spanish ethnicities that [for M´erim´ee] were the most exotic: Basques and Gypsies.’49 However, as previously examined, although the generic trappings of this stylish urban thriller disguise its politics, the film still contains longeurs that may be interpreted as Deleuzian time-images which elicit

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empathetic and erotic contemplation of Basque and Gypsy bodies and thus have the potential to incite a sympathetic acceptance of Antonio’s cause.50 Indeed, this fatal exoticism also informs a tragedy of exclusion because Charo is triply marginalized as Gypsy, junkie and whore, while Antonio is repeatedly identified as a reckless maverick ripe for exclusion from the community of citizens by the leadership of ETA, who order his killing. These tensions culminate in the final scene in which the sexually frustrated and furiously hyped-up Antonio sends his explosive-laden car rolling into the police station. His phallic penetration of the hegemonic social and political order should be fodder for the mythic narrative of ETA. Yet in the moment that he releases the car he simultaneously sees the arrested Charo, the true object of his desire, being led into his target. Antonio barrels after the car in slow motion but is unable to stop it crashing through the barrier and so walks martyrlike into the flames that engulf the screen. About to be murdered by his fellow ‘soldiers’, Antonio is ultimately reclaimed in death, dressed in the fiery iconography of martyrdom and ironically relocated at the centre of the cause alongside the similarly incongruous Mikel.

The Biographical Subject Whereas martyrdom for the sake of a faith or the struggle of a minority demands a sacrifice that weighs suffering against unprecedented intimacy with the deity and the means of calling others to the cause, in psychotherapy it denotes a false and flawed personality based on delusions of posthumous sanctification and the conviction that evil is entirely the prerogative of those who can be blamed. Because martyrdom depends upon the exaggeration of victimization and persecution in order to prove rightness and righteousness, a counterweight of biographical veracity that exposes the psychological flaws of the martyr can problematize and undermine idealisation and symbolism. Biographical subjects include Mikel Lejarza, who infiltrated ETA during the final years of the dictatorship and remains an elusive figure, and Mar´ıa Dolores Gonz´alez Katarain, who went from membership of ETA’s executive committee to exile in Mexico and was killed by a distrustful ETA on her return to the Basque Country. Both biographies go by the nicknames of their subjects: El lobo (The Wolf, Miguel Courtois, 2004) and Yoyes (Helena Taberna, 1999) respectively, which suggests a foregrounding of myth. Yoyes admits to the impossibility of ever knowing its subject by presenting a fragmented and elliptical narrative that juxtaposes her ascension within ETA in the 1970s with her attempts at reinsertion in the 1980s. Yoyes (Ana Torrent) moves from Mexico to Paris as a political refugee but her attempt at a PhD is frustrated because Spain’s Ley de Amnist´ıa (Amnesty Law) of 1977 rescinds her refugee status. At the same time, because there is no warrant for her arrest, she is allowed and obliged to apply for academic funding as a Spanish citizen from Spain and so returns to the Basque 102

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Country in 1985 to be with her daughter (in real life, her son) and apply for a grant, but her presence is revealed by the press and she is murdered by ETA in 1986. The film’s ‘immediately noticeable [. . .] feminist tone’51 is wielded by Ann Davies in her critique of the theorizing of Basque cinema by Gabilondo and Mart´ıOlivella in which she contends that home and homeland is ‘a densely gendered concept’.52 Indeed, gender is a crucial factor in Basque nationalism that is too often elided by cultural stereotyping affecting those who do not correspond, conform or aspire to these ideals and are therefore excluded from the community that is a ‘theoretical space defined by the beliefs of the collective’.53 Transposed to the cinema of citizens with its strict criteria for inclusion and exclusion, these stereotypes inform representations of the warring, male gudari and the nurturing, female ama lur, which thereby reinforce those same criteria. Just as Sorenson concludes that realists ‘go wrong because they fail to analyze the “domestic” changes in statehood that have taken place’54 , so Davies advises that in relation to films with female terrorists such as Yoyes, A ciegas (Blinded, Daniel Calparsoro, 1997) and El viaje de Ari´an (Arian’s Journey, Eduard Bosch, 2000), ‘we need to incorporate the multiple and complex forms of exclusion and marginalisation that occur within Basque cinema and its diaspora.’55 Yoyes disturbs traditional gender roles and is trapped in the myth of her own exceptionalism: ‘I’m not just anybody, I’m fucking Yoyes!’ At the same time, her embodiment of the fusion of feminism with Marxism both enhances the fantasy that ETA is engaged in a class war and problematizes the reality of her sharing space with libidinous young men whose hierarchy she upends. Thus, although Yoyes participates in ETA she is excluded from the community of citizens that it envisions because she transgresses rigid gender roles in embodying the paradox of a female gudari. Moreover, in exile she is granted special refugee status that defines her as stateless because she meets the criteria for exclusion from the community that she once sought to construct from within. Consequently, when her refugee status is rescinded and she fails to qualify for the research grant because the criteria includes domiciliation in Spain she falls outside the criteria for both exclusion and inclusion. She returns to the Basque Country hoping to be accepted within a community of sentiment but the community of citizens, where she finds she has ‘to sign more forms’ is too rigid. Immediately after collecting her new photo-ID card she is confronted by a newspaper announcing the scoop of her return with a similar photograph. Yoyes thus posits the radical nationalist ideal of a centripetal Basque community as one of strictly monitored citizens that brings into question the supposed socialism of ETA, while also suggesting the extant fascism in democratic Spain via its depiction of the violent tactics of the GAL. However, Yoyes also opposes this via a complex display of disparate linguistic signifiers of centrifugal sentiment by superimposing a practical network of evolving and functioning languages onto the stagnant dicta of impractical, extremist, exclusionary views. For example, one reason why Yoyes might be excluded from the Basque community of citizens is that she does not

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speak Euskara, although her daughter is pointedly shown to be learning it as a second language. The film also boasts a plethora of characters speaking in rarely subtitled Castilian, French and Euskara as first, second and third languages, as well as the English of diegetic songs on the radio and the heavily-accented Castilian of an American television reporter. It then juxtaposes all this functioning dialogue with the doublespeak of the Spanish and ETA authorities. Thus, although the ideology for inclusion in the community of citizens includes linguistic demarcations, the film undercuts this with its realistic depiction of the necessary interaction of all the different languages and their cultural influences that might feature in a community of sentiment. In the end, Yoyes is killed as she wanders a folk festival that should be a celebration of inclusive sentiment, but is actually one in which Basque song, dance, sports and customs symbolize the exclusive and extant community of citizens instead. The less nuanced El lobo is a linear narrative punctuated by violence and plagued by ill-defined peripheral characters. Caught between the terrorist group that debates the value of violence and kills those who demur, and the security forces for whom the destruction of ETA may be detrimental to the continuation of the totalitarianism that nurtures them, Lejarza (Eduardo Noriega) is a cipher to whom the film struggles to attach any meaning. Neither hero nor martyr, Lejarza lacks both citizenship and sentiment and his identity is erased entirely when he is forced into survivalist anonymity. Similarly lacking resonance is GAL (Miguel Courtois, 2006), which follows journalists investigating the Spanish government’s funding of a hit squad but fumbles the chronology as well as the motives of characters with made-up names and unconvincing accents. Both El Lobo and GAL presuppose a scale of reception that responds to generic conventions that set radical Basques against extremist Spaniards and both films are inadequate in relation to the historical circumstances that they purport to document. However, more importantly, this simplification seems aimed at international audiences wanting entertainment rather than an idea of a domestic audience as a political grouping with specific social and political concerns. It may be that terrorism suits Guy Debord’s society of the spectacle of late capitalism because its threat encourages potential victims to consume, whether it be buying insurance or paying for reassurance via entertainment or the electoral success of a particular political party. At the same time, a fascination with violence emerges from a community that receives the spectacle of terrorist violence as signifier of the actual conflict. Films from the cinema of citizens tend to align their representations of conflict with rigid versions of history, whereas those from the cinema of sentiment subscribe to a more fluid, complex and holistic understanding of memory. Basque cinema thus features the same extant but increasingly irrelevant distinction between history and memory that characterizes Italian cinema in which, as O’Leary describes, ‘history is the institutional or official but certainly written version of the past. It may not completely avoid mythologizing, rhetoric or emotional appeal, but it mitigates

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this by the recourse made to the authority of evidence and documents.’56 On the other hand, O’Leary, advises that memory is ‘the unofficial, “unfootnoted” set of perceptions which can be relied upon to be (or to be in the process of becoming) common knowledge. Much of it will be mythological in content, and it provides the intersubjective ‘glue’ that holds communities (including nations) together.’57 Consequently, just as the ‘official version’ of history is a defining factor in the community of citizens, so memory is the ‘intersubjective glue’ that enables a community of sentiment. However, such memories can not only conflict with but also absorb contradictions between the elements that go into molten Basqueness. Films such as Estado de excepci´on, El proceso de Burgos and Segovia-ko ihesa reduce conflict over the Basque Country to monolithic, didactic and biased retellings that fit within the cinema of citizens because spectators either accord with this view of history or are excluded from its intended audience (the community of citizens). On the other hand, films such as La muerte de Mikel and Yoyes include complex interactions of memory, subjectivity and perception and propagate a community and cinema of sentiment that allows for dialogue, debate and reflection, even grief.

Documenting Grief Grief is such a powerful feeling that one might expect it to be a factor in uniting the community of sentiment, if only demands for justice, mercy, recognition and revenge did not foreground trauma over empathy. Basque cinema has discovered that fiction is largely unable to deal with such complexity and that documentary provides a more appropriate platform for emotional, subjective views. Thus, a battle between documentaries that focus on the victims of the conflict has recently been defined as ‘the genre of Basque tragedy.’58 The portmanteau documentary Barrura begiratzeko leihoak (Windows Looking Inward, Josu Mart´ınez, Txaber Larreategi, Mireia Gabilondo, Enara Goikoetxea & Eneko Olsagasti, 2012) presents five separately authored reflections upon those imprisoned on charges of terrorism and sedition. The film begat controversy when it was rejected for the Zinemira section of the SSFF and subsequently screened at selected venues to invited audiences. It purports to present five fragments of a much larger picture and this pretence of cohesion is established by the film opening on a typically idyllic Basque landscape overlaid with the following text: ‘Between France and Spain, the Basque Country: 3 million inhabitants. One language in common: Basque.’ The assertion of the seven provinces as a geographical unit with a singular linguistic unity is both equivocal and indicative of the rigidity with which the subjects and their documentarists imagine their community. This initial image is then ‘martyred’ by a slow pull back from the landscape to reveal that the camera is separated from it by prison bars, thereby revealing that the Basque Country has been imprisoned, 105

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but, by a flip of subjectivity, that the filmmaking apparatus also aligns itself with the position of its incarcerated subjects on the other side of the same bars. The first episode foregrounds the intra-history of Irati Tobar Eguzkitza, who is jostled between France and the CAE as she both awaits and eludes arrest for being a member of the left-wing youth group SEGI, which was declared an illegal terrorist organization in 2002. This young woman inhabits a self-aware paradox: ‘I’m living a public life without living it. I’m free but I’m not.’ She switches between the Castilian of her alleged torturers and her own plaintive resistance in Euskara as she re-reads and performs her testimony, thereby accentuating her Basque identity within an oppressive Spanish state. Alone in candlelit interiors that suggest sensory deprivation, she claims temporal disorientation – ‘I can’t place my memories in time’ – that is countered by frequent close-ups of her digital alarm clock counting down to her arrest on 24 April 2011. The second episode continues this tension between the fragmenting individual and the unified collective in its focus on Jon Ugarte Zinkunegi, who says of his release from prison in 2003: ‘It was a bucolic feeling that made me whole but which quickly dissipates into fear of dissolution once more: You get out and think “don’t drown”.’ Fragmentation and resistance also typifies the beleaguered and unified community of the third episode featuring Gotzone L´opez de Luzuriaga, whose recurring cancers have allegedly gone without adequate treatment throughout her 29-year sentence for collaboration. Disjunctions accumulate as the unseen prisoner’s voice is heard on excerpts from the 169 tapes of telephone conversations hoarded by her mother and reach an apex in the fourth episode in which not even the voice of Jexux Mari Zalakain Garaikoetxea, a former priest, journalist and professor (all professions requiring verbal skill) is heard. Instead, his ‘terrorism of ideas’ is channelled through several former university colleagues and this erasure is maintained in the final portrait of Mikel Albisu Iriarte (aka. Mikel Antza), the longest-standing leader of ETA, who was arrested in 2004 and sentenced to 20 years in 2010. He carries the ´ blame for the 1997 killing of aforementioned councillor Miguel Angel Blanco that inspired a resounding public backlash against the newly hardline tactics of ETA; yet the episode ignores this. Instead, it considers the literary endeavour of this prisoner by way of signifiers of martyrdom and gathers long, quiet takes evoking his sentence to the extent that audiences without foreknowledge might assume the martyrdom of a revolutionary poet. Although this vagueness is ostensibly the opposite of explicit bias, the fragmentation and erasure in this documentary leaves much in disarray and unsaid. The call for dialogue made by Albisu Iriarte – ‘We have to talk about the ugly things. About the pain. We have to face it. I think the situation that we’re living at the moment demands it’ – assumes an emotional union based upon equivalency between the sentiment on both sides. Yet the lack of any explicit recognition of culpability in his words or in the film means that Barrura begiratzeko leihoak is complicit in weighting degrees of loss and regret to only one side of the conflict.

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Critical responses to the films under discussion often display polarization such as that analysed by Rold´an Larreta in relation to Yoyes and Davies in her study of Ander eta Yul.59 Cautious distributors and exhibitors mean that Barrura begiratzeko leihoak has had no formal release, whereas the documentaries directed by I˜naki Arteta, which provide a structured platform for the testimony of victims of ETA, tend to play festivals and are for sale on DVD. Voces sin libertad (Voices without Freedom, 2004), Trece entre mil (Thirteen out of a Thousand, 2005) and El infierno vasco (The Basque Hell, 2008) offer choral affirmations of trauma by subjects pushed to the front of an argument to win the case with their empirical data and display of the iconography of grief. Photographs of young people in teams or uniform are offered to the camera for its blessing and juxtaposed with photocopies of newspaper articles recalling the violence that haunts the interviewees. In response, the filmmaking apparatus insists upon its sympathy via jerky zooms, canted angles, jump cuts and different speeds that underline and punctuate the testimonies, structuring grief into an agenda. The emphatically empathetic filmmaking co-opts victimhood, equates it with moral innocence and makes mourning exclusive. The audience is either grieving or it is gone. These documentaries make their case via paradox by presenting a multitude of voices that attest to a community dominated by silence. Trece entre mil focuses on 13 victims disinterred in grainy home movies and spectrally embodied via hand-held camera, while El infierno vasco displays a catalogue of those who have had to ‘escape from extortion, social isolation and nationalist impositions.’ The iconography of grief extends to shots of people driving cars filmed in long takes from ‘empty’ passenger seats that reveal both the lack of a loved one and the stand-in ghost of the camera. It also initiates a battle to reclaim the traditionally nationalist iconography of Basque cinema by bracketing many interviews within shots of overcast land and seascapes, suggesting that instead of a majestic landscape worth killing for, this is a land in mourning. Several interviewees from Voces sin libertad reappear in Trece entre mil to reprise their stories and revile the sociedad controlada (controlled society) and its campo de concentraci´on ling¨u´ıstica (linguistic concentration camp). Forced into exile, these Basques have lost their right to vote in the Basque Country and are therefore excluded from the community of citizens; but neither does the community of sentiment console them. There is a loneliness at the centre of the films of Arteta that is not reconciled by the grouping of grieving victims because each one is shown suffering alone. The aesthetics of exclusion are everyday, matter-of-fact and anonymous, presenting an endless queue of people both waiting to be heard and tired of repeating themselves.

All or Nothing More films dealing in conflict over Basque nationhood than can be covered in this chapter are examined by Santiago de Pablo.60 This survey concludes with the all or nothing comparison of one film of union – La pelota vasca: la piel contra la piedra 107

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(Basque Ball, Julio Medem, 2004) – and one of estrangement – Tiro en la cabeza (Bullet in the Head, Jaime Rosales, 2008). Following several oneiric films that revealed a troubled relationship with both reality and the Basque Country, Medem began pre-production for an as yet unrealized film called Aitor that juxtaposed incidents of torture in various eras of the modern Basque Country in the service of a myth-inflected meditation on the legacy and transcendence of suffering. Having grown up in Madrid, this San Sebastian-born filmmaker embarked upon a reacquaintance with the Basque Country via interviews with those who could inform his view of the conflict and a documentary project emerged. Looking to structure a dialogue from over 100 separate interviewees, Medem mapped associations according to approximate symmetry ranging from extremists on both sides to opposing politicians and an array of cultural commentators. The film mostly maintains equidistance from all sides, which is symbolized by a birds-eye shot flying through a gorge. The refusal of both ETA and the democratically-elected Partido Popular to participate also suggests a problematic symmetry of absence, however, and the balance collapses when the film attempts to match the pain of victims on both sides and thus appears to weigh up the worth of the dead. The widow of a victim of ETA, for example, is juxtaposed with the wife of a convicted terrorist on the long bus journey to visit her husband in prison; but bereavement and grief are not equivalent to estrangement and resignation. La pelota vasca also incriminates Basque cinema in the prolongation of the conflict by illustrating its adherence to the Romantic iconography of Basque nationalism (Guernica, crashing waves, lush landscapes) and interspersing factual and fictional excerpts from documentaries, newsreel and feature films, thereby presenting something akin to a mash-up of the history and cinema of the Basque Country that challenges an audience to differentiate between being ruled or fooled by, or being active and engaged in, the construction of an imagined community. Finally, following the polyphony of competing subjectivities in La pelota vasca, there is the silence and objectivity of Tiro en la cabeza, which comes from outside Basque cinema. The film is an observational essay without audible dialogue, rather like a wildlife documentary without commentary, that tracks the trajectory of a man in long shots of lengthy duration and it approximates the form of temporal sculpture rendered in time-images. This is not a psychological portrait: the motiveless figure remains undefined as victim or executioner until the penultimate scene of the film. Instead, the film layers everyday routine to the extent that its lack of action, direction, dialogue and depth could be dismissed as elitist, mannerist and minimalist, if only the intensity of its tedium were not deliberately uncanny. Conflict in, over and between Basque communities perhaps demands a new way of seeing that Basque cinema has failed to provide. However, without betraying the flatness of the screen, this film aims for cubistic three-dimensionality in the sense of an ongoing present that is both fluid and permanently pending the inevitable shot to the head. Paradoxical to a point, the final killing in this intense/boring

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film is senseless and therein lies its meaning. With the accumulative, nondescript killings in Northern Ireland of Elephant (Alan Clarke, 1989) and its relocation to a Columbine-like high school in Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003) as evident predecessors, Tiro en la cabeza ends in the dreary car park of a French motorway service station, where the ideology that incites the unexplained killing is signified as pointless too. The film’s vacancy thus indicates all that is missing from conflict in the Basque Country: dialogue, progress and closure. It also approximates a new film language that appears experimental but is recycled; for this silent, observational feature recalls the origins of cinema in 1895, the same year that Sabino Arana came up with his nationalist rhetoric, and invites its audience to start again. Violence in Basque cinema can be a kind of exorcism that cleanses the past of ambiguity, clarifies present-day choices and justifies measures aimed at shaping a particular future. However, the positioning of a target audience in relation to this violence as a cultural-political community includes its politicization and presupposes its dissemination of a film’s ideas. An equivalency of radical Basque nationalism is commonly identified in the anti-Basque nationalism of the Spanish state, but in the territory of Basque cinema, where the focus is tightened and concerns over Spanish national cinema are set aside, the significance of this violence is even more paramount. This is because the uncanny is not fixed in such a process but subject to shifting patterns of what is familiar. Gabilondo concludes that there is a ‘kind of reductiveness [that] “others” this violence by implying that it is “only Basque” and not something affecting and implicating the entire Spanish state.’61 However, if one replaces the context of the Spanish state with that of the Basque community (and excludes the GAL), then the violence changes to one in which its ‘othering’ is no longer possible because all sides of the conflict are Basque. Ander, Mikel, Yoyes and Txomin are killed by kith or kin and the ‘last man standing’ of Antonio in D´ıas contados takes the Basque Cain motif to its logical conclusion by killing himself. Nevertheless, the release of a Basque cinema of sentiment from the rigid confines of a Basque cinema of citizens may yet be indicated by changes in what is considered to be uncanny because, in an ongoing process of becoming, the uncanny becomes not the eruption of violence but the maintenance of peace. This chapter is not yet finished.

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6 Elastic Basqueness: The Second Basque Wave Albert Schweitzer’s assertion that ‘the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean’ extends to the cinema too, wherein waves of creativity never signify a break with the past but a surge of energy that furthers evolution.1 There are three waves of Basque cinema in which the sentiment of Basqueness is not an unchangeable quantity of objective criteria but a mercurial quality subject to both passion and disaffection. The transition to democracy gave rise to a cinema that would aid in nation-building and resulted in the first Basque wave of the early 1980s. This was partly funded by the Comunidad Aut´onoma de Euskadi (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, hereafter CAE), which expected a responsive and contributary Basque cinema of citizens, but its impact suffered from changes of government, economic reforms, filmmakers’ dissent and the waning of public interest. At the same time, the surge in independent production companies in Spain led by Sogetel (later Sogecine) signalled more competitive domestic and foreign markets characterized by patchwork coproduction agreements, transnational distribution partnerships, aggressive claims on European funding, and the investment of commercial television networks, which competed for broadcast licenses armed with promises of re-investment in the Spanish audiovisual sector. The second Basque wave of the early 1990s was a transitional cinema between that of citizens and sentiment, no longer coloured by Francoism nor even Basque nationalism. Its practical ambitions extended beyond a national cinema to target a global market, where the idiosyncrasies of exportable regionalism might be valued on the festival and art house circuit and anonymous genre films could serve multiplex and home viewing audiences. There remained the question of this second wave’s political positioning that the filmmakers themselves, in performing and being consumed by their roles as auteurs, would have to defend or dodge; but whereas the creative autonomy of auteurism 110

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under Francoism had been championed as a riposte to authoritarianism, that of ´ Julio Medem, Enrique Urbizu, Alex de la Iglesia, Juanma Bajo Ulloa and Daniel Calparsoro was subject to branding and ‘the commerce of auteurism’ instead.2 Their generation was cine-literate, having grown up with home video and thus having access to films in a way that the earlier generation had not, while the transition to Spanish democracy and a degree of Basque autonomy had provided a context for creative endeavour that would encounter global production and distribution opportunities. The films these five directed and mostly wrote are not the sum of Basque cinema of the 1990s but they are commonly perceived as its substance. Moreover, as shall be seen, their Basqueness in relation to the cinema of citizens they left behind and the cinema of sentiment that they were becoming was so elastic that it could stretch a long way before rebounding.

Auteurism Unbound Dissident Spanish filmmakers during the dictatorship had seen their creativity associated with theories of auteurism that emerged from France in the 1960s, applauding directors who could be deemed to have realized a unique artistic vision within the system in which they were embedded. This usually meant the production lines of entertainment factories like Hollywood; but in Spain the state’s control of Spanish culture fulfilled ‘a double and quite contradictory function: on the one hand, it intensified the prevention against a growing cultural opposition; on the other, it promoted a more “liberal” image of Spain abroad [meaning] authorial film practices in Spain assumed a dialectical position vis-`a-vis the national film system.’3 Ironically, therefore, films directed by Luis Garc´ıa Berlanga, Juan Antonio Bardem, Carlos Saura and V´ıctor Erice, amongst others, were able to critique Spanish society via a metaphorical discourse that allowed the dictatorship to use them as evidence in support of its claims to be tolerant of artists and open in support of their individual creativity. In the Basque Country, meanwhile, Jorge Oteiza’s 1963 essay-manifesto and ETA’s 1964 letter to intellectuals had called forth artistic works based on collective endeavour such as the crowdfunded, ethnographic film collage Ama Lur (Motherland, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1968), which epitomized collaborative resistance to Francoism but, nevertheless, allowed the regime to signal to the wider world its acceptance of regional expression. The creative autonomy of individual Spanish filmmakers, however, was distinct from the likes of Ama Lur because the alignment of radical Basque nationalism with Socialism engendered collaborative enterprises that served and represented the imagined Basque community of citizens. Indeed, this difference partly accounts for the indistinct relationship of Erice with Basque cinema, for his El esp´ıritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973) resembles an auteurist vision rather than the collectivized responses of Ama Lur and the Ikuska series of documentaries that extended this practice into democracy. By the 1980s, moreover, Basque films that 111

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suggested directorial folly such as La conquista de Albania (The Conquest of Albania, Alfonso Ungr´ıa, 1984) still suffered disdain for individualism. At the same time, filmmakers who resisted subordination to a Basque cinema of citizens continued to leave for Madrid, as is the case of Iv´an Zulueta, whose Arrebato (Rapture, 1980), a drug-induced and film-fuelled fever, would become a touchstone for underground and avant-garde filmmakers associated with la movida madrile˜na and be reclaimed as a cult film by Basque filmmakers of the third wave who identified with the inspirational survivalism of its no-budget alternativity. Basque filmmakers of the second wave could not claim citizenship forged under Francoist repression nor any sentiment of collective self-determination, but the coincidence of their debut films in the period 1990–95 suggested a correlation between independence and creative autonomy. Their work still invited reductionist analysis from the media that sought their unity in the presumption of common experiences of nationalism, exile, terrorism, post-industrial malaise and everyday violence, meaning that this new semiology signified the experience of contemporary Basqueness within a still-rigid context of citizenship. However, it also reflected the commodification of Basqueness in cultural events and practices geared towards tourism and commerce as much as political ends. Moreover, whereas Gramscian ideals might have identified a need to develop an intellectual filmmaking culture amongst the working class, the supposition of a privileged cultural hegemony fuelled by capitalism prompted the notion of this new wave as a construct that could be expected to hold a worldview governing individualized perceptions of life in the Basque community. Consequently, in this post-Franco, pre-digital Spain, filmmaking seemed a privileged undertaking that prompted auteurist readings of works tied to the social function of intellectuals. This approach was corroborated by the media-facing profiles of filmmakers that could be categorized in terms of gender or regionalism, for example, as is the case with female filmmakers4 and the directors most associated with the second Basque wave. Ana D´ıez, Helena Taberna and Arantxa Lazcano are female Basque filmmakers who could be included in both camps, but the mediatic grouping of Medem, Bajo Ulloa, Calparsoro, de la Iglesia and Urbizu was so hermetic that this study must contend with the perception of Basque cinema in the 1990s. This was biased and chauvinistic, informed by theories and popular notions of auteurism that confirm the process described by Timothy Corrigan by which ‘the practice of the auteur as a particular brand of social agency initiates its revision of its relation with film audiences in the contemporary status of the auteur as star.’5 For example, Carlos F. Heredero’s monumental 780 page Espejo de Miradas: Entrevistas con Nuevos Directores del Cine Espa˜nol de los A˜nos Noventa (Interviews with New Spanish Directors of the 1990s, 1997) does not include D´ıez, Taberna or Lazcano. Despite directing the key Basque films Ander eta Yul (Ander and Yul, 1988) and Yoyes (2000), the careers of D´ıez and Taberna, respectively, lack the prolificity of their male counterparts, while Lazcano only directed Urte ilunak (The Dark Years, 1992); but

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the consequences of a phallocentric bias to auteurist criticism are also a factor in this slight. Heredero dedicates a third of his 15 interviews to the aforementioned males, whose profiles were so common in the specialist and popular press that their media presence was becoming ‘situated along an extratextual path in which their commercial status as auteurs is their chief function as auteurs.’6 All were posed and portrayed as celebrity-auteurs: Medem was handsome and thoughtful, Calparsoro was the ex-punk turned cinephile, Bajo Ulloa was boyish but troubled, Urbizu was literate and career-minded and de la Iglesia was nerdy and enthusiastic. All were posed and portrayed as celebrity-auteurs, which demanded that their personal lives, experiences and beliefs were displayed in the ‘commercial dramatization of self as the motivating agent of textuality’7 ; so of course their Basqueness was a thing. However, grouping these five filmmakers together by their Basqueness not only elided their estrangement from traditions of Basque filmmaking and erased discrepancies in the criteria for inclusion, but also ignored associations with their non-Basque contemporaries in terms of genre, sensibility and style. A concern with female subjectivity could connect Medem, Calparsoro and Bajo Ulloa with Iciar Bolla´ın, Pedro Almod´ovar, Arantxa Lazcano and Helena Taberna, for example, but Vacas (Cows, Julio Medem, 1992), Salto al vac´ıo (Jump into The Void, Daniel Calparsoro, 1995) and Alas de mariposa (Butterfly Wings, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, 1991) were largely perceived as auteurist works that illustrated new attitudes towards Basqueness. The second wave of Basque cinema was thus a construct, forged not by theories of auteurism but because of ideas of auteurism. Nevertheless, whereas the post-dictatorship movida in Madrid had posited self-determination in the arts, music and personal expression as emblematic of the new liberalism, the second Basque wave was a party announced as the guests of honour were leaving. Bajo Ulloa described a neutral upbringing and no interest in politics, Urbizu called his Basque heritage ‘a ball and chain’ and rejected films that spoke of Basque problems, Calparsoro denied any influence or authority of nationalism and Medem assumed the role of spokesperson by declaring ‘we are filmmakers because we want to make films, not for any militant or political cause.’8 Meanwhile, according to Peter Buse, Nuria Triana-Toribio and Andy Willis, ‘investigating the Basqueness of [de la Iglesia’s] cinema is not a very fruitful line of enquiry, for there is very little material to go on.’9 Barry Jordan and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas understated their case when they read this ‘burgeoning trend in Basque cinema [as] somewhat misleading [because] while Basque in origin, most Basque directors tend to live and work outside the region’10 for the simple reason that ‘a film industry capable of housing all these talents that emerged periodically on Basque soil had not yet been developed in the Basque Country.’11 It is therefore ironic that, as Joxean Fern´andez observes, Basque cinema should have become so visible at a time when it was dismissed by its most representative filmmakers. That said, it would be an exaggeration to claim that Basque cinema of the 1990s suffered auto-erasure, that is ‘the notion that filmmakers in small nations may

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deliberately erase the nation from films in order to appeal to audiences globally’ in the manner of Uruguay as described by David Martin-Jones and Mar´ıa Soledad Mont´an˜ ez, because this would have required the very congruence amongst the filmmakers that they denied.12 However, because subsidies could account for only a small part of the financing for these films, they were not ‘owned’ by the Basque government and therefore not indebted to its community of citizens or obliged to constitute its cinema. Thus, common signifiers of Basque cinema, such as language, government funding, location shooting and the nationality of cast and crew lost their privileges as signifiers. But neither was the Basqueness of these films negligible. Several take the Basque Country as their subject and, however critical their perspective, they could still be claimed as Basque by marketing and by those with nationalist ideals or ambitions akin to Francoism’s re-centring of dissident cinema as an example of dialogue and tolerance. What is important to note, however, is that this generation embraced knowledge of, and communication with other communities of sentiment via music, comic books, philosophy, new media and films that made them more likely to empathize with the immediate and extroverted creative response to political disillusionment by their Austinite contemporaries in Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1991), for example, or the urban tensions caused by economic neglect in the Parisian banlieue of La Haine (Hate, Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) than with their forebears in an introverted Basque cinema.

Breaking Through Deeming this second wave ‘a golden age for the cinema of Euskadi’ suggested that the breakthrough films of Bajo Ulloa, Urbizu, Medem, Calparsoro and de la Iglesia could be arranged to resemble a resurgent Basque cinema of citizens.13 None were filmed in Euskara, but themes of lost innocence, female subjectivity and volatile claustrophobia common to Alas de mariposa, Todo por la pasta (Everything for the Bread, Enrique Urbizu, 1991), Vacas and Salto al vac´ıo could be linked to previous ´ examples of Basque cinema. Acci´on mutante (Mutant Action, Alex de la Iglesia, 1993), on the other hand, is a raucous generic mash-up of science-fiction, gorefilm, western and black comedy that seems to be the least Basque film in Basque cinema, corroborating the view that ‘if one wants to find the “Basque” themes and concerns in de la Iglesia, one is forced to find them expressed indirectly, in displaced or coded forms.’14 Acci´on mutante is light years away from the Basque Country and the ‘respectable’ Spanish cinema of literary adaptation, heritage films and Social Realism too, although its frenetic plot, extravagant caricatures and grand guignol stylings do suggest a debt to the films of Luis Garc´ıa Berlanga and Marco Ferreri that is best collected by contemporary graphic novels. Nevertheless, when the intergalactic terrorist group of Acci´on Mutante wage a campaign of violence, kidnapping and extortion against Spain’s privileged, right-wing ‘beautiful’ people and disguise themselves as Basques to avoid detection by the space police, there is 114

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more here than merely ‘ironic detachment.’15 In fact, at this point the film displays a self-aware testing of the elasticity of Basqueness, stretching deep into outer space to a point where references to ETA might be meaningless, where the criteria for claiming Acci´on mutante for a Basque cinema of citizens is reduced to the far away and long ago birthplace of its director. Elastic Basqueness is thus what we shall call this distancing that remains subject to tension. Elastic Basqueness can appear opportunistic, stretching to reach funding opportunities and audiences elsewhere and contracting when such possibilities are found in the Basque Country. Elasticity may also be perceived in thematic and aesthetic concerns marking differences from conventions and discrepancies with the criteria for inclusion in the Basque cinema of citizens. The second Basque wave is thus characterized by an elasticity that stretches between the cinema of citizens of the first wave and the cinema of sentiment of the third wave, which is associated with the Kimuak initiative and is analysed in Chapter Seven. Consequently, scanning the second wave for signifiers of Basqueness and totting up their occurrence misses the point of the Basque cinema of sentiment that it was becoming, one that would be fluid, empathetic and inclusive, at home in the post-national order theorised by Arjun Appadurai, who argues that identity and identification with a nation state endure reinterpretation through a multiplicity of affiliations in a period of flux characterized by the economic migration of people and the mobile anchorage of electronic media.16 This risks an ephemeral sense of identity, but it corresponds to a sentiment of uncertainty and displacement that figures in many parts of the world, including those where Basques are found and feel connected. What the second wave revealed was that Basqueness was no longer defined by an imposed, centripetal and introverted rationality. Instead, it was a sentiment fuelled by extroversion and recharged by contact with other communities that did not necessarily cause it to lose or abandon Basqueness. Looking away from the Basque Country could render coherence fragile, but it also exuded a longing for a new coherence that was realized not by a return to the rigid criteria of citizenship but by reaching out to elsewheres through cultural expressions such as design, music, performance and the composite art of film. Rather than the deterioration or disappearance of Basque cinema, therefore, the second wave resulted in a more fluid, sentiment-based articulation of Basqueness that moved beyond the definition of the Basque people (that was held by the Basques themselves and others) as sharing in exclusive legal, political, social and economic rights and obligations in exchange for supporting (and being supported by) an idea of itself as a subject with a unique historical, cultural and even linguistic identity. Instead, the second wave moved towards a cinema of sentiment, based upon relations between a group defined by a common language (in this case, film) and the cultural and historical identity based on myths, symbols, music, art and assorted iconography that, as is the case with Acci´on mutante, could now be drawn from new media, comic books, roleplaying games, punk, Star Wars, heavy metal, Manga, anime, spaghetti westerns

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and much else besides. This was not the dissolution of Basque cinema in a molten pot of universal influences and its post-modern slurry, but the realization of the creative and emancipatory potential of Basque filmmakers in relation to a more universal cinema that could exist beyond the nation state and ultimately beyond citizenship, one in which identity was no longer apportioned or rescinded but eternally malleable. The Basqueness of Acci´on mutante is not interesting; what is interesting is the new world that surrounds it. By contrast, Vacas was all about the chaos within Basqueness, for the film’s cyclical narrative illustrates how a community with a collective identity was divided by repulsive forces at its core. The film explores a sentiment of Basqueness in relation to the bindings of citizenship, subverting the rigid, romantic idyll that is central to the iconography of Basque nationalism via surrealist eruptions through fissures in reality that disrupt linear temporality. Extreme close-ups of the irises of eyes and zooms through camera apertures are but two examples of a circular motif that results in the same actors playing successive generations through cyclical periods of conflict extending from the Carlist war of 1875 to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. When Manuel Irigibel (Carmelo G´omez) escapes the cartload of corpses in which he hides by slipping out and dropping naked and bloodied to the ground in a horrific, Goya-esque parody of childbirth, he is met not by the loving gaze of a mother but by the indifferent one of a cow, which symbolizes a weary female subjectivity on all the repetitive phallocentric violence. The gaze is nonetheless locked between them and the slow zoom and buzzing sound into the fly-infested eye of the cow leads to the next chapter, where male violence will once again be visited on the motherland, with another war in the forest and the diseased cow having her legs chopped off by the now aged and deranged Manuel (Txema Blasco). As Jo Evans describes, the way that the Basque Country destroys its own people via civil war, incest and inherited grudges reveals it as an eternal combustion engine engaged in ‘a process of neurotic repetition.’17 Excepting El esp´ıritu de la colmena, whose essential Basqueness is too often subsumed within surveys of Spanish cinema, Vacas is the most well known, taught and studied example of Basque cinema.18 Bazt´an (I˜naki Elizalde, 2012) duly takes it as its post-modern subject, although Vacas already embodies and interrogates that which Joseba Gabilondo defines as Basque cinema’s ‘uncanny questioning of its own identity and existence’ by treating a traumatic history with psychoanalysis that uncovers unresolved tensions.19 The film plays with subjective camerawork and Freudian symbolism and combines the two by adopting the viewpoint of cows, who tend to look upon humans with the impassive gaze of a psychiatrist, whose bovine attempt at disentangling sentiment and citizenship contrasts periods of war with the potential for violence in times of peace and concludes that a psychosomatic disorder causes the Basque people to seek out competition and welcome conflict. It situates Basque identity within systems of colonial administration shored up by civil wars and plots any movement towards

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independence with irony because one brutal hegemony always replaces another, whether Carlist, Republican, Francoist or Basque nationalist. And because escape is only possible in fantasy or madness, so Vacas provides an allegorical critique of the community that is thereby imagined by Basque nationalism. The only other means of escape is the Irigibel family trait of cowardice that saves Manuel (Carmelo G´omez), who fakes death on the battlefield, his son Ignacio (G´omez again), who flees to America, and the illegitimate grandson Peru (also G´omez), who is dismissed as unthreatening by Francoist soldiers because of his abject terror. In decoupling history and myth, Vacas reveals a twisted umbilical cord tying romantic fantasies to Basque nationalism that is a prototype of elastic Basqueness, exposing the wish to avoid suffocating traditions as well as the desideratum of reconciliation with the community left behind. Shorn of a scripted but unfilmed epilogue set in Brazil, Vacas concludes with the self-serving mobilisation of sentiment away from a wartorn Basque Country, which takes place in response to invading forces and in spite of the organization of resistance, as symbolised by Peru and Cristina (Emma Su´arez) leaving a cursed rather than enchanted forest.20 The conclusion therefore resembles a perverse Basque fairy-tale, while simultaneously undermining the potency of such folklore by illustrating how elastic Basqueness looks beyond the small, authoritarian project of Basque nationalism towards opportunities elsewhere. Vacas is also revisionist because it dares to diagnose the Basque Country as consumed from within. It illustrates sustained domestic conflict as evidence of this and it identifies radical Basque nationalism as a cause that validates several sources of violent threat to ordinary people. However, it offers no political resolution for this problem beyond a blast of intense therapy on a violent Basque cinema with obsessive compulsive disorder about its own iconography, thereby subverting the complacent romanticism of traditional semiology via recourse to the subconscious. When the aged Manuel arranges his family and livestock in front of his baserri (farmhouse) for a photograph, for example, it is ‘taken’ by an unloaded camera standing alone, thereby questioning the authorship of such imagery and, indeed, the responsibility of Basque cinema in representing Basque history. Vacas essays the diversity of sentiment in relation to the Basque Country that may be extrapolated from its iconography in such scenes as this and the aizkolari (woodsman) behind the opening credits, whose masculinity is applauded by the cinematic language of rapid editing of shots from various angles, which favours display over the merely ontic, but whose chopping of a vaginal V-shape into the log on which he is standing equates violence against the motherland with that against women. However, it also identifies these sentiments less with political consciousness and more in accordance with a Sorge (a concern or care) as essayed by Martin Heidegger, who defined it as a sentient condition, where a mood that arises from beingin-the-world assails the beholder.21 In its mix of Romanticism with Surrealism, Vacas acknowledges that a community and cinema of citizens obliged to respect Basque nationalism will oppose a community and cinema of sentiment prone

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to irony. Nevertheless, it also posits a way forward by projecting its characters into an as yet unrealised but possible future in which Basque cinema might be able to look back and consider this history of internal conflict with impartiality and impunity. For budgetary reasons Vacas was filmed without direct sound, then dubbed in post-production by foley and actors. Disjunctions are noticeable at times, which gave rise to an erroneous assumption by some critics and audiences that it had been shot in Euskara and then dubbed into Castilian. However, Euskara was inessential to the identity of the second wave, which would not depend upon a domestic Basque audience and its smaller Euskara-speaking component for survival. Although Sorenson asserts that ‘the “sentiment” and the “citizenship” components are woven together [with] emotional attachment to the nation [and] highly stimulated by the reward of citizenship rights’, rights to government funding, partisan critical support, favourable screen quotas and guaranteed distribution had been all but eradicated by the time of the second wave.22 This accorded with the view expressed by Hugo Radice that ‘the capitalist world economy is now so thoroughly integrated across national boundaries that an autonomous national economic strategy is no longer possible.’23 Consequently, as filmmakers moved away from the Basque Country in search of opportunities, their distance from the homeland entailed estrangement from citizenship, compromise and commitment, thereby allowing Euskara to be jettisoned. Critical, ironic and even bitter portraits of the contemporary Basque Country now appeared in films such as Alas de mariposa. When Bajo Ulloa received the Goya for best short film for El reino de V´ıctor (The Kingdom of Victor) in 1989, his curt thanks – eskerrik asko – in Euskara had promised a role for the Basque language, but, as for Medem and de la Iglesia, his debut feature was also in Castilian with a non-Basque star. Nevertheless, Alas de mariposa appears to retain the traditional themes and iconography of Basque cinema by adopting the wide-eyed female child of El esp´ıritu de la colmena as protagonist, extending the potential for cruelty of Ana (Ana Torrent) in the film directed by Erice towards the capacity for murder of Bajo Ulloa’s infant Ami (Laura Vaquero). Ami’s parents long for a boy, whose birth leads to the neglect of Ami, who kills her baby brother as a way of regaining the love of her mother, who is traumatized instead. The film thus takes a character already weighted with symbolism in relation to Basque cinema, but instead of reflecting upon her innocence it illustrates her ignorance of responsibility for violence. Analysis that locks the film into the Basque cinema of citizens is simple: being born in the Basque Country has made this fratricidal child capable of killing her own sibling in the hope of reclaiming her mother(land) but she is unable to restore unity through violence and suffers increasing marginalization. Such an allegorical reading invokes a heritage of Basque auteurism, which is underlined by the scene of schoolgirls reading poetry aloud to a day-dreaming teacher that references El esp´ıritu de la colmena. However, the mix of nightmare with melodrama is also contemporary. The recital equates such

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learning by rote and reading without understanding with the retrograde status of the female, which is also emphasized by the medieval-sounding score and the dominant chiaroscuro. However, the film also reveals how the phallocentric familial and social order, which is represented by the demands of the grandfather (Txema Blasco) for a male grandchild to carry on his name, depends upon a matriarchal infrastructure to sustain it. Thus the actions of Ami are transgressive because they move beyond the film’s gothic stylings and the customary symbolism of butterflies in relation to metamorphosis in order to oppose social and familial hierarchies in a way that emphasizes the contemporary experience of simultaneous estrangement from and entrapment within the traditional Basque community of citizens. The film inverts stereotypes too: Ami’s father (Tito Valverde) is a gentle and conciliatory servant of the family’s well-being, indifferent to the sex of his progeny, while her mother (Silvia Munt) is the one who initiates sex for procreation and excludes her daughter from learning the maternal role when Ami observes her breastfeeding. The unclear sympathies of this urban fairy tale are indicated by the camera being mostly at chest-height, looking slightly down on children and slightly up at adults, which blurs the focus between the distressed child and her disturbed mother. Emphatic tracking shots punch against the constrictive framing but the film ends with the three main characters resigned to their imprisonment: the paralyzed father physically, the traumatised mother mentally, and their now-grown daughter accepting the pregnancy resulting from a rape that condemns her to the ironically cyclical maternal role of caring for both the mother who rejected her and her own unwanted child. The butterfly here is no longer a symbol of metamorphosis, but reinscribed as a worm in fancy dress, thereby evoking juxtapositions of disgust and beauty, secrecy and display, the burden of heritage and fleeting moments of fantasy. Because Ami is neither worm nor butterfly, Alas de mariposa embodies what Sorenson describes as a ‘dynamic picture of a contested identity always being debated.’24 The tropes of fairy tales remain, however, and signal the universality of this theme. Salto al vac´ıo relocated the traumatized girl to young adulthood on a garbage dump on the outskirts of Bilbao, where her equidistant androgyny is, like Ami’s, both refuge and disguise. The emphasis on the landscape as signifier of identity ´ in Basque cinema is updated with this setting of urban decay through which Alex (Najwa Nimri) wades, resembling Tasio above his charcoal oven in his eponymous film; but the Arcadian settings of that film are buried deep in the smouldering detritus of the modern Basque Country. In addition, the long takes of Tasio (Montxo Armend´ariz, 1984) that suggest naturalism are broken here by jump cuts ´ that express Alex’s fragmenting psyche and opportunistic survivalism amidst the unnatural post-industrial decay that dismisses the rural–urban axiom of nationalist ideology that informs the semiology of Basque cinema, where rugged hills and crashing waves representing innate purity oppose the smoking factories and slums maintained by outsiders. Here even the metamorphosis of the countryside into

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the modern city has stalled in a landscape of anonymous, universal decomposition. Indeed, the film resists specificity, Calparsoro having ‘argued that the violence of ´ point of origin is the rhetoric of the film could occur anywhere.’25 While Alex’s the Basque community of citizens, she is ‘othered’ from its new prosperity and rendered void, a word she has shaved into the back of her head as if branded by a society that consigns her to a global community of sentiment defined by economic sedimentation. Nimri’s shaved head and large eyes also bring to mind Maria Falconetti in La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor ´ Dreyer, 1928), which enhances the depiction of Alex as martyred by capitalism. The post-industrial squalor of a pre-Guggenheim Bilbao is also exploited in Todo por la pasta, which exaggerates and effects a contrast with the influence on Basque cinema of American movies, besting the feminism of that same year’s Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991), for example, by having its hunted but gutsy female duo of Azucena (Mar´ıa Barranco) and Ver´onica (Kiti Manver) survive. The ´ environment of Alex, Azucena and Ver´onica is unmappable within the narrow terms of Basque nationalism that renders the female role invisible in its cinematic narrative of nationhood, but also foreign to the conventions of male-centred ‘Hollywood’ genres, meaning they must seek connections with similar sentiment elsewhere. Hence the use of punk music in Salto al vac´ıo and the kind of associated slang, attitude and violence that leads Rodr´ıguez to analyse its punkish ‘do-ityourself aesthetics [and] spatial and visual configuration marked by degradation and decay [that are] related to an intention to place this film as a critical alternative to Hollywood narratives.’26 Hence too, the setting of key scenes of Todo por la pasta in a porno cinema by which this modern noir clues audiences into its satire of phallocentric hegemonies in relation to cinema that is heightened by a deliberately absurdist deployment of the exploitationist motif of crash zooms. Both Salto al vac´ıo and Todo por la pasta provide alternatives, even affronts to traditions of Basque cinema and their association with Basque nationalism, but they do not subscribe to the dogma of Hollywood instead. Their sentiment of estrangement from society and politics within the Basque Country as well as their rejection of the panacea of American culture points to a transformative potential and consequent displacement to the extent that Basque cinema might be classified as a ‘European’ cinema above the component nation state to which it is nevertheless bound by elastic Basqueness. Sorenson writes of the parallel alienation of many Europeans in their constituent homelands that ‘this may not look dramatic, but EU rights indicate a break-up of the close links between statehood and citizenship [because] national citizenship is in the process of being replaced by a “postnational membership” based on universal human rights.’27 This does not elide the continuance of communities of citizens or their importance, but it does limit their influence to their point of origin, where their criteria for exclusion and inclusion is so rigid as to often literally be law, and where, as Nancy Berthier and Jean-Claude Seguin maintain, ‘the adoption of criteria for

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determining the “nationality” of a film implies to some extent an ideological posture.’28 At the same time, however, this process of distancing while remaining anchored suggests that membership of a community of sentiment beyond the nation state ensures a greater context of empathy, interaction and resonance where ‘interconnections, mixtures and porosities encourage and sustain doubts about any limited, narrow, centripetal concept of the “nation”.’29 This theorizing enables the mapping of the three waves of post-dictatorship Basque cinema along the lines of the national, the transnational and the post-national, respectively. Each met challenges that demanded a rethinking of collectivity and a redefinition of balance. Each negotiated citizenship and explored sentiment, gradually moving towards greater liberty from what might be delineated as Basque themes, subjects and aesthetics, while simultaneously risking anonymity in global markets and ‘foreign’ genres. Consequently, theories of a cinema of citizens and a cinema of sentiment coincide with Jean-Claude Seguin that ‘in an established nation, identity is a given, in a nation that has yet to be established, identity is a constant quest.’30 The second wave of Basque filmmakers was indeed transnational as it moved beyond the Basque Country to enter a much greater context; but it was also temporal, occurring between the community and cinema of citizens that had defined the previous generation and the community and cinema of sentiment that would describe the next.

Breaking Away Unlike exile, which is a break with the homeland, the elasticity exhibited by the films of the second wave resulted in varying degrees of estrangement from the criteria for a Basque cinema of citizens. This occurred as a result of funding secured from other sources, entry into greater industrial processes, determinant input from non-Basque collaborators, attempts at ‘foreign’ genres such as science-fiction and erotic cinema, marketing with no use for Basqueness, and the classification of films for festivals or markets that favoured the unproblematic categorization of films. The populist auteurist critique, which refers everything back to the formation and creativity of the director, persisted in relation to La madre muerta (The Dead Mother, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, 1993), which reworked Gothic fairy tales via brusque editing, chiaroscuro and Lynchian motifs. It also lapped up the renewed emphasis on subjectivity in La ardilla roja (Red Squirrel, Julio Medem, 1993) and Tierra (Earth, Julio Medem, 1996) and took the recurring collaboration of Nimri with her then husband Calparsoro to signify sexistically that she was his muse in Pasajes (Passages, Daniel Calparsoro, 1996) and A ciegas (Blinded, Daniel Calparsoro, 1997), which concludes what Davies calls the director’s ‘Basque trilogy’.31 The auteurist approach was less certain about Urbizu’s return from the mean streets of Bilbao to the theatrical farce of his debut Tu novia est´a loca (Your Girlfriend is Crazy, 1988) with C´omo ser infeliz y disfrutarlo (How to Be Miserable and Enjoy 121

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It, 1994) and Cuernos de mujer (Infidelity, 1995), although strong roles for actresses offered a through-line. Meanwhile, the apocalyptic horror-comedy of El d´ıa de la bestia (The Day of the Beast, 1995) took de la Iglesia beyond categorization by indicating porous genres and overlapping audiences. These second and third films from the second wave confirmed that elastic Basqueness linking the individual with the collective had stretched far from the historical construct of the Basque community and cinema of citizens and was exploring possible identities in relation to less insular sentiment. Even in narrative terms, La ardilla roja, A ciegas and El d´ıa de la bestia each illustrate a journey away from the Basque Country. In El d´ıa de la bestia, which was co-produced by Canal Plus, Sogetel and Iberoamericana Films, a Basque ´ priest (Alex Angulo) travels to Madrid to avert the apocalypse. La ardilla roja, which was also produced by the Madrid-based Sogetel, sees Jota (Nancho Novo) steal the amnesiac Sof´ıa (Emma Su´arez) away from the Basque Country to a campsite. There he improvises a myth of their history together, turning the wilful Sof´ıa into the pliant Elisa, until his mythopoeia is not so much thwarted as validated by the emergence of her authentic sentiments, thereby suggesting how Basque nationalist myths are accepted as historical fact by those with an emotional response to the imagined community. However, the film also illustrates the danger of replacing one hegemony with another whereby the contested identity (Sof´ıa/Elisa) becomes both internally fragmented and externally disputed. In A ciegas, which was produced by the Madrid-based Star Line company, the female terrorist Marrubi (Najwa Nimri) has also betrayed her oppressive male leaders and fled the Basque Country in a way that illustrates elasticity in its rejection of hardline criteria for citizenship and strikes Santiago de Pablo as a ‘milestone’ in how ‘the sociopolitical meaning of films experienced a transformation around the same time that Basque society had been ´ deeply shaken by [ETA’s] brutal slaying of [councillor] Miguel Angel Blanco.’32 Shifts in policy by the Basque Ministry of Culture had also led to the creation of Euskal Media, a limited company awarded 80 million pesetas for film funding, but this was dissolved in 1995 following criticism of the way private and public finances were muddled, prompting Medem to describe a ‘profoundly incompetent [and] nefarious system of subsidies.’33 The erasure of funding links to the Basque Country meant that Basqueness lost prominence in the films themselves. The terrorist organisation is never identified as ETA in A ciegas, for example, and La ardilla roja never reveals the actual birthplace of the amnesiac Sof´ıa, who when told several possibilities that include San Sebastian crosses her fingers and hopes for Lisbon. This accumulative weakening of the link to Basque citizenship corresponds with Sorenson’s ‘view that national citizenship is in the process of being replaced by “postnational membership” based on universal human rights rather than on the national rights flowing from shared national citizenship and a national community of sentiment.’34 Increasingly, the recognition, rights and privileges sought by filmmakers were gleaned from international prizes, festival

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Figure 11. Konrad´ın (Fernando Guill´en Cuervo), Juantxo (Karra Elejalde) with the ring and Pako (Alberto San Juan) gambling in Airbag (Juanma Bajo Ulloa, 1997).

success, a global fanbase, box-office returns from foreign markets aided by critical and academic interest, and invitations to work and be funded elsewhere. Medem declared, ‘we’ve no alternative but to go where the work is’ and continued to distance himself from the Basque Country via flight to the Arctic Circle in Los amantes del C´ırculo Polar (Lovers of the Arctic Circle, 1988) and ferry to a floating island in Luc´ıa y el sexo (Sex and Lucia, 2001), which set a profitable benchmark for art house erotica that jarred with the lack of the same in Basque cinema.35 This international success was attained in a new global context ‘whose transactions are largely uncontrolled or even uncontrolled by states.’36 It leads inevitably to a ‘loss of democratic accountability’ for participants, including the increasingly autonomous filmmaker.37 However, as Isabel Santaolalla perceptively forewarned in her analysis of Tierra, Medem’s ‘process of separation and distancing from the motherland is a necessary strategy geared towards self-examination and self-definition [as] only through a dynamics of differentiation can an individual acquire self-knowledge.’38 As we shall see, La pelota vasca: la piel contra la piedra (Basque Ball, Julio Medem, 2004) would fulfil Santaolalla’s prediction by showing what happened when the elasticity of Medem’s Basqueness reached its limit and rebounded. In the final years of the previous millennium, however, each of these filmmakers tended to stretch their Basqueness to breaking point, making films that were unaccountable to the Basque government and audience or any traditions of Basque cinema and more liable to be categorized as Spanish, European or World cinema. If there were Basque roots to the films they directed, they had to be dug out via auteurist critiques, psychoanalysis and explanations of in-jokes. Subsequent second wave films reached far beyond the Basque Country. Urbizu made the action-comedy Cachito (1996) in Andalusia based on the novel Un asunto de honor by Arturo P´erez Reverte, whose work he would also adapt for The Ninth 123

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Gate (Roman Polanski, 1999) and the pilot episode of the Alatriste television series in 2014. Calparsoro moved to a scorching Madrid for the hormonally-complicated survivalism of Asfalto (Asphalt, 2000) and then Kosovo to film a stark tale of Spanish boy soldiers charged with inhuman choices and responsibilities with Guerreros ´ (Warriors, 2002). Alex de la Iglesia went to the borderlands between Mexico and the United States to direct Perdita Durango (1997), a black comedy of Satanic embryo-smugglers whose extreme violence and amorality hid familiar satirical strikes against fascistic yet cosmeticized consumers. And Bajo Ulloa directed Airbag (1997), a visually inventive mash-up of exploitation-style action, flailing satire and road movie that starts with a high-stakes game of jai-alai (Basque ball) before hightailing it to Portugal. Airbag was denied financing from the Basque government but won backing from the Basque company Asegarce associated with jai-alai and celebrity chef Karlo Argui˜nano (who enjoys a riotous cameo) and became a German-Spanish co-production that stormed the Spanish box-office. Airbag is so golfa (promiscuous and salacious) that it suited this new wave of extrovert, visceral films such as Acci´on Mutante, Todo por la pasta, La ardilla roja and Asfalto that constituted ‘a very specific tendency of filmmaking in the Basque Country in the 1990s.’39 Airbag resembles an orgy of globalization with a fetish for American culture, displayed in such fan-boy fondling as the repeated sampling of the theme from Starsky and Hutch (1975–79) and the casting of the Portuguese actress Mar´ıa de Medeiros so soon after she appeared in Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994). Looking homewards from a distance, these films tended to target anachronistic remnants of Basque heritage as punchlines to displays of tradition, such as the integration of folk music in Airbag’s climactic wedding, the ‘prehistoric’ pop video in La ardilla roja and the humming of a Basque song by terrorists keen to persuade the space police that they are not terrorists in Acci´on mutante. Such parody of Basque iconography punctures the hubris of the Basque community and cinema of citizens and responds, in part, to the Basque Country’s failure to support its film industry with funding, which weakened the legitimacy of a category of Basque cinema for the films that threadbare criteria for inclusion attempted to lasso. These breakaway films were centrifugal and thus embodied the elastic bond between regional tensions and global transformations that illustrated ‘various aspects of globalization, including much improved possibilities for interaction and communication between people on a world scale.’40 For Sorenson, moreover, this elasticity enables ‘a transnational dialogue between concerned individuals (rather than between defined groups of national citizens) [which] puts traditional, national political leadership as well as citizen loyalty and support much more into question than it ever was before.’41 The filmmakers of the second wave would redefine the balance between their own interests and that of a canonical Basque cinema, if such a thing existed. However, the films they directed still included considerations of what Sorenson describes as ‘the precise extent to which [communities were] being transformed or maybe even undermined by the new developments.’42 In the new millennium,

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Breaking Apart The idea upheld by Giddens that post-national identity is ‘in large part to be discovered, constructed, actively sustained’ underpins the centrifugal trajectories of Basque filmmakers of the second wave without disallowing association with the parallel evolution of the Basque community.44 This is because, in accordance with Sorenson, the community is also ‘exposed to changes in a new context characterized by the increased salience of globalization and the transnational relations that go with it.’45 Political and religious beliefs such as nationalism or catholicism that are rigid in the frozen core of a community of citizens are thus also subject to change and reflection in a molten community of sentiment from which new and individualized notions of a position or faith may emerge. The Basqueness of Basque cinema, for instance, is no longer dictated but in dialogue with cinemas from around the world, where any discourse risks instability and incoherence, accusations of plagiarism, being out of its depth in previously uncharted markets and out of its league in ‘big’ genres such as science-fiction and the epic. The Basque cinema of sentiment also risks anonymity and dissolution, but as an ongoing process it is eclectic and belligerent too, even anathema to the precepts of a Basque cinema of citizens, while at the same time indicating contemporary Basqueness in its ongoing transformative process. The selection process that goes into this condition may be personalised to a point that chimes with auteurism and challenges consensus or the categorization of a collective identity. A cinema based on sentiment competes for attention with other associations and categorizations that consign, for example, Medem to the art house, Calparsoro to the action genre and de la Iglesia to cultdom. The Basque cinema of sentiment suggests a pro-active response to globalization, although the process advocated by Giddens may succumb to a sedimentation of sentiment that groups art house darlings, mainstream or middlebrow filmmakers and those at work on documentaries, in television or gallery spaces, above or below each other in a ranking subject to critical and popular interest or disdain. At the same time, successful individuals may wish to distance themselves from those who fail, experimental and mainstream filmmakers may mutually snub each other, and specialization in different genres may engender segregation. Following the key filmmakers of the second wave into the new millennium will now illustrate the centripetal and centrifugal impulses that define elastic Basqueness in the cinema of sentiment.

ELASTIC BASQUENESS: THE SECOND BASQUE WAVE

influences and impurities, challenges and opportunities would all assail emotional attachment to the nation, confirming the assertion made by Anthony Giddens that the process of acquiring self-identity is ‘a reflexively organized endeavour’ for those who no longer ‘rest content with an identity that is simply handed down, inherited, or built on a traditional status.’43 By 2001 the Basque cinema of citizens was dead. Long live the Basque cinema of sentiment?

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Calparsoro directed suburban horror Ausentes (The Absent, 2005) and subsequently moved into television with the Madrid-based New Atlantis production company, specializing in dramas based on Spanish instances of mediatized global phenomena such as serial-killers and racist attacks. El castigo (The Punishment, 2008) recounted the escape of delinquents from an abusive rehabilitation centre over two nights on Antena 3 and its success green-lit the brutal thriller La ira (The Fury, 2009) and the sex-trafficking drama Inocentes (Innocents, 2010) for Telecinco as well as the social experiment in xenophobia of La tormenta (Storm, 2010), again for Antena 3. Each series set its alienated protagonists against their uncanny or threatening environments and featured strong women in a world of weak men, but Calparsoro’s return to features with Invasor (Invader, 2012) and Combusti´on (Combustion, 2013) offered uninspired riffs on the Bourne films and The Fast and The Furious franchise respectively, despite a standout performance from Adriana Ugarte in the latter. Nevertheless, as Ann Davies observed, their derivation problematized ‘the use of violence as simply reflective of US practice (itself a possibly reductive understanding of US cinema), and the overly narrow conceptualisation of Basque cinema’ which was relevant to Urbizu’s work in the thriller genre too.46 After also working in national Spanish television with an episode of the detective series Pepe Carvalho in 1999 and the vampire-horror Adivina qui´en soy (A Real Friend, 2006), Urbizu returned to the neo-noir of Todo por la pasta for three critically and commercially successful thrillers written by Michel Gaztambide that reinvented the gal´an Jos´e Coronado as a leading character actor: La caja 507 (Box 507, 2002), La vida mancha (Life Marks, 2003) and No habr´a paz para los malvados (No Rest for The Wicked, 2011). Meanwhile, Bajo Ulloa suffered severe depression following Airbag (1997) that coincided with a legal battle over profits between the scriptwriters and the producers that would take until 2010 to be resolved in favour of co-writers Bajo Ulloa and stars Karra Elejalde and Fernando Guill´en Cuervo. Fr´agil (Fragile, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, 2004) returned to the fairy tale basis of his earlier films and the trope of seeing this world through the eyes of a traumatized girl (the daughter of a bee-keeper, no less), who is unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality in a Basque context indicated by the landscapes that frame the first and final scenes of her delusion in which duality is rendered by characters entering from one side of the frame, the camera panning away and finding them on the other side of the frame too. Fr´agil is mostly a pantomime about the cynical business of filmmaking in which this Cinderella falls in love with an actor playing a prince. Barely released, it led to Bajo Ulloa concentrating on music videos until he announced his return to the territory of Airbag during the 2013 San Sebastian International Film Festival (hereafter SSFF) with Rey gitano (Gypsy King), which he declared would be made for Galician and Andalusian producers, adding, ‘I hope we get the support from the Basque government that we didn’t get for Airbag.’47

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By way of contrast, de la Iglesia and his co-writer Jorge Guerricaechevarr´ıa were prolific, making domestically profitable genre cocktails with a dash of Basqueness that tended to begin with taut set-pieces, then drag until final acts that boiled over into mayhem. He also managed several short films, as well as La habitaci´on del ni˜no (The Baby’s Room, 2005) and two seasons of the science fiction-comedy Plut´on B.R.B. Nero (2008–9) for RTVE (Spanish National Radio and Television). His film Muertos de risa (Dying of Laughter, 1999) targeted nostalgia for light entertainment television as a laminate of respectability on a society ridden with open wounds, while the claustrophobic, comic strip framing of the Hitchcockian and Polanski-ish La comunidad (Common Wealth, 2000) exposed the greed and potential for barbarity of good neighbours in neo-liberal Madrid. Nostalgia was also satirized in the homage to spaghetti westerns filmed in the ‘Mini-Hollywood’ of Almeria that was 800 Balas (800 Bullets, 2002), while Crimen ferpecto (The Perfect Crime, 2004) portrayed a gender war in a Madrid department store. The dilettante English language mystery thriller Los cr´ımenes de Oxford (The Oxford Murders, 2008) was then followed by the grotesquerie of Balada triste de trompeta (The Last Circus, 2010), which evoked a carnivalesque nightmare of Francoism beneath the forced happiness of clown make-up and suggested a country in need of therapy. Indeed, this recurring theme of how thin is the veneer of civilisation in contemporary Spain reaches its apotheosis in his Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (Witching and Bitching, 2013), which begins with made-up mime artists assaulting a pawn shop on Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol. In the year of this film’s making, the Puerta del Sol became the scene of numerous demonstrations against the increasingly right-wing government of the Partido Popular and their often violent dispersal by police, as well as the victim of virulent privatization that eradicated buskers and beloved landmarks and subjected the iconic metro station to sponsorship by a company that paid to have it renamed Vodaphone Sol. The robbery goes wrong and what is left of the Puerta del Sol is obliterated in an orgy of Peckinpah-esque mayhem; but two of the robbers escape and head to the Basque Country, unaware that a fissure has opened up in contemporary Spain through which the dark and ancient forces that operate below are emerging. Las brujas de Zugarramurdi then revisits the setting of Akelarre (Witches’ Sabbath, Pedro Olea, 1984) to pile metaphor upon that allegorical film about the battle between Christian Spanish forces of oppression and an incipient Basque campaign of self-determination and independence in the sixteenth century. The robbers are imprisoned by a coven until all hell breaks loose, as well as a Godzilla-sized Venus of Willendorf. But this time the characteristic mayhem makes sense, for the film captures a zeitgeist of frustration with the corruption of the ruling rightwing Partido Popular and its riot of destruction vicariously implicates audiences that are mirrored by the cast sitting in a cinema and looking back in the bizarre epilogue. Las brujas de Zugarramurdi opened the 2013 SSFF and its use of Basque settings and legends, as well as its zealous disorder and disrespect for rules and norms

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suggests a counter-attack on the pattern of fascistic propaganda essayed by Theodor Adorno, who claimed that modern moral and political life was inseparable from the reduction in status of the human being in capitalist society to the extent that any moral actions in a context of immorality were doomed to irrelevance: ‘Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen’ (There is no right life in the wrong one).48 The film’s amorality thus informs its apocalyptic Hieronymous Bosch-like cavalcade and its like-for-like reflection of contemporary Spanish society because, as Ross Wilson explains, ‘it is important to note that Adorno saw fascism not as a kind of satanic magic visited upon a previously just and happy society, but rather as the most extreme intensification of tendencies already latent within the capitalist insistence that anything – human beings included – could in principle be exchanged for anything else.’49 The conceit of Las brujas de Zugarramurdi is that, as with El d´ıa de la bestia, with which it closes the circle by returning to the Basque Country left by that film’s priest, it definitely does see fascism as satanic and, finding it rampant in contemporary Spain, resolves to play by its own lack of rules in a game of mutually assured destruction.

Snapping Back The most resounding rebound of a second wave filmmaker subject to elastic Basqueness was that of Medem, who most embodied the notion of the contemporary auteur as performer and product that resulted from his desire to be one in a post-national world of opportunity in which ‘self-identity becomes a product for the individual.’50 So why, after getting so far away from the Basque Country and its cinema with Luc´ıa y el sexo, did Medem succumb to the pull of elastic Basqueness and snap back to the centre of its limited universe with La pelota vasca? Perhaps, as predicted by Santaolalla, fame and fortune resembled an unassailable vantage point from which to look back on the Basque Country? Medem intended Aitor to be his next film and an elliptical epic like Vacas, constructed as a mise-en-abyme of incidents of torture during and after the dictatorship. In pre-production, however, he embarked upon a homework project of interviewing those with strong and considered opinions on Basque history and identity, until the accumulating footage suggested its own potential as a documentary. The construction of the resultant La pelota vasca: la piel contra la piedra reflects the themes of symmetry and subjectivity that inspire Medem’s fictions. Its juxtaposition of declarations creates an artificial dialogue across a neutral middle ground supposedly occupied by the filmmaker. The dialogue builds into a polyphony but cannot avoid stalling when immobile dogmatism lays claim to the argument, prompting the intercession of several mashups of newsreel and clips from films (including Vacas) that confirm the role of Basque cinema in Basque history. Finally, protagonism is awarded to the Plan Ibarretxe, which called for the self-determination of the seven territories of the Basque Country and their free association with Spain. The plan was approved by 128

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a narrow margin in the Basque parliament on 30 December 2004 but rejected by Spain’s and later revised into a call for an as yet unrealized referendum.51 Crucially, the Plan distinguishes between Basque citizens, who are subject to existing municipal administration, and Basque nationals, whose accreditation would be a matter for subsequent jurisdiction.52 Spelled out in captioned shots of traditional Basque landscapes, the Plan imagines its community of citizens as a product of specific criteria, the exact nature of which would be decided by referendum. Thus, although the division of people is rigid, the film suggests the Plan is progressive because the referendum it heralds might at least reveal a palliative consensus. The ensuing controversy resulted in a burnt-out Medem shelving Aitor and needing four years to reassemble the themes, stylings and erotic content of his earlier films in Ca´otica Ana (Chaotic Ana, 2007), whose multiple languages (French, Arabic, Spanish, English) and foreign locations (Arizona, Ibiza, Madrid, New York and Fuerteventura) indicated his deliberate, even desperate re-immersion in the centrifugal cinema of sentiment.53 Although structured in ten chapters like a hypnotist’s countdown to a new consciousness, Ca´otica Ana is discordant and incoherent. Its most remarkable sex scene is scatalogical, dressed in political allegory but repulsive, unfunny and unerotic. Derided or ignored in Spain and barely released in foreign markets, this film smacked less of a refreshed identity far from the Basque Country than a reaction to the radicalism that still raged within it. Another four years would pass, during which Medem made promotional films including those for Spanish tourism’s I Need Spain campaign (2010) and the low-budget Habitaci´on en Roma (Room in Rome, 2010), until ETA’s ceasefire prompted him to disseminate his denunciatory ‘Epitaph to ETA’, which described the terrorist organization as ‘our greatest shame’ and called for ‘unity [and] deserved pardon for all those who have suffered its terror.’54 By then he had moved to Los Angeles, where he fostered an expatriate community of Spanish filmmakers.55 The portmanteau 7 d´ıas en la Habana (Seven Days in Havana, Laurent Cantet, Benicio Del Toro, Julio Medem, Gaspar No´e, Elia Suleiman, Juan Carlos Tab´ıo & Pablo Trapero, 2012) resembled a publicity campaign for Havana Club rum and his attempt at a biopic of Aspasia, the lover of Pericles, failed to secure funding and became his first novel instead prior to being turned into a mini-series with Medem as showrunner.56 With any elastic connection to the Basque Country seemingly severed, however, Medem opened up to El Diario Vasco, whose headline for the interview was the seemingly penitent pull-quote, ‘I want to return and be close to the Basque Country.’57 Soon after, it was announced that Pen´elope Cruz had selected Medem to direct her in a thriller entitled Ma Ma and that he was working on a biopic of the Basque fashion designer Crist´obal Balenciaga for the Catalan company Distinto Films, which would fund his return to filmmaking in the Basque Country as well as a recreation of occupied Paris, where Medem would focus on Balenciaga’s resistance to the unambiguous villainy of Nazis.58

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By illustrating tensions between citizenship and sentiment, the elastic Basqueness of the second wave appears both exemplary and cautionary. In the second decade of the new millennium, the five filmmakers who the media and academia had grouped together as an overly exclusive representation of Basque cinema are engaged in a variety of projects that have few rights or obligations in respect of the Basque Country, which does not provide them with commanding levels of funding but does still attempt to reinforce its identity by affirming a mutually-binding sentiment when selecting Las brujas de Zugarramurdi to open the SSFF in 2013, for example. Ideas of Basque identity remain strong in its community of sentiment but, following Sorenson, its narrative of nationhood could be said to be ‘situated in a different kind of world system where traditional nationhood as expressed in the modern state is itself under transformation.’59 Stretching between rigid and fluid notions of Basque identity, elastic Basqueness creates new meanings for Basque cinema as it extends the concept to engage with other cultures, markets, genres, aesthetics and audiences. It aids hybridity because it connects enterprise with points of origin such as sources of funding or traditions of Basque cinema, but it also requires a shift in perception of what Basque cinema is eternally becoming, including an understanding that the construction of an identity for a Basque filmmaker or film and an evolving Basque cinema involves difference from one’s own self as well as from others. Elastic Basqueness therefore illustrates Theodor Adorno’s ideas of culture existing ‘beyond both the heterogenous and the own’60 because the films made during the second wave embraced hybridity and no longer prioritized innate or inherited differences, thereby embodying Wolfgang Welsch’s contention that ‘cultural conditions today are largely characterized by mixes and permeations. [. . .] Lifestyles and identities are no longer limited to nationally based cultures.’61 Indeed, these films often illustrate journeys between what is known and what is foreign as well as returns from familiar foreign places to an unfamiliar home. Before leaving, however, might we put all this to the test by examining a film that hardly seems Basque at all? The aforementioned Habitaci´on en Roma is a loose remake of the Chilean En la cama (In Bed, Mat´ıas Bize, 2005). It was filmed in a Madrid studio with a few insert shots in Rome and its limited release did not anticipate the film’s subsequent dissemination via the internet, both legally and otherwise, which energised a fanbase. The film begins with a shot looking down from a balcony onto two flirting women as they approach the hotel before reappearing in the eponymous room that is signalled as a performance space by a mobile, balletic camera. Knowing nothing about each other, the women begin to negotiate the construction of their identities and the baseline of this process is established by their quickly undressing because their nudity is indicative of a tabula rasa. Rigid sexual identities are declared initially as Alba (Elena Anaya) asserts her lesbianism and Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) professes heterosexuality. This fixed point of origin suggests a sexual incompatibility that their nakedness ironizes even as seduction

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is postponed, interrupted and renegotiated in a way that indicates a more fluid identity for the protagonists and the film. As they circle each other and return to the question of sexuality, their tentative coupling allows the more confident Alba to be on top, which also suggests a remnant of the original Chilean film in which the couple were a man and a woman. However, as the camera circles too, it manoeuvres them and the audience away from fixed ideas of identity before proceeding to reconstruct them via sentiment, whereby layers of feeling, meaning, history and reality are all gradually added to Alba, Natasha and the film that they inhabit. The film suggests the construction of identity and gender in a way that excludes the male influence, although this is contradicted, of course, by the authorship of Medem, which nevertheless pretends to disguise its own hegemony by feigning a female subjectivity. In addition, Medem also displays awareness of his own construction and performance of identity by aligning this film with Fa yeung nin wa (In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wai, 2000). This self-conscious positioning of his authorship is apparent in his previous films and is cemented here by the plucking tick-tock of Jocelyn Pook’s song ‘Libera Me’ (Free Me), which recalls Wong’s use of ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ by Shigeru Umebayashi, although Habitaci´on en Roma most resembles Chun gwong cha sit (Happy Together, Wong Kar Wai, 1997), which also observes the negotiations of a gay couple in a hotel room.62 However, art-house erotica is just one of the guises assumed by the film, for just as Alba and Natasha transcend their temporal and spatial confinement by playing dress-up with different identities, so the film itself references the generic conventions of a thriller, a comedy, a tragedy and a romance. Ultimately, however, Alba, Natasha and the film negotiate a way out of rigid citizenship towards more liberal sentiment that reaches for something more original and authentic, thereby signalling identity as something so malleable that the film even makes for itself a happy ending. This is not merely intertextuality on film, which tends to look backwards in the way ‘the image track “inherits” the history of painting and the visual arts, while the soundtrack “inherits” the entire history of music, dialogue and sound experimentation.’63 The room in Rome is arguably a chronotope in which ‘time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history.’64 Habitaci´on en Roma is impure cinema, certainly, but also emblematic of those films that ‘call our attention to the different medial and cultural borders in their fabric.’65 Thus, the film’s layers incorporate various languages including English, Castilian, Italian, Russian, Euskara, Latin and even a visual dialogue between paintings in the room. These layers are added and discarded as the women tell stories about themselves that they later either admit are false or verify by the use of new media, with Google Earth, internet search engines and ‘home movies’ on mobile phones all playing their part in the realization of this most persistent theme in the films directed by Medem: the authentication of a fantasy by the emotion invested in it. Relevance to an evolution in Basque identity thus occurs because although these

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Figure 12. Alba (Elena Anaya) and Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) constructing identities in Habitaci´on en Roma (Julio Medem, 2010).

women and their film are located in a tiny place, they are shown to be evolving, outward-looking and in contact with the rest of the world. When the women’s relationship is consummated, Habitaci´on en Roma implicates the spectator in the literal construction of their conjoined identity via camera movement and editing that appears artificial when compared with the naturalistic scenes shot mostly in long takes and mid-shots of La vie d’Ad`ele (Blue is The Warmest Colour, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013), for example, which observes the emergence of an innate identity for Ad`ele (Ad`ele Exarchopoulos) at the hands of Emma (L´ea Seydoux). Both films reference but dismiss the criteria that might be used to determine, classify or impose a sexuality and therefore an identity that may suffer inequitable legal status, criminalization and the rescindment of citizenship in nations such as Natasha’s contemporary Russia. However, whereas La vie d’Ad`ele explores a deeply personal process of self-determination, Habitaci´on en Roma contextualizes the passion within the ideal of a holistic European identity for the protagonists who frolic in a room with the flag of the European Union on its balcony, thereby suggesting how the Basque Country has often looked towards Europe as an enabler of self-determination. Ultimately, the two women’s attempt to realize/construct identity reveals a metaphorical narrative that illustrates how elastic Basqueness moves identity out of the realm of citizenship, where it is subject to rigid criteria for exclusion and inclusion, and into a free-forming process that is validated by sentiment. This process exists not only between places but between different times as well, which allows successive waves of Basque cinema to be seen in relation to each other. The historic specificity of the first wave’s 132

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narrow definition of a Basque cinema of citizens resisted supranational elements and refrained from contributing to the emergence of a collective identity ‘above’ the nation. In contrast, the cinema of sentiment that eventually resulted from the second wave played a role in globalization and proved that there was much to gain from intermediality and multiculturalism. In other words, unlike the first wave, the second one no longer needed to join in the search for a single identity but could go about the negotiation of many. Basque cinema was not weakened or dissolved by the second wave because its filmmakers and their films, like their audiences, found that in a cinema of sentiment, as in a community of sentiment, they could ‘take on any number of new identities without discarding what they already have.’66 And thereto the ending of Habitaci´on en Roma in which Alba and Natasha are consumed by the potential of sentiment. Shot once more from high above, the women leave the hotel and Alba goes left while Natasha exits right. In film as in physics, however, elasticity denotes the tendency of materials to return to their original shape after being stretched. Thus, at the very last moment, Natasha runs back across the centre of the screen to catch up with Alba on her way to San Sebastian. Having embodied the elasticity of Basqueness, the film snaps back into the nationalistic clich´e of a happy ending in the Basque Country. But whether this signifies choice and self-determination, surrender or reconciliation remains a matter of unresolved tension.

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7 Boxed In and Breaking Out: Short Films and The Third Basque Wave The short film can be a rough sketch or a miniature masterpiece in its own right. It can serve as blueprint, warm-up, manifesto, calling-card, spotlight or witty aside. The cultural and political history of Basque cinema is punctuated by short films that fulfil each of these functions. From the earliest travelogues that involved hitching a camera to a tram to make one-reelers that could be shown at funfairs to the latest hand-held records of urban activism that compete against the white noise of the internet, numerous short films have contended with complex matters of Basque citizenship and sentiment. Primarily, there are brief ethnographic documentaries, many of which barely transcend the limitations of home movies while simultaneously making of those constraints an indicator of the context of oppression. On the other hand, the production of short films in the Basque Country has at times been organized to the point of industriousness, as in the Ikuska series (1978–85) that approximated a Basque national cinema (analysed in Chapter Three) and the ongoing Kimuak project that has provided funds and training for new and emerging Basque filmmakers since 1998 and resulted in a third Basque wave of filmmaking talent. In addition, several key individuals have used the form to experiment with the aim of discovering or creating a certifiably Basque aesthetic, one that might embody an invariably politicized philosophy. This chapter traces a history of the short film in the context of Basque cinema, paying special attention to ethnographic, aesthetic and formal concerns. It then focuses on Kimuak’s innovative production and promotion of short films that have enjoyed festival success and awards throughout the world. It includes an appraisal of the impact of new screen technologies on short filmmaking in the Basque Country and considers whether the community of sentiment, which is the true context of contemporary Basque cinema, is now global and online.

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The closing of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth saw the emergence of an urban proletariat and a prosperous middle class and thus a volatile proximity of resentment and entitlement in the newly industrialized and rapidly politicized Basque Country. The first filming and projections were of street scenes, carnivals and regattas and were necessarily short because of the limitations of the cinematic apparatus. Since then, the dividing line between long or ‘full-length’ films and shorts has been subjective or imposed by external criteria such as eligibility for funding or inclusion in a festival, but for their book on the subject Jes´us Angulo, Jos´e Luis Rebordinos and Antonio Santamarina establish the limits of their territory at ‘thirty minutes maximum for a short film.’1 Thus, the first fictions made in the Basque Country, such as Un drama en Bilbao (A Drama in Bilbao, Alejandro Olabarr´ıa, 1924), were already ‘long’. Sponsored shorts such as Caja de Ahorros Municipal de Bilbao (Municipal Savings Bank of Bilbao, Mauro & V´ıktor Azkona, 1925), which would be updated in 1939, and ethnographic reports such as the series of eight on Basque folklore, sports and customs produced by Manuel Mar´ıa de Ynchausti between 1923 and 1928 allowed for the representation and revision of ideas of the Basque Country that were palatable for audiences from elsewhere and flattering to those within. Hobbyists such as Ricardo de Bastida made home movies that speak to Santos Zunzunegui of an unrealized potential during the 1930s.2 However, as Angulo, Rebordinos and Santamarina explain: ‘If until then Basque film production had not been very buoyant, the arrival of sound, with the huge investment that it demanded, did not improve the situation, quite the opposite.’3 The Spanish Civil War would find a role for short filmmaking in the need for documentaries funded by the Secci´on de Propaganda del Gobierno de Euskadi (Propaganda Section of the Basque Government) that included the emblematic 20 minutes of Guernika (Nemesio Sobrevila, 1937) but there was also the offset escapism of the theatrical comic shorts made by Cinesia in a San Sebastian taken by Francoist forces. That the first full-length film made in the Basque Country since the Civil War was Ama Lur (Motherland, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1968) suggests that the intervening years might have remained the territory of shorts, but few features escaped the purely amateur environs of largely clandestine filmmakers who showed their films to fellow members in societies such as the Cine Club Guip´uzcoa in San Sebastian and Cineclub FAS in Bilbao, which is described in Chapter Nine. In the early 1960s, however, the production of short films was enabled by the availability of new lightweight filming equipment, the philosophical call for an aesthetic determination of Basque identity by the sculptor Jorge Oteiza, new Spanish policies of apertura (openness) that responded to the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957, the forum and focus of the San Sebastian Film Festival (hereafter SSFF), the increased visibility of Euskara

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A Brief History of Short Films

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in religious and cultural events, the interest of a few Basque patrons of the arts such as industrialist Juan Huarte, new measures of protectionism stemming from the second tenure (1962–68) of Jos´e Mar´ıa Garc´ıa Escudero as Spain’s General Director of Cinematography and Theatre, and the availability of funding for natural history documentaries and travelogues from RTVE (Spanish National Radio and Television). Consequently, disparate attempts at essaying aspects of the Basque Country add up to a variety of short films that include ethnographical and metaphorical elements as well as symbolism and abstraction. The ethnographic works have an occasionally explicit but mostly vague cultural and political function. Made during the dictatorship for entities such as RTVE, these mostly contributed to the displays of regional landscapes, wildlife and customs that allowed for differences to be dissolved within a centralizing series such as the Noticiarios y Documentales (NO-DO) newsreel (1942–81) or subsumed within composite documentaries that represented regional varieties as indicators of the range of Spanishness. Yet the sight of any extant Basqueness was a sign of difference, progress and even defiance, while the training-ground and practice that ethnographic films provided was essential for the acquisition of skills that were sharpened by the potential for subversion. In addition, what is apparent in the short films of the 1960s is a kind of disorganized treasure hunt for an idea of Basqueness that might be found in avant-garde projects, ethnographic subversion and experimental animation.

Twist and Shout: Ethnographic Subversion Where the ethnographic film takes groups of people in society as its subject, the limitations or restrictions of their representation and consequent classification can denote a political subtext that overrides the display of difference and presents its disavowal. Thus, sympathies towards Basque differences might be annulled by labelling the flora and fauna, cultural and sporting events, folkloric rituals and seasonal activities in the Basque Country as varieties of Spanishness, which was the strategy of the national NO-DO documentary series, for example, that mirrored the centralization of government during the dictatorship (1939–75). Karl G. Heider argues that ethnographic film illustrates a need to preserve the integrity of the subject by rendering it whole whereby ‘if ethnographic demands conflict with cinematographic demands, ethnography must prevail.’4 The conflict in relation to representations of the Basque Country is not the one between art and science that concerns Heider, however, because the emphasis on ‘wholeness’ in ethnographic documentaries is in the service of a Francoist vision of Spain that demands an artificial erasure of any separatist tendencies. As David MacDougall explains, while the term ‘ethnographic films’ gives a semblance of unity and scientific respectability to the form, the fact is that ‘films become ethnographic by virtue of their use [and] since all films are cultural artefacts, many can tell us as much about the societies that produced them as about those they purport to describe.’5 Thus, whereas difference 136

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is denied in most Spanish ethnographic films of the period, this ‘wholeness’ is subverted in several Basque ethnographic films that point up the superficiality of this denial by highlighting the incompatibility and wayward trajectory of certain Basque elements. For example, the numerous documentaries on Basque wildlife made since 1959 by the prolific Rafael Mar´ıa Treku Eugui, who would become President of the Asociaci´on de Productores Independientes Vascos (Association of Independent Basque Producers) and co-director of the SSFF in 1985, and his collaborator in Ornis Films, Francisco Bernab´e Carranza, emphasized such unique landscapes and bio-systems that they also illustrated the ‘separate world’ of the Basque Country. However, the primary sign and signifier of Basque difference is, of course, Euskara, which was forbidden from being treated as subject or deployed as commentary. Nevertheless, several filmmakers explored the potential of the ethnographic documentary as a vehicle that could be used to smuggle illegal sound. In Pelotari (Basque Ball Player, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1964), the simple listing of great players’ authentic Basque surnames evinces deliberate and unmistakeable sounds of defiance, while in Misa vasca (Basque Mass, Antonio Mercero, 1971), the sound of Euskara used in the ceremony overrides the ostensible ethnographic worth of it being filmed to indicate the film’s revivalist intention. This subversive use of ethnographic film also inspired Gotzon Elorza, who had been exiled in Paris since the Civil War, to ‘to take the first steps towards a cinema made entirely in Euskara’ by making travelogues with commentary in Euskara that attested to both a mind-mapping of Basque territory and the preservation of an imagined community.6 Elorza’s documentaries, which were restored by the Euskadiko Fimategia/Filmoteca Vasca (Basque Film Archive, hereafter EF/FV) in 2011 and screened during that year’s SSFF, are rudimentary and their initial distribution was limited. Ereagatik Matxitxakora (From Ereaga to Matxitxako, 1959) offers a coastal tour while Elburua Gernika (Destination Gernika, 1962) heads inland. The 22 minutes in 16mm of Ereagatik Matxitxakora offers fixed shots and jerky tilts and pans. The iconography of rural Basqueness is catalogued without reference to any urban alternative for the inhabitants, who the commentary insists are ‘all happy, far from the problems of the city.’ Yet this tendency towards the idyllic is undercut by shots of ruins, decay, moored boats bobbing listlessly, rusted tools, monuments ‘to the memory of those lost at sea’ and graves that point to a lack of renewal. The overcast skies leave a sundial incapable of marking time for the inhabitants of Barrika who ‘live facing the sea their whole lives and even after death, most of them will look there forever.’ The occasional lurch into poetic commentary on the landscapes lacks eloquence: ‘Our eyes will not get bored of seeing them. They are so beautiful.’ Yet, in addition to the commentary in Euskara there are shots that stand out against the sleepy sojourn such as the stark composition of a red chair and green door against a whitewashed wall offering a flash of the colours of the Basque flag. Elburua Gernika is a more rousing portrait of activity and rebirth

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that follows the routine of tuna fishermen and ends by contrasting the town of Gernika, which ‘in the last war was burned and the city destroyed’, with shots of its modern market-day in which ‘the city comes to life.’ The inevitable final shots of the tree of Gernika inspire an address to the audience in Euskara: ‘What can be more wonderful than to see young people following the steps of their parents to strengthen the Basque identity? But if we want young people to be truly Basque their parents must teach them the basics. If not, a child may crawl all his life.’ The personal commitment of Elorza clearly stems from his own exile from the Basque Country, which in turn allows him to comment openly in Euskara on the condition of those he left behind. He also made Avignon (1964) about the south eastern French town with commentary in Euskara to prove that the Basque language could talk about things other than Basque, but his vindicatory stance is most evident in Erria (Homeland, 1963), in which the title appears in the stocky, wide-brimmed Basque font against darker skies weighed down by mournful music. This expressionist miniature presents several shots of mountains until a farmhouse is framed in Arcadian bliss. Shots of scything, harvesting, ploughing and grazing cows are overlaid a variety of birdsong that includes a prominent cuckoo, a bird known for leaving its eggs in the nests of other species, like the Basque parents who left their boy Elorza in France. Indeed, this collage centres on a carefree child with pronounced Basque physiognomy, seen farming in incongruously clean smock and beret. Styled like a home movie, this spectre of Elorza’s own childhood is located in a dreamworld expressed in a voiceover that supposes traces of actual memories: Nobody can say what the homeland is. For me the homeland begins next to my grandparents with my first words in our language, in Euskara, with sounds of the txistu [Basque flute] in the mountains and valleys, the steps of the aurresku [Basque folk-dance] in our fields and the clarity of the bertsolari [improvising Basque poet] among the farmhouse trees. Above all because they transmit the foundations of the Basque Country. This is the homeland for me and forgive me those that cry.

This emphasis on the ‘basics’ and ‘foundations’ of Basque identity suggests a linguistic, structuralist imperative. Because Euskara was prohibited during the dictatorship, its lexicon did not keep pace with the twentieth century to the extent that, following the dictatorship, its rapid modernization required a plethora of neologisms. That the Euskara of an exile should resort to the most traditional and emotive Basque iconography of the txistu, aurresku and bertsolari is not only indicative of the limitations of Elorza’s estrangement from his mother tongue, however, but also the semaphore intended to reach his imagined audience. This audience is a Basque community of sentiment made of ‘those that cry’ from which he is separated and yet for which, being uniquely able to speak in Euskara, he assumes bardic responsibility. Erria thus breaks with passive Arcadia in a central sequence that has an aurreskulari (dancer) perform a sprightly and impassioned 138

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It’s the mother that always seeks to care for her child. If Euskara is for the Basque, The mother the Lord gave us, Nobody will belong to the Basque Country If he or she does not know Euskara.

Language in Motion: Modernist Works As the ethnographic film moved from the cinema to television in the 1960s, so its subjects and themes became ecologist in a manner that also suggested a need to rescue and preserve Basque ways of life and customs and assist in their evolution. In addition to the rural and coastal landscapes, which were threatened by housing developments in touristic areas, a twist on the usual subjects of natural history documentaries revealed a concern for the urban environment too. La r´ıa de Bilbao (The Bilbao Estuary, Pedro Olea, 1967) is an impressionistic portrait of the main artery of the city made for RTVE that contrasts private and public activities and offers a eulogy to the city’s ‘new beauty, the beauty of the future.’ Also made for RTVE was Quesada (Antonio Mercero, 1968), which revealed a Spain not far removed from Luis Bu˜nuel’s Tierra sin pan (Land without Bread, aka. Las Hurdes, 1933) and was banned for 15 years. In line with the dissident Spanish cinema of filmmakers such as Juan Antonio Bardem and Carlos Saura, restrictions and censorship revealed a need for evasive and elusive metaphor in the short film at the same time as the aesthetic debate about Basque cinema was becoming a political one. Seeking coherence between aesthetics and politics, certain Basque filmmakers explored the potential of symbolism and metaphor that was not only in the visual or aural mise-en-sc`ene but in structuralist considerations too. This had been previously suggested in A trav´es de San Sebasti´an (By Way of San Sebastian, El´ıas Querejeta & Antxon Eceiza, 1960) in which a collage of images and sounds of the city on a hot day is overlaid with obtuse poetic commentary, while shots of hordes of holidaymakers crossing bridges and coming down steps recall those of the revolutionary-minded masses in Bronen´osets Potiemkin (Battleship Potemkin,

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aurresku (tributary dance) to the sound of a non-diegetic txistu and tamboril (Basque tambourine) in the middle of a cornfield like a peasant in a Stalinist Soviet musical. The aurresku is performed at weddings, festivals and commemorative events and here its role in the community moves beyond ethnography to embody a spirit of devotion and defiance. It also effects a shift from the limitations of bluntly sequential ethnographic observation to the deployment of symbolism and putative modernist ambitions for film language. The commentary becomes a song, which is dubbed over silent shots of everyday farm-workers whose lips move as they sing the same verses but whose own voices in their homeland are unrecorded because they are as yet denied:

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Sergei Eisenstein, 1925). The follow-up A trav´es del f´utbol (By Way of Football, El´ıas Querejeta & Antxon Eceiza, 1961) essays important historical events through the parallel evolution of football and is a whimsical collage of antique photographs, newspaper headlines and statistics with an overlaid dialogue between a rousing male voice and a breathless female respondent. It was funded by Querejeta’s fellow players in the Real Sociedad football team and fostered by the Uni´on Industrial Cinematogr´afica (UNINCI) that was associated with the illegal and clandestine Communist Party. UNINCI would produce the work of dissident filmmakers Bardem and Luis Bu˜nuel until the scandal and consequent economic sanctions stemming from the latter’s Viridiana (1961) resulted in its closure. A trav´es del f´utbol, which suffered 30 cuts (or ‘corrections’ as the censor called them) that amounted to more than four minutes of its 11 minute running time, illustrates the beginning of the Spanish Civil War with a shot of a goalkeeper lying face down in the goalmouth that renders him a downed Republican soldier in the style of the photographs of Robert Capa. It then follows this with footage of ‘friendlies’ between Spain and Germany and Italy that culminate in the game becoming a ‘national’ (i.e. centralized, Francoist) sport. As the cuts proved, blatant symbolism was a red rag to the censor, and therefore less effective than strategies of surrealist provocation by Bu˜nuel, the collages of found footage with their disorienting ellipses and graffiti-ed frames created by Iv´an Zulueta for films such as his vandalistic palimpsest of The Beatles in Get Back (1969), and the exaltation of absurdity by filmmakers in the Barcelona School. Explicit symbolism was also less evocative than the conjuring of the uncanny in El esp´ıritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive, V´ıctor Erice, 1973) and less of a challenge for the censor than the dizzying tactics of submitting dummy scripts favoured by Querejeta, who would become a key figure in Spanish cinema as producer.7 Thus a shift to Formalism and its structuralist underpinning was engineered by Basque artists who responded to experimental and constructivist sculptor Jorge Oteiza’s 1963 essay-manifesto Quousque tandem . . . ! Ensayo de interpretaci´on est´etica del alma vasca (How long will you abuse our patience! Essay on the Interpretation of the Basque Soul), which is described in Chapter Four. The revival of a moribund Basque cinema therefore resulted from the transfusion of ideas and energies from other arts such as sculpture and painting, whose move into celluloid occasioned short modernist films by those used to working in other media. Many of these artists, including Oteiza, N´estor Basterretxea, Jos´e Antonio Sistiaga and Rafael Ruiz Balerdi, were members of the Gaur group (1965–67) that included sculptor Eduardo Chillida. Sistiaga and Ruiz Balerdi worked in animation, but Basterretxea, who had grown up in exile in France and Argentina, worked with musician Fernando Larruquert to form Frontera Films (Frontier Films) and made a short promotional film called Operaci´on H (Operation H, 1964) for Juan Huarte, a Navarrese industrialist who had been inspired by Quousque tandem . . . ! to found X Films in 1963 with the intention of promoting experimental cinema.

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In a 2013 exhibition that provided a retrospective of the career of Basterretxea, the Museo de Bellas Arts (Fine Arts Museum) in Bilbao made a free standing exhibit of Operaci´on H playing looped on a portable, cathode ray television that spoke of its antique nature while insisting upon its continued relevance. This film’s aesthetic consideration of the details of industrialization is rendered in close-ups of machine parts and fragments of production lines, framed and lit to find geometric harmonies in a process that is shown to fuse mathematical precision with natural elements, such as the textures of the raw materials, the light and shadow, and the running water that cools the drills. In essence, the 12 minute film, whose editing was overseen by Oteiza, pronounces that machinery is art and insists upon the lack of contradiction with nature in a way that sutures the urban-rural divide that had for so long troubled the Basque Country. Editing by association, for example, allows for cuts from chimney stacks to trees, and from standing bolts and cogs resembling futuristic cityscapes to a young girl running through long grass in way that enables a transition from a workspace to a living space without contradiction. Although Operaci´on H at first resembles Ballet m´ecanique (Fernand Leger, George Antheil & Dudley Murphy, 1923–24), a putative cubist film that was rather more illustrative of the artistic philosophy of Futurism in its celebration of machinery, it does not posit the filmmaking process as just one amongst the numerous production lines depicted, but celebrates the camera for seeing the harmonies and the editing for making them explicit. In other words, like cutting a diamond from a stone, artists in pursuit of a particular aesthetic could extract the beauty from the most unpromising subjects and thereby perceive even a sparkling future for the Basque Country from out of the bedrock of the dictatorship. Next was Pelotari (Basque Ball Player, N´estor Basterretexea & Fernando Larruquert, 1964), which provided further evidence of the effect that could be achieved by a revivalist aesthetic consideration of what passed for the ordinary and everyday. Like the production line, Pelotari also depicts a process of evolution, that of human fitness and sporting prowess that is built on precision engineering (this time physical rather than mechanical) and repetition. Thus the players are filmed and freeze-framed, silhouetted and subject to fade outs, slow motion, jumpcuts, ellipses and repeated shots. A soundtrack of Basque instruments (txalaparta and txistu) and sparse commentary aids the reverent, ritualistic tone that heralds ‘la voluntad de vencer’ (the will to triumph) and the shaping of the images of the sculpted male body in motion expresses the same ideology of harmony and potential in its aesthetics as Operaci´on H. Moreover, the staccato editing and canted angles of the shots suggested an equivalency to the otherwise forbidden language of Euskara. Hard-edged and pricked by sharp consonants, Euskara lends itself to such visual equivalency as the aforementioned Basque font as well as the metaphor of the hedgehog that author and poet Bernardo Atxaga deploys to symbolize the language.8 In imitating the verse form of the bertsolari in the construction of their films, Basterretxea and Larruquert also approached an equivalence between

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word-sounds and shots that meant the visual grammar of their film could function as a metaphor of their silenced language.9 For example, one shot of a player running left to right (reading direction) across the screen to hit the ball with a resounding thwack is repeated three times as if the sight/sound was a hard consonant appearing thrice in a long Basque word. This aesthetic triumph, which arguably met the challenge set by Oteiza, would be transposed to the more ambitious project of the full-length Ama Lur, which was key to unleashing so much cultural, political, linguistic and cinematic endeavour. However, rather than develop a recognizably Basque aesthetic that was ideologically sound, linguistically based, cinematically proven and even accessible to general audiences, experiments in short filmmaking in this period moved defiantly towards abstraction.

Nonsense and Sensibility: Experimental Animation The transfer of artistic skills learnt in one medium, such as painting or sculpture or music, to celluloid and the machinery of filmmaking meant that the plasticity of the process was seized upon as a challenge and an end in itself. Artists such as Ram´on de Vargas, Javier Aguirre, Rafael Ruiz Balerdi and Jos´e Antonio Sistiaga set to the moulding of the material and the experience of its perception in a way that explored its potential to stimulate the senses at the expense of any lucid or legible meaning. Reducing the cinematic apparatus and its production process to the single frame, they painted, scored, punctured and scribbled on filmstrips to provide the audience with an abrasive experience of projected light and colour. Although charged by the aesthetic search for a structuralist notion of relevant Basque identity, those working in animation were also driven by a frustration that found equivalence between the restrictions of the dictatorship and the limitations of the form. Because animation as a way of filmmaking mostly results from choices made in its production process in which chance and spontaneity are eliminated, so the deliberate boxing-in of these artists’ creativity into the single frame created an explosion of violence against it. Where they might have at least been expected to film something, they resolutely refused to use the apparatus in the way it was intended and set about its subversion, even destruction, instead. Any meaning permitted via censored, conventional interpretation would be irrelevant to Basqueness, but sentiment through experience of the artefact was a valid transmission of frustration, anger and release that required only a slight shift in perception to foster participation in that which Bego˜na Vicario describes as ‘an attitude of rupture’.10 This was creation without consequence, immune from censorship, inured to audience response, and a simplification of the filmmaking process that set these modernists against the limitations of their celluloid canvas. Political and aesthetic coherence was in the act of fusing creation with destruction. The nonsense that resulted nonetheless evoked a sensibility of resistance, difference and separatism that can be interpreted as typically Basque. 142

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Sponsored by X Films, Balerdi painted frame by frame upon fragments of old Tarzan movies featuring tribal dancers, charging elephants and scattering antelopes that did not even feature Tarzan for Homenaje a Tarz´an (La cazadora inconsciente) (Homage to Tarzan: The Unconscious Hunter, 1969) and interspersed these rotoscoped images cut to jungle drums with his own sketchy approximation of a fight between an absent hero and a gorilla in a narrative that staggered towards a cliffhanger that remained forever unresolved in the next unrealized instalment. The short therefore indicated the stalling of a history whose resolution was withheld, pending effort, imagination and language. Instead of describing a heroic rescue, this stump of a story provoked viewers to look back on a pointless film from the viewpoint of a dead end, from where ‘brushstrokes become more relevant, take center stage in themselves, to the detriment of what they represent.’11 If this was a comment on the lack of evolution of the Basque Country three decades on from the end of the Spanish Civil War, it was neither explicit nor open to accusations of being implied, but audience frustration with narrative and form certainly courted an equivalent sentiment. Another painter who attacked celluloid was Aguirre, whose eight short films including four animated works bore the umbrella title of Anticine (1962–66). Beyond any semblance of recognizable cinematic conventions, these were rebellious works designed to liberate sentiment from censorship that emanated from Aguirre’s declaration that ‘I refused to admit that the film had to be, forcibly and legally so, 24 images per second.’12 Jean-Luc Godard had declared that film was truth 24 frames a second, but Aguirre punching holes in frames so that the projector light pierced the film was an attack on the perception of truth itself that might literally burn the retinas of anyone who saw it. The challenge to sight, perception and memory was more geometric in its expression but no less anarchic in his Uts Cero (Zero [in Euskara], Zero [in Castilian], 1969), which consists of a white dot against a black background (and a soundtrack of piercing electronic music hiding softer tones by Luis de Pablo) that enlarges and then shrinks and is an ‘all or nothing’ dialogue between everything and the void that challenges its audience to decide which is which. The consequence of these Basque artists working on film was a dissolution of the rigid criteria for a work’s inclusion or exclusion from categories of art and sub-categories of cinema such as performance piece, gallery work, genre, animation and short film. In other words, these painter/sculptor/filmmakers broke the ‘rules of citizenship’ for film and expressed a revolutionary sentiment instead. The monumental work in this regard is Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren (1970), which Jos´e Antonio Sistiaga concluded under the patronage of X Films after almost 18 months of painting individual frames for a ‘silent symphony of forms, colours and structures’.13 Despite running 70 minutes, Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren (a nonsensical title) was classified as a short film by the Ministerio de Cultura (Ministry of Culture) in Madrid, which could not conceive of the film as a film.14 Nothing less than the perception of time under Francoism was therefore altered

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by Sistiaga whose experiment succeeded in provoking the censor to compress the film’s expansive duration and provocation into the more manageable, belittling category of a short. Each frame of Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren is a painting with thousands of these unrepeatable miniatures passing before the projector bulb for over an hour at 24 frames per second. The film is a blizzard of red, blue and green spots, amoebic droplets and shimmering stains whose intensity approaches three-dimensionality. In motion the film sometimes resembles time-lapse footage of cellular growth, the flare of a far-away nebula, or a pulsing, blood-filled ovum, accumulating in a hypnotic reverie in which the viewer perceives life and sentient movement. Smears, smudges, scratches, burns, tears and breakages were all part of its few projections or ‘performances’ requiring the viewer’s ‘complete attention and mindfulness, and if these conditions were not met, the film would either suck him in or violently repel him.’15 Yet Sistiaga could not have imagined that the only way to see his film today would become the digitized copy at the EF/FV and that the viewer before the computer screen now has the ability to pause the flow at any moment for a clear image of each frame. Thus, the film’s syntax reveals itself as myriad dried droplets, scribbles, brushstrokes and colourful splashes that spread beyond the frame. Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren represents the zenith of experimental animation in the dual sense of both its triumph and its occupying an imaginary point that was above a specific territory. Beyond the understanding of centralized forces and authorities, the nonsense and sensibility of these animated films provoked centripetal or centrifugal sentiments that could be understood as feelings of inclusion or exclusion in the Basque Country. As a cinema of citizens these shorts were belligerent, transgressive and alien. And thus, as a cinema of sentiment, they were ideal.

Budding Filmmakers: Kimuak Meaning ‘sprouts’ or ‘buds’ in Euskara, the name Kimuak suits a scheme that since 1998 has professed to ‘gather the new buds that germinate in the Basque short filmmaking every spring, so as to take them to every corner of the world.’16 The enterprise originated during an annual, week-long festival of fantasy and horror films in San Sebastian, whose sidebar short film competition was inundated with quality entries. The festival’s director Jos´e Luis Rebordinos, who became director of the SSFF in 2010, presented the idea of a special catalogue for short films to Amaia Rodr´ıguez, then Director of Cultural Projects in the Basque government and the first catalogue was published by the local council under the initial directorship of Ane Segurado, followed by Ana Araizaga and then Txema Mu˜noz in 2002. In some cases, filmmakers have graduated to making ‘long’ films, such as Pablo Malo, who made Jardines deshabitados (Uninhabited Gardens, 2000) for Kimuak prior to the feature-length Fr´ıo sol de invierno (Cold Winter Sun, 2004). Others, such as Koldo Almandoz, who can boast of six shorts 144

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in the scheme, have never made this transition, preferring the short film for itself. The success of Kimuak under Mu˜noz is recognized by Jara Y´an˜ ez in her survey of short films made in Spain between 2000 and 2009 for ‘its pioneering experience [which] has been, additionally, a true benchmark and a model to follow both for the rest of the Autonomous Communities and for the private companies that have been created to fulfil the same functions.’17 Indeed, copycat ventures include the Cat´alogo de Cortometrajes Andaluces (2002), Programa Curtas en Galicia (2003), Hecho en Castilla la Mancha (2004), Madrid en Corto (2005), Cat´alogo Jara en Extremadura (2006), Canarias en Corto (2006), Short Cat (2008) and Curts Comunitat Valenciana (2008).18 In 2005 Kimuak became part of the EF/FV and thus part of a national rather than local institution, one with appropriate technical capabilities in different formats. Kimuak is now a nonprofit enterprise funded by the Department of Culture of the Basque government and its objectives are the promotion, dissemination and distribution of short films, particularly via real and virtual film festivals, as well as enabling contacts with television networks and international distributors. Each March the scheme invites submissions from filmmakers born or resident in the Comunidad Aut´onoma de Euskadi (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, hereafter CAE) or whose production company is based there and in July an independent panel of audio-visual professionals selects the works for the Kimuak catalogue based on their quality and suitability. Prior to 2005 there were two catalogues made, one since discontinued containing a wide range of films for domestic consumption, and the other for international dissemination and containing a small selection, which has attained considerable prestige. The catalogue consists of information for interested festivals, a single DVD containing all selected shorts with subtitles in at least four languages (English, French, Italian and German) and is made ready for distribution by September. When the film is in Euskara it is also subtitled in Castilian and when it is in a language other than Euskara the subtitle options include Euskara. Then in September alongside the SSFF the chosen shorts are privately screened to the filmmakers and their production teams as well as some guests of the SSFF including representatives of other festivals, for whom Kimuak is a mark of quality assurance. It has also proven indicative of a third Basque wave, whose centrifugal dissemination and dialogue with films, themes, festivals and other media from elsewhere makes it a showcase for the contemporary Basque cinema of sentiment. Following release, short films tend to have a life of their own, winning prizes and finding new audiences on novel platforms many years after their making, and tracking their trajectories is not always possible. Nonetheless, figures gathered from Y´an˜ ez and provided by Mu˜noz for the years 2010–12 show that the years 2003 (801 festivals and 133 prizes) and 2005 (1,378 festivals and 323 prizes) were particularly successful, largely because the sixth edition in 2003) included El tren de la bruja (The Witch’s Train, Koldo Serra, 2003) and 7:35 de la ma˜nana (7:35 in the Morning, Nacho Vigalondo, 2003), which received over 75 international prizes and an Oscar

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nomination.19 The 2005 haul of 323 prizes awarded included an Oscar nomination ´ for Eramos pocos (One Too Many, Borja Cobeaga, 2005) and the tenth anniversary of Kimuak in 2007 was celebrated by the selection of the 12 best short films of the scheme’s first decade by a jury of 78 international filmmakers, critics and industry professionals. The legacy of Kimuak includes the international career trajectories of many of those it has fostered, including Nacho Vigalondo, Daniel S´anchez Ar´evalo, Koldo Serra, Asier Altuna, Borja Cobeaga, Luiso Berdejo and Gorka Merchan. In addition, Kimuak shorts have made use of numerous Basque actors including ´ Mariv´ı Bilbao, Kandido Uranga, Alex Angulo, Patxi Ugalde and Saturnino Garc´ıa, as well as popular Spanish actors such as Blanca Portillo, Elena Anaya, Najwa Nimri, Luis Tosar and Marta Etura. On the downside, however, Y´an˜ ez identifies overwhelming male domination in the arena of short-filmmaking in Spain that is corroborated by Kimuak, for which there is a constant average of just one or two films by a female director in each annual catalogue.20 On the whole, Kimuak is characterized by the peripatetic and polyglot approach of its filmmakers, who set their shorts in worldwide settings and use such a wide range of languages (including Euskara, English, Castilian, French, Italian, Russian, Polish and Khmer) that their role as little flagships for the contemporary Basque community and cinema of sentiment signals a global awareness that rejects any previous restrictions regarding language and/or location in the formulation of a definition of what Basque cinema might and could be. In addition, the freedom to mix and mash-up genres is a clear indication of creative liberties enjoyed by new Basque filmmakers, who tend to make films that avoid easy or absolute classification.

Herding Catalogues: Hybrids, Mash-ups, Parodies and Pastiche Kimuak is a platform for the constitution of a Basque community of sentiment characterized by change and innovation; one which does not posit a restrictive sense of Basqueness, and departs from traditions and social structures to create new insights. It engages with local situations regarding universal themes such as family configurations and lifestyles, but does so in a way open to contemporary forms of expression and hybrid artistic configurations as privileged venues for artistic fulfilment. The fact that the short films comprising the 1998–2012 catalogues of Kimuak resist categorization is indicative of numerous fresh perspectives emanating from and looking back upon Basque cinema. Many are hybrid films that favour heterogeneity over homogeneity and contamination over purity, thereby positing mutability and instability (of genres as well as the people they feature and represent) as key themes while rejecting the classification of films (and those who make and watch them) into rigid or absolute categories.21 Kimuak is thus at the centre of what has become a centrifugal cultural tradition in contemporary Basque cinema, one that spins off a multiplicity of genres and a panoply of creativity. Fiction dominates but several documentaries have also featured since 2008, including 146

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As¨amara (Jon Gara˜no & Ra´ul L´opez, 2008) and On the Line (Jon Gara˜no, 2008), which investigate child labour in Ethiopia and Mexican immigrants attempting to cross into the US respectively. Social protest also inspires Pregunta por m´ı (Ask about Me, Bego˜na Vicario, 1996) about a woman whose kidney was removed without her consent, and Haragia (Meat, Bego˜na Vicario, 1999), which juxtaposes archive footage and animation to represent cases of kidnapping and torture. Yet in each of these films the victims are always non-Basque Others, either foreigners in the Basque Country or strangers in another strange land, thereby displacing Basque concerns and locating social problems elsewhere. Other documentaries are similarly outward-looking: Dirty Martini (Iban del Campo, 2009) essays a star of Coney Island burlesque, La presa (The Dam, Jorge Rivero, 2009) examines the ´ construction and decoration of an Asturian dam, and Coptos (Alvaro Sau, 2011) tells of a young man who left Cairo to live a spiritual life in the Ryan valley. Animated films look elsewhere too and range from the fantastical kiddy-tale of Tortolika eta tronbon (Tortolika and Trombone, Joxean Mu˜noz, 1998) to the dark fable Daisy Cutter (Enrique Garc´ıa & Rub´en Salazar, 2010) in which Iraqi children are obliterated by American bombs. Techniques range from the animation of drawings made by children living with Aids in a Goan clinic in Bajo la almohada (Under the Pillow, Isabel Herguera, 2012) to the high-definition digital rendition of Nowhereseville USA in the Pixar-like Beerbug (Ander Mendia, 2012). The legacy of Basque experimental animation is also evident in the inky nightmare of shape-shifting figures in Hezurbeltzak (A Common Grave, Izibene O˜nederra, 2007) and the workshop piece Berbaoc (coordinated by Isabel Herguera, 2008) that illustrates a soundscape via an array of organic life-forms. While a few shorts in the Kimuak catalogue recover the ethnographic and nostalgic tendency of projecting the Basque landscape and its traditions, they are laughed offscreen by those that openly parody those elements. Ahate pasa (Duck Crossing, Koldo Almandoz, 2009), for example, is a hybrid mockumentary about several generations of Basque film-star ducks that demolishes the pretensions of the biopic. Composed as a faux-hagiographic collage that juxtaposes clips of famous filmmakers presumably discussing recalcitrant actors with shots of subtitled ducks quacking at the camera, the film displays a characteristic lack of fear towards the past that approximates vandalism and therefore underlines the lack of any allusions to Francoism or the Civil War in the Kimuak catalogue, which arguably effects a complete break from those two obsessions of Spanish cinema. Indeed, the fact that parody, pastiche and comic shorts have achieved the most success suggests that humour is a universal language that is also an ideal vehicle for universal sentiment. Fantasy film is another realm in which genre hybridization is frequent, wherein, as James Walters explains, a conscious effort is made to depart from the confines of ordinary, everyday existence according to the rules of reasonable logic.22 Amongst others, Dortoka uhartea (Turtle’s Island, Maru Solares, 2002), El aire que respiro (The Air I Breathe, Sara Bilbatua, 2004), El so˜nador (The

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Dreamer, Oskar Santos, 2004) and For(r)est in the Des(s)ert (Luiso Berdejo, 2006) all feature protagonists striving to escape an oppressive reality and taking refuge in other, possibly oneiric worlds. Although horror is an element in many of the short films, its insinuations do not constitute a dominant genre, but rather a tone or mood in the natural universe that is rendered as ‘a threat that is outside the realm of normalcy, reality or history.’23 This otherworldly threat is elusive, undefined and no longer Francoism or ETA, which features in only a single Kimuak short: La vaca (The Cow, Gorka Esteban, 1997). Instead, it is a force that is both within and far beyond the subject, leading to ‘core confrontations with abject terror, otherness, and issues of gender identity, dislocation and fragmentation.’24 Horror films commonly address the pressing fears of communities, thereby clarifying cultural, social, political and sexual anxieties in a particular context. To this end, there are deep social fears about the breakdown of these communities underpinning several short films that are more superficially categorized by generic shocks and twists. Examples include Amor de madre (Mother’s Love, Koldo Serra & Gorka V´azquez, 1999), which subverts Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) in its grand guignol tale of a dutiful son’s defence until death of his serial-killer mother, Torre (Tower, Oskar Santos, 2000) about murderous impulses in a possibly sentient building, the aforementioned Jardines deshabitados illustrating brutal punishments for curiosity, and M´aquina (Machine, Gabe Ib´an˜ ez, 2006), which takes to extremes the reworking of horror motifs in a particular context and provides the first representative case study.

´ Body Horror: Maquina The silent M´aquina received 41 international prizes including the Special Award at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival. It follows a young woman, who is kidnapped and then released, whereupon a medical examination reveals that a metal grinder has been surgically inserted into her vagina. The film concludes with her seduction of her probable kidnapper and consequent destruction of his penis. The transformation of human bodies into grotesque Freudian nightmares of hybridized flesh and metal is clearly inspired by Tetsuo (Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, 1989), about a man whose penis turns into a gigantic power drill, but M´aquina appropriates and reworks the motif in a way that illustrates the ideas of Julia Kristeva, who maintains that the abject is located in sexual perversity, torture, bodily wastes, murder, death, and the feminine body.25 Kristeva defines the abject as a construction of otherness that threatens and disrupts the processes of life, which evokes human reactions (disgust, horror, fear) caused by the loss of any distinction between subject and object. The primary example of what may cause such reactions is the corpse, but other items able to elicit similar reactions include open wounds, human excrement and even the skin that forms on the surface of warm milk. Consequently, the female body is considered a perpetually worthy 148

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subject of horror in art and art in horror and, as Barbara Creed explains, ‘this is why the horror film – delving always into the abject as a means for terrorizing audiences with everything from bodily excrement (blood, sweat, vomit) to sexual perversion as sexualized, violent death – relies so heavily on the female character, be she in the role of besieged heroine or monster, in order to subvert further the comfort level of the viewers.’26 M´aquina locates the abject on several levels simultaneously and makes it omnipresent from the start. The silent, unnamed protagonist is physically characterized by her long, dark, unruly hair, which becomes a motif when strands are seen floating in her bath and even the serum bottle connected to her in hospital. When she arrives at the hotel, cockroaches scurry from the bed and get into the glass of milk from which she drinks. When she looks at herself in the dirty, broken mirror, her reflection is fragmented, distorted and grim. After her abduction, her semi-naked body is found covered by rubbish in a street that has become a dumping site and, when taken to hospital, a gruesome L-shaped scar on her body prompts an ultrasound scan that reveals the metal grinder inside her. As Creed notes of horror films that feature female monsters, ‘the violated border is defined in terms that are significantly feminized: blood that cannot be appropriately contained or controlled, bodily organs – especially the vagina and the mouth – that threaten the male with castration.’27 The protagonist has literally become a castrating machine: the embodiment of vagina dentata and the purveyor of its supreme castration anxiety. Moreover, while her ultrasound scan clearly resonates with those that monitor the evolution of a foetus, her ‘baby’ is an inanimate metal object that inverts the reproductive capacity of the female body. More abject images follow her return to the hotel: blood drips from her body and she inspects her vagina by inserting a carrot, which is promptly shredded. Amazingly, she laughs, the blood flow ‘rewinds’ and she seems to attain a kind of happiness. Seductively dressed, she dances in a night club and takes a man back to her room for a climax of naked, bloody, violent slaughter. Finally, before leaving, she looks outside through the window and smiles, thereby suggesting that she accepts herself as a humanmachine hybrid that is not exempt from problematic interrogations of this fusion of female subjectivity, devouring sexuality and vengeful purpose. Yet M´aquina also uses the female body as a vehicle for furthering the expression of a monstrous life form and posits it as an object of abjection. Once again, the protagonist is a non-Basque (played here by Mexican actress Iazua Larios). This allows the abject, which combines the abuser and the abused, to be located in the foreign female body far from the Basque context. Horror can reveal much about gender and social and historical circumstances that are so unsettling and threatening as to become disruptive and transformative. M´aquina has an experimental artistic quality which combines fragments of animation, images in fast-forward and fantastical inserts that ramp up the feeling of the uncanny in respect of its location. At the same time, however, it subverts notions of female victimization, reproductive functions and desire in the construction of a monstrous feminine body that is so pointedly

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Figure 13. The woman (Iazua Larios) inspects her body horror in M´aquina (Machine, Gabe Ib´an˜ ez, 2006).

non-Basque as to possibly protest too much. As a counterpoint to the chauvinist erasure of the female from any form of protagonism in much of Basque cinema, M´aquina is brief, pointed and extremely bloody.

˜ Penile Peril: Choque, Un novio de mierda and 7:35 de la manana Several of the aforementioned shorts subvert and question underlying social structures (particularly in relation to masculinity) in order to reconfigure their community of sentiment via the recalibration of retrograde mores in favor of more balanced and contemporary values. Continuing the desecration of masculinity indicated by M´aquina, several Kimuak films mock machismo. Choque (Bump, Nacho Vigalondo, 2005) follows Diego’s discovery of a bumper car track in an underground location. He eagerly buys tokens for himself and his girlfriend but their romantic adventure is spoiled by a gang of boys who turn up to determinedly bump into them both. Diego (played by the director) is stuck in his car, which is ironically named Ninja, while the boys crash into his girlfriend in a manner that takes on sexual connotations. The furious Diego erupts in a fit of crazed carbumping against one of the assailants until his embarrassed girlfriend leaves him vomiting, bloody and limping. The film thus targets masculinity as a gendered enactment that reflects a social role informed by cultural expectations. Diego feels obliged to rage, though his girlfriend is unbothered. His ensuing performance of masculinity combines stereotypical impulses associated with violent macho traits. He shouts and threatens the boys while shamefully immobilized and his machismo is further ridiculed by the infantilizing vehicle of a bumper car. Choque therefore questions, satirises and subverts the kind of hegemonic masculinity that is a regulatory fiction which ‘articulates various social relations of power as an issue of gender normality.’28 When the undone Diego manages to escape the 150

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Figure 14. Tipo (Nacho Vigalondo) (centre) pauses before leading his captive chorus in 7:35 de la ma˜nana (7:35 in the Morning, Nacho Vigalondo, 2003).

hellish underground track, his composed and indifferent girlfriend awaits him in the driving seat of her car. ‘Don’t you want to know who won?’ asks Diego in a final, pathetic attempt to reinstate a semblance of masculinity in a context in which, both visually and discursively, any value that might be attached to it has vanished. Un novio de mierda (A Shitty Boyfriend, Borja Cobeaga, 2010) similarly problematizes normative masculinity by highlighting its internal contradictions and instabilities in this slight tale in which Pablo visits his ex-girlfriend after four months without contact, only to use her bathroom. Then, on leaving, he is accused by his ex of literally going to her flat to shit. Against his protestations, she reminds him of his reluctance to use public restrooms and, in an attempt to portray himself in a more flattering light, Pablo assures her his actions were an excuse to see her again and renew their relationship, to which she agrees. The last shot frames the renewed couple on a sofa as her assertion – ‘It will work out this time’ – are contradicted by the expression on Pablo’s face. In this case, the selfishness of the male character, who only thinks about his immediate needs and nothing of their consequences is targeted along with his evident lack of resources and abject cowardice encapsulated in the film’s punning title. 7:35 de la ma˜nana (7:35 in the Morning, Nacho Vigalondo, 2003) features a woman (Marta Belenguer) beginning her breakfast routine in a cafeteria in which staff and customers are strangely subdued. Suddenly, a young man (again played by 151

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the film’s director) breaks into a song and dance routine that involves everyone else present singing successive lines of a song and performing an awkward choreography that he anxiously encourages. The song reveals he is in love with a woman he sees there every morning at 7:35 a.m., but that he is frightened of approaching her directly. This should be a grand romantic gesture, but the woman’s surprise turns into terror when she realizes that the clientele are being coerced and that the man’s control of the bizarre situation is down to the dynamite strapped around his torso. She manages to call the police on her mobile phone and sirens are soon heard, but as the terminally shy pretender concludes his song he leaves the cafeteria with a sack of confetti and an explosion sends its contents back inside where it falls on the stunned woman. It has been suggested that the film inverts the patterns of Hollywood musicals through the perspective of deformation present in Valle-Incl´an’s esperpento, which includes the parodic re-enactment of instructions provided by the film’s ‘director’ (here playing the main role), thereby unmasking the pretence of spontaneity in Hollywood musicals.29 A similar though less tragic ploy is attempted in the sequence of the Madison dance in Bande a` part (Band of Outsiders, Jean-Luc Godard, 1964), which also uses grainy monochrome and allusions to the most remarkable quality associated with musical performance, that is, ‘its spontaneous emergence out of a joyous and responsive attitude toward life.’30 This therefore dooms the protagonist’s attempt at embodying the myth of authenticity (since the musical relies on meticulous preparation and orchestration of all audiovisual elements and performances) to failure. In addition, as with Bande a` part in which Odile (Anna Karina) is ultimately left stranded, the dystopian ending of 7:35 de la ma˜nana dialectically engages and antithetically opposes the usual happy ending of its utopian, Hollywood counterpart. In a manner that perhaps parodies the ambitions of the Basque cinema of sentiment, for all his efforts at staging a Hollywood number in his local Basque bar, our ‘hero’ is incapable of attaining his object of desire and settles for self-destruction, while a final irony is provided by the fact that the short film he briefly inhabits was nominated for an Oscar.

Basque Heritage Revisited: Transforming the Unique Nation Very few Kimuak shorts seek to reclaim the spirit of Basque heritage films: ´ Ondar ahoak (Mouths of Sand, Angel Aldarondo, 2010) is an oneiric elegy to lives lived by and on the ocean and Hauspo soinua (The Sound of the Bellows, Inaz Fern´andez, 2000) tells of a child who is left with his grandparents for a few days and how this experience allows him to discover Basque traditions and a way of life that the film nostalgically recreates. However, several aforementioned films directed or co-directed by Asier Altuna satirise Basque traditions, as does his feature-length Aupa Etxebeste! (Hooray for Etxebeste, 2004) which was codirected with Telmo Esnal and is discussed in Chapter One. Topeka (Ram Fight, Asier Altuna, 2002) offers an allegory of the Basque conflict in the nonsensical 152

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riot of head-butting that erupts amongst the male-dominated audience betting on battling rams. 40 ezetz (40 Says No, Asier Altuna & Telmo Esnal, 1999) explores the Basque tradition of competitions between rock-dragging oxen but veers into science-fiction as a scheme to clone champion bullocks becomes an affront to the claims of singularity and particularity that have been associated in discourses of patriotism with the purity and uniqueness of Basqueness. In the same parodic vein, Artalde (Sheep Flock, Asier Altuna, 2010) relocates the shepherd (a mainstay of Basque iconography) to the contemporary urban environment of downtown Bilbao, where his flock of humans wanders happily until another shepherd with his own flock appears and the film ends with numerous urban male shepherds trying to herd different groups of people. Clearly a cautionary political allegory in which the masses are rallied and led by the articulation of a few simple sounds, Artalde folds the past into the present in order to juxtapose purposeful traditions with aimless post-modernism in a pointedly parodic manner that illustrates Linda Hutcheon’s view that ‘through a double process of installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference.’31 These shorts pretend to look inward and recuperate myths, symbols, customs and sports associated with the Basque Country, but they also question and criticize blind adherence to traditions and diagnose the malignancy of machismo in order to prompt fresh resolutions to the conflict because, as Susanne Kord and Elisabeth Krimmer argue, ‘there is an inextricable link between the fate of masculinity and that of the nation. Narratives of empowered masculinity often go together with images of dominant masculinity.’32 Even the animated short Zienek gehiago iraun (Who Lasts Longer, Gregorio Muro, 2011) signals this link by tracking the bleak, life-long consequences of young Basque boys playing chicken on train tracks. Basque sociocultural norms are evidently crucial to the community of sentiment and the Kimuak films that essay traditional gender roles, however parodic or satirical, depend largely on foreknowledge of Basque customs and sports, family configurations and their respective normative structures in order to effectively, if affectionately, debunk them. However, because comedies ‘play(s) on deviation from socio-cultural norms’ they also allow for cathartic laughter in the Aristotelian sense as fault is found, blame is placed and the culprit is lampooned.33 The details of a crime may be specific, but because the actions of the male buffoon are depicted as errors, they also ‘speak of the universal and do not make invectives of particular persons’, thereby provoking a unifying virtue in the audience, which is the purging of the ridiculous via laughter.34

Modern Families: Damages and Breakages Drama is the dominant genre of Kimuak and those marked by social denunciation include Dos encuentros (Two Meetings, Alan Griffin, 2004), Sarean (In the Net, 153

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Asier Altuna, 2006), Lagun mina (Intimate Friend, Jos´e Mari Goenaga, 2011) and Los monstruos no existen (Monsters Do Not Exist, Paul Urkijo, 2012). A variation of drama in the form of love story is achieved in Sinton´ıa (In Tune, Jos´e Mari Goenaga, 2005), which has received more prizes than any other Kimuak production and whose director went on to co-direct the feature-length 80 egunean (For Eighty Days, 2010) with Jon Gara˜no, which is analysed in Chapter One. Within this broad category, however, there is an overwhelming concern with the ideal and reality of the modern family in which childhood and old age are signalled as sites of ´ loneliness and despair. When the mother walks out on her family in Eramos pocos (One Too Many, Borja Cobeaga, 2005), her husband and son decide to rescue her mother from a nursing home so as to have someone at home to cook and clean. The new family unit suits them all and even when the men realize that they have brought home the wrong woman the advantages of the arrangement result in their mutual pretence being merrily continued. Amona putz! (Inflatable Grandma, Telmo Esnal, 2009) adds a surrealist tone in its sketch of a couple with two children bringing an inflatable grandmother with them on vacation that can ´ be conveniently blown up and deflated according to their needs. Meanwhile, El nunca lo har´ıa (He Would Never Do It, Anartz Zuazua, 2009) takes this developing critique of opportunism and selfishness in the contemporary family unit to vicious ends in its portrayal of grandparents as dogs, who can be adopted or abandoned at whim. In addition, each film pursues the notion that men are incompetent and fallible and that traditions may be modified in order to create, if only opportunistically, a new sense of community that is more malleable. In this aspect especially, the third Basque wave of the 2000s displays its progressive universality as a cinema of sentiment by both opposing the phallocentrism of the radical Basque cinema of sentiment that demanded a centripetal cinema of citizens from the first Basque wave of the 1980s, and concluding the shift to a more centrifugal cinema of sentiment that was begun by the second Basque wave of the 1990s. Yet it also claims universality by positing awareness of broken homes, fractured families, estranged adolescents and stagnant marriages as universal problems rather than blaming local or national political or ideological causes.35 Violence against children, for example, takes multiple forms in Kimuak and is exemplified in Por un infante difunto (On a Deceased Infant, Tinieblas Gonz´alez, 1998), a semiautobiographical black and white film with instances of horror that portrays the life of a child in a violent and hostile environment both inside and outside the family. Equally grimly, Ecosistema (Ecosystem, Tinieblas Gonz´alez, 2003) illustrates how the death of a daughter at the hands of her alcoholic father will be temporarily assuaged and probably thereafter repeated by a new birth in the family. Thus, Kimuak shorts that essay social and affective dysfunction tend to identify abuse and ´ neglect as ingrained and cyclical (the happy ending of Eramos pocos is merely an exception that proves the rule), while also looking beyond the immediate political arena and exclusively national concerns that define their citizenship in order

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A Child is Being Killed: La guerra La guerra (The War, Luiso Berdejo & Jorge C. Dorado, 2005) is another drama about suffering children that incorporates elements of horror at the visual and discursive levels. Its shuffled narrative reveals how a boy seeks refuge in an abandoned house that had previously terrified him after setting traps for soldiers; but when he leaves the wardrobe, he slips on the blood of a victim and fatally breaks his pelvis. It opens on a black screen and a young boy’s voiceover in French – ‘Second person of the simple present of the verb to be: you are’ – followed by his explanation that he is hiding in a wardrobe, trying to save himself and his baby sister from a German soldier during World War II. In this heightened moment of awareness it is evident that the verb eˆtre that he recites to calm his nerves means both to be in a location (the wardrobe) and to exist (as in French and English, but not in Castilian or Euskara, which have other verbs for that function). The boy is engaged in nothing less than a desperate, survivalist plot of ‘je pense, donc je suis’ (I think, therefore I am) and this idea that eˆtre refers to our existence or state of being (as well as to our physical location) also owes much to existentialist philosophy and works such as Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’Etre et le N´eant (Being and Nothingness, 1943).36 This simple yet complex recitation is then juxtaposed with the last words of the boy in the process of dying, of not being anymore. Vicky LeBeau contends that to contemplate the death of a child goes against the ideal that children are not killed, not hurt and not hated.37 Yet the war is encapsulated in the fate of this boy, whose father has died and whose mother has been raped and tortured and probably killed too. Susan Sontag reflects on responses to atrocities when observing war pictures, and concludes that even when the horror is vivid, its contemplation does not implicate the viewer in the outrage and insanity of war.38 However, La guerra questions whether the film itself is a privileged form of sadism against an audience engaged in distancing itself from the events onscreen by also incorporating a voiceover in the second person in which the character addresses himself: ‘But you had a family, you went to school, you had friends. Do you remember?’ This distancing tool by which the child imagines himself as another re-organizes his thoughts in a manner that allows for the inclusion of memories and reflections mediated by the address to a ‘you’ that is and at the same time is not the ‘I’ of the beholder. This echoes the observation made by JeanLuc Godard in For Ever Mozart (1996), which ‘analyses the gap between actual suffering during war and the images that document this pain’39 , that the ‘I’ of ‘I think’ is not the same as the ‘I’ of ‘therefore I am’ because the relation between body and spirit is unproven. The address simultaneously provokes intimacy between the character (‘you’) and the viewer (also ‘you’), thereby implicating

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to engage with the widespread problems that inform and shape more universal sentiment.

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the audience and signalling its powerlessness to prevent the death of the child, who narrates with a meticulous and impossible awareness of his condition: ‘You have clamped your marrow bone between the third and the fourth vertebra of your vertebral column.’ When reflecting on images of dying children, Lebeau concludes that ‘at the limits of language, of culture, of knowledge, the child can always be used to make the familiar strange, the domestic uncanny, in a way that also draws on the image of the child as an incitement to compassion, pity, feeling – above all to the future.’40 This film’s strategy duly involves and distances the audience, forcing it to objectify the detail of the suffering while also responding with emotional subjectivity to the melodrama. La guerra ends before the child dies, with him reflecting – ‘Well, it is the war’ – and thereby re-using eˆtre to define this war and the concept in general in terms of its specific location, ongoing occurrence and questionable existence. At the same time, therefore, this image of a dying child is removed from the Basque Country, being located in France during World War II, yet reminds Basque audiences of films and newsreel about Guernica, the Spanish Civil War and terrorism in the Basque Country, and remains philosophically resonant because of the universality of its theme.

A Summary of Shorts More than any other aspect of Basque cinema, the fractured history and contemporary boom in short filmmaking attests to the evolution away from hermetic, centripetal citizenship towards more universal, centrifugal sentiment. Whereas Basque short films during the dictatorship were mostly clandestine and, even with their reduced length and home-made formats, a barely viable means of cultural expression, they did mark the territory of Basque cinema in ethnographic and linguistic terms as well as via aesthetic experimentation. Nowadays, the impact of new screen technologies on production and distribution has rendered short films ideal vehicles for bursts of humour, horror, social commentary and political critique. Filmed, edited, uploaded, downloaded and shared around the world to festivals, online platforms and incalculable spectators, the success of Basque short films, particularly in relation to Kimuak and its fostering of a third Basque wave, prompts the question of whether the community of sentiment is not merely Basque but now online and therefore global. Above and beyond the multifarious amateur and semi-professional productions competing amidst the white noise of the internet, Kimuak has built upon the tradition of short films in the Basque Country to provide vital opportunities, contacts, funding, facilities and showcase exhibitions that bestow a universally recognized mark of quality upon new Basque filmmakers, one that is appropriate to the worldwide arena in which they compete. Kimuak has become a magnet for awards by participating in a wide range of national and international competitions and it has encouraged numerous filmmakers to graduate to full-length features without ever denigrating the form and possibilities of the 156

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short film itself. In sum, the third Basque wave delivers a manifesto of artistic creativity which contends that Basque cinema can go anywhere and do anything provided the sentiment it engenders is authentic, empathetic and connects. The films of the Kimuak generation are the e´lan vital of a new Basque community and cinema of sentiment that is at the same time located in a place, ongoing and evolving, and aware of its connections to wider worlds, both real and virtual.

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8 Longing and Belonging: Transnational and Diasporic Cinema To examine Basque cinema in exile demands rethinking fundamental concepts of subjectivity, history and memory. It also requires the development of new models of experience and ideology present in all processes of exile. Analysis of the most salient examples of Basque transnational cinema, Basque cinema in exile and Basque diasporic cinema, reveals complex and diverse portrayals of nonresident Basques and their different levels of affiliation to the Basque community of sentiment. Transnational filmmaking must be analysed in relation to Basque history, which has always been marked by mobility and displacement, and is linked to the early manifestations of Basque cinema, since the majority of films produced and promoted by the Basque government during the Spanish Civil War were made in Paris. In the following decades of the Francoist dictatorship, exiled Basque nationalists used film to propagate national identity and facilitate the social links of members and supporters. This chapter therefore explores Basque films which originated in exile and examines the concept of diaspora as it may be applied to contemporary films created in America. Like all transnational films, the Basque examples belong to two (or more) different locations and they expose the contradictions inherent in the interactions between two ideological and political constructions. Amongst other topics, they explore fundamental ideological and political issues such as tradition and change, maintenance of Basque identity and innovation, belonging and displacement. Those analysed in this chapter respond to that which Wolfgang Welsch has defined as transculturality, a concept that refers not to separation but to exchange and interaction.1 There is a trend in contemporary Basque transnational film to expose such negotiations by focusing on uprooted characters and their negotiations with displacement, relocation, exile and 158

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Transnational cinema is defined and used in reference to cinema made by displaced filmmakers living in exile or diaspora; used as a mode of expressing the interstitial and artisanal modes of production, distribution and consumption; marked by the use of a hybrid stylistic forms, patterns of identification and ideological concerns; and ‘defined by [the] affirmation of difference’ as a mode of resistance to the homogenising forces of globalisation. In one sense, we can think of these clusters/themes as providing a framework for articulating the notion of transnational cinema to (cor)respond to the traffic and forces of globalization.2

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homeland, which are emotional and conflict-ridden but necessary to the struggle to achieve a sense of belonging. This trend will be considered in relation to Amaren ideia (Mum’s Idea, Maider Oleaga, 2010), in which three elders return to their homeland after 70 years of exile occasioned by the Civil War, and Zuretzako (For You, Javi Zubizarreta, 2011), which is the first American-made film in Euskara, telling the story of the filmmaker’s grandfather and his life as a shepherd in the United States. Both films take family as their most important theme and expose painful, necessary negotiations between people, times and places. The theoretical development of transnational film has recently received so much attention that any attempt at a single definition is a complex, incomplete and unwieldy undertaking. Nevertheless, as Vijay Devadas contends:

Throughout the history of Basque cinema there have been a number of coproductions or films set in other countries in which the themes and visual images transcend the national borders of their narratives, contexts of production and sociopolitical context. One example is the Basque-Cuban co-production Mait´e (Eneko Olasagasti & Carlos Zabala, 1994). Because a cinema of sentiment is partly about empathy between nations, so Mait´e explores the ideological and practical links that have endured between Cuba and the Basque Country since the 1950s, when their post-colonial, revolutionary fervour first surfaced. In order to save the family business, desperate Basque businessmen arrange to swap Basque eels for Cuban cigars in an exploitative hard-headed deal between two communities of citizens. However, in Havana the Basques and Cubans find that sentiment in the shape of empathy complicates and undoes things. The eponymous Mait´e is an infant mulatta whose questioning prompts revelatory truths: ‘¿Qu´e cosa es vasco?’ (What is Basque?) she asks and is answered: ‘¿Vasco? Es un pa´ıs . . . como Cuba.’ (Basque? It’s a country . . . like Cuba). The film illustrates myths, symbols and customs associated with Cuba and the Basque Country while also questioning their indebtedness to tradition. It represents both nations as engaged in ongoing projects in which the ‘community of sentiment must also be exposed to changes in a new context characterized by the increased salience of globalization and the transnational relations that go with it.’3 159

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A more recent example of this ongoing transnational relationship is the episode directed by Julio Medem in the portmanteau 7 d´ıas en la Habana (7 Days in Havana, 2012). Indeed, Medem has located films such as Los amantes del C´ırculo Polar (Lovers of the Arctic Circle, 2007), Ca´otica Ana (Chaotic Ana, 2007) and Habitaci´on en ´ Roma (Room in Rome, 2010) in several different elsewheres. Alex de la Iglesia filmed Perdita Durango (1997) in Mexico and took a new step into the international field with The Oxford Murders (2008), which was filmed in English with a cast headed by John Hurt and Elijah Wood. Recent developments in Basque cinema include San Sebastian-born Luiso Berdejo moving to Los Angeles in 2007 to direct Kevin Costner in The New Daughter (2009). His Violet (2013), which played in the Zabaltegi section of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, tells the story of a boy named Alex (Junio Valverde) living in Santa Monica, California, who spends his days with 5 (Leticia Dolera). Alex finds an old Polaroid of a girl he names Violet and searches for her through memories, fantasies and Super 8 footage shot by his grandfather in the Basque Country. These grainy images of a younger Alex playing on the beach in San Sebastian are juxtaposed with the Polaroid image of the mysterious Violet, thereby signifying movement towards the past and the future simultaneously. When the face of 5 finally replaces that of the unknown woman in the Polaroid, a substitution of the object of affection occurs that points to the practicalities of recognizing true love and discarding fantasies in the present. The film concludes with images of Alex’s grandmother shot by his grandfather in San Sebastian a few days before she died. Berdejo has claimed ‘to love [Santa Monica] as much as I love my hometown San Sebastian in Spain’ and the film duly conveys a harmonious sense of transnational experience and cultural integration.4 Another example is offered by cinematographer and lynchpin of the first wave of Basque cinema, Javier Aguirresarobe, working on Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) and Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013) as well as the New Moon (2009) and Eclipse (2010) episodes in the Twilight saga. The concept of displacement is one of the fundamental aspects of transnational cinema, yet rather more than professional opportunities pursued by the likes of Medem, Berdejo and Aguirresarobe, the more usual association in Basque cinema is with exile, which is a recurring reminder of otherness and endeavour throughout Basque history. Unsurprisingly, therefore, it is also a persistent theme in various areas of social, cultural and political life in the Basque Country, one that informs tradition, debate and expression in relation to religion, media, art and literature. As Pedro J. Oiarzabal states: The history of the Basques has always been mobile, both inside of and across geographical borders. From early commercial entrepreneurship in Europe, whale hunting in Newfoundland to Atlantic trade between the New and Old worlds, Basques carved out new lives in widely diverse ends of the labor industry, in widely disparate places.5

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Exilic cinema is dominated by the there and then in the homeland, diasporic cinema by its vertical relationship to the homeland and by its lateral relationship to the diaspora communities and experiences, and post-colonial ethnic and identity cinema by the exigencies of life here and now in the country in which the filmmakers reside.6

In An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Naficy analyses works made by filmmakers who have migrated or been exiled and who use film as an aesthetic response to the experience of exile, emigration and diaspora. He argues that exile is usually the result of the punishment for an offence, which entails the impossibility of return, and may be internal or external depending on the place one is expelled from. For Naficy, as in the present chapter, exile refers to ‘individuals or groups who voluntarily or involuntarily have left their country of origin and who maintain an ambivalent relationship with their previous and current places and cultures.’7 In this regard, it is important to note that the idea of Basque cinema in exile is usually linked ideologically to the efforts by the Basque nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and the dictatorship (1939–75), when exiles in Europe and America continued the work begun by the defeated Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea/Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party, hereafter EAJ/PNV). Several recent Basque films have attempted to recover historical memory by focussing on the repression and persecution of Basques during the dictatorship, including Tras un largo silencio (After a Long Silence, Sabin Egilior, 2007), El s´eptimo d´ıa (The Seventh Day, Sabin Egilior, 2006), Udazkena oraindik: memoria de la Guerra Civil en Hernani (Memories of the Civil War in Hernani, Sabin Egilior, 2006), A un paso (One Step Away, Txabi Ruiz, 2011) and Debekatuta dago oroitzea (To Remember is Forbidden, Txaber Larreategi & Josu Mart´ınez, 2010).8 The exiled Basque nationalist government was able to produce a number of propagandistic films that conveyed the sentiment of a nation destroyed by the Civil War and oppressed by Francoism in order to attract support from other Western countries and to project a view of the Basque nation as beleaguered but strong, rebellious and authentic, resolved to maintain its unique identity at all costs. Their films located the action in the Basque homeland and used old photographs and amateur films originating in the Basque Country for that purpose. The idea of the Basque Country propounded by these films was based to some extent upon romantic images of the traditional, rural world, which

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Yet all this hard work and versatility is also a necessary response to becoming strangers in strange lands, where the longing for a homeland may be somewhat assuaged by the establishment of a community in exile. Hamid Naficy coined the term ‘accented cinema’ in relation to the adoption of film as a medium of reinforcing identity for and by these communities in exile. Yet he also differentiated between three types of ‘accented’ films:

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appealed to Basque exiles, who felt nostalgia for the homeland and identified with the fight for its freedom. The first of these films was produced in Paris by the exiled government, which commissioned Nemesio Sobrevila to make three documentaries that reflected the worldview of the Basque nationalist republican side: Guernika (1937), Elai Alai (1938 [Elai Alai is the name of Guernica’s main square]) and Euzko deya (Basque Call, 1938). Their outlines are similar because they each start with an idyllic vision of the Basque people as agrarian, peaceful, democratic and Catholic, which is interrupted by the outbreak of war, and they all conclude with a call for international solidarity. Also relevant are the four 16mm documentaries shot and compiled between the late 1950s and the first half of the 1960s by Gotzon Elorza, a photographer and designer from Bilbao living in Paris, which are analysed in Chapter Seven. In addition, a notable example of nationalist political cinema made by exiles is the short film Los hijos de Gernika: la lucha del pueblo vasco por su libertad (Children of Gernika: Basque People’s Struggle for Freedom, Segundo Cazalis, 1968). Running just under half an hour, this was produced in Caracas by the EAJ/PNV and its youth organization, Euzko Gaztedi (EGI), and was financed by nationalist exiles in Venezuela. The film is a collage of photos, images and old movies from the Civil War, interspersed with clandestine images of amateur footage showing demonstrations that took place in the Basque Country in 1967 on the occasion of the Aberri Eguna (Day of the Homeland) in Pamplona and Primero de Mayo (Labour Day) in San Sebastian, which had both been broken up by Franco’s police. Despite its modest, even rudimentary production, Los hijos de Gernika was screened in several European countries and regions of America and was influential upon the Basque diaspora, although only seen clandestinely in the Basque Country. The extent of the Basque diaspora therefore needs to be explored in order to understand the often problematic connections between the host countries and the homeland. The diaspora has always been ‘an original and salient factor’ of Basque identity, which ‘includes the immigrant populations and their descendants spread and sown throughout the world living in the Basque diaspora, the maintenance of their ethnic identity, and their connections to their homeland.’9 Argitxu Campos Echecopar follows the French Basque writer Pierre Lhande in stating: ‘To be an authentic Basque there are three requirements: to carry a sonorous name that indicates one’s origin, to speak the language of the sons of Aitor, and to have an uncle in the Americas.’10 The concept of diaspora problematizes the concept of nationhood in relation to the Basque Country because it indicates that its community of citizens and/or sentiment is made up of members of various ethnic and national groups who have left the homeland or are descended from those who left. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur define diaspora as ‘displaced communities of people who have been dislocated from their native homeland through the movements of migration, immigration and exile.’11 However, St´ephane Dufoix

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observes that it has ‘become a term that refers to any phenomenon of dispersion from a place; the organization of an ethnic, national, or religious community in one or more countries; a population spread over more than one territory; the places of dispersion; any nonterritorial space where exchanges take place, and so on.’12 One might also refer to William Safran, Paul Gilroy and Robin Cohen for further clarification and argument; but, in essence, the term conveys the idea of transnational populations, living in one place, while still maintaining relations with their homelands.13 The Basque diaspora now lives in many host countries while regarding the original and imagined Basque community as a place that functions as a repository of traditions from which it has long since departed but is not at all estranged. It tends to be organized into communities, which have predominantly been established in Latin America and the United States. These organizations tend not to impose conditions of citizenship in the community and, indeed, cannot impose any legal criteria, but they often do all they can to encourage the growth of a community of sentiment and its affiliation with the homeland via such activities as music and dance, film screenings and scholarships for young people to experience their heritage. Gloria Totoricag¨uena has explored the Basque diaspora in detail by comparing ethnonationalism, transnationalism, and identity maintenance in the numerous host countries that have significant Basque immigration populations.14 She explains that Basques have linked themselves to the networks of relationships and meaning between host and home countries, imagining their community as a bridge between local and global identities. In this way, Basque communities have established their own self-awareness by creating group identities that are multiple and multilayered, that anchor this identity to the homeland but also incorporate their experiences of exile, immigration and life in the host society. Networks created by members of the Basque diaspora facilitate access to information about the host country and have recently been greatly enhanced by social media. These groupings then create and populate organizations that serve their particular economic, religious, social, psychological and cultural needs.15 In recent years, globalization and its effects have affected the Basque diaspora, its relations with the homeland, its understanding of ethnicity, and the general understanding of Basque identity, while, at the same time, Basque diaspora associations have underscored cultural and political activities in the Basque Country and enabled their global impact by dissemination and participation. Crucially, the internet functions as a global collaborative and collective platform for the Basque diaspora and has proven its worth as a community-forming device enabled by ‘networks of transnational migrant communities comparable to nodes (individuals, groups or organizations) in a social network connected by a set of affiliations.’16 Thanks to social media such as Facebook, migrants and their descendants share a collective identity linked to their homeland and collectively maintain and develop cultural, religious and political expressions of their identity. In addition, cinematic

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expressions of this worldwide Basque community of sentiment include Basques in the West (2014), a full-length documentary film shot in the United States and directed by Brent Barras, which features the Basque people in the western areas of the United States and the changes they are having to make to keep tradition alive and their livelihoods sustainable. Ipuinak kontatu: The Basque Way (Telling Stories, Emily Lobsenz, 2012) is another documentary that explores 25 centuries of Basque cultural history and considers its preservation as a tale about the tangent possibilities of tradition and innovation through the lives of five Basques. The fact that the film’s title is in Euskara indicates how the Basque diaspora tends to consider the preservation of their language as vital to both the maintenance of identity and the transfer of Basque customs via oral tradition down through the generations.17 Ipuinak kontatu captures that tradition by exploring Basque culture through personal tales and the perceptions of its protagonists, offering the kind of unique and intimate perspectives on the history and challenge of creating a useful, sustainable, lively culture amidst the cross-currents of tradition and progress. As chef Mart´ın Berasategi declares in the film: ‘Todo lo que es innovaci´on, si es bueno, un d´ıa ser´a tradici´on y todo lo que hoy es tradici´on un d´ıa fue innovaci´on’ (Everything that is innovation, if it’s good, will one day be tradition and everything that is now a tradition was once an innovation). Artzainak: Shepherds and Sheep (Jacob Griswold & Javi Zubizarreta, 2011), is a short documentary that exposes the struggles and hardships of immigrant shepherds in the hills of Idaho and it traces a basic outline of Basque and South American immigration to this region. It was filmed in mid-October 2009, when Zubizarreta and Griswold spent a week in Idaho, interviewing shepherds and watching them work. Basque Hotel ( Josu Venero, 2011) is a documentary road movie that exists in 80 and 58 minute versions, which revolves around the diaspora and the evolution of the Basques from their first appearance as labourers on North American ranches to their cultural contributions in the twenty-first century. It contrasts the experiences of five writers – Robert Laxalt, Joseba Zulaika, Bernardo Atxaga, Asun Garikano and Kirmen Uribe – and it tells the stories of Basque immigrants who dedicated themselves to the care of livestock and explains how current generations hold a different view of what being Basque means. Guk (We, Nuria Vilalta Renobale, 2011) is a 60 minute documentary that observes the Basque community in Argentina and Agur estasea (To Say Goodbye, Izaskun Arandia & Matt Richards, 2012) is an animated feature about the 4,000 refugee children who left the Basque Country during the Spanish Civil War and were shipped to England, where they remained, that was screened during the San Sebastian International Film Festival’s 60th edition in the Zinemira section that is dedicated to cinema produced in the Basque Country. In addition, the aforementioned Amaren ideia and Zuretzako are Basque films made in America that illustrate the transformation of Basque identity in relation to the theoretical construction of the diaspora. Basque diasporic communities have usually been approached from an economic and demographical

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I didn’t want to comment on any grand, meta-narratives of fatherhood, immigration, love, etc. I wanted to be very, very specific and small. I wanted to tell my understanding of the details of my grandfather’s life. I really did not want this to be a story of ‘Basque Migration to America’, but rather ‘Javi Zubizarreta’s telling of Joaqu´ın Zubizarreta’s time in the US’.

With similar ambition, Amaren ideia focuses on the lives of three characters who incarnate the multiple experiences of Basque children taken as refugees to many different countries during the Spanish Civil War. Both these films simultaneously respond to and challenge the definition provided by Sorensen regarding nationhood and identity in terms of people within a territory who make up a community.19 What examination of these two films reveals is that the diasporic condition of Basque territory has always been part of Basque history and culture, and that the physical configuration of Basque territory, even in geographical terms, has always been problematic. Furthermore, if one adds migration to ongoing arguments over the grouping of the three, four or seven Basque provinces in Spanish and French territory and recognises this to be a salient factor in Basque history and that of the proliferation of Basque communities in Europe and the Americas, then the notion of community necessarily needs to be expanded and reconfigured in terms of sentiment and citizenship, of longing and belonging, both physically and metaphorically.

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perspective, but these films illustrate a new trend towards subjective histories stemming from ‘additional research projects [that] focus on the lives of the actual immigrants and their descendants in the host country, and its evolution.’18 As Javi Zubizarreta, the director of Zuretzako, declared in interview with the authors:

All That They Gave: Zuretzako Sorensen contrasts a community of citizens, which is marked by the relation between the citizens and the state in terms of political, legal and socio-economic rights and obligations, with the community of sentiment, which he identifies in respect of ‘relations between citizens as a group: common language, common cultural and historical identity, based on myths, symbols, art, and so on.’20 Indeed, his idea of ‘a community of sentiment based on linguistic, cultural and historical bonds’ is essential to an understanding of the visual and discursive narratives deployed by Zubizarreta and Oleaga, the director of Amaren ideia.21 Zubizarreta presents himself in his film and in interview with the authors as someone with a strong yet individualistic affiliation to the Basque community of sentiment: ‘My Basque identity is a major part of who I am as a person and a filmmaker, so I’d like to think that it informs all of my work, regardless of whether it directly pertains to the Basque people.’ This tallies with Totoricag¨uena’s conclusion that 165

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recent generations tend to experience their ethnicity by voluntary individual choice and the opening of Zuretzako provides a similar declaration of intent both in visual and narrative terms.22 The credits announce what appears to be a purely English-language, European-sponsored and American-funded project: ‘By The Old Bridge Productions, with Support from Princess Grace Awards for Emerging Theater, Dance and Film Artists in America; NANOVIC Institute for European Studies, and UROP Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program.’ However, this information clashes with the metafilmic opening, which replicates silent films by simulating a black and white production in a smaller screen within the bigger black frame that immediately locates the audience in an environment marked by Basqueness for two reasons. Firstly, the soundtrack consists of a version of Agur jaunak (Greetings/Farewell, My Friends), the quintessential song played at the most important instances of formal, institutional and familial gatherings to open and close ceremonies in the Basque Country (and the song that plays over the end credits of Ama Lur [Motherland, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1968]). The song both welcomes and sees off friends and guests and here, as performed by the onscreen Kelly family, evokes a commentary from Jean Etchepare: ‘We Basques, born outside the fatherland, consider the Agur jaunak our spiritual song. This rendition by the Kelly family is of great emotion, and I cannot but wipe a tear from my eye. Eskerrik asko (Thank you).’ The community of sentiment thus connects with the song and so the film from the start, which situates the filmmaker and his audience as participants in the Basque musical and cultural tradition, while also signifying a manner of honouring the heritage they share which will be transferred to the figure of the director’s grandfather on his first appearance in the film. Secondly, representative geographical images of the Basque Country (traditional farmhouses, mountains, waves hitting rocks) give way to portrayals of Basque sports and traditions, whereby the prologue focuses on people as carriers of meaning rather than locations. Antique portraits of Basques dressed in folk costumes appear onscreen and confirm the shift to Basque identity as something personal and portable rather than fixed in any one place. Consequently, the film effects a transition from the Basque Country to America without ever leaving the community of sentiment. This movement from the general to the particular, from the nation to the individual, is further emphasized in the subsequent collage of portraits of Basques who sought work in America, each of whom is identified by an inscription in an antique-style font stating names and destinations: Telesforo Bernaola, P.O. Box 63, Boise, Idaho; Miguel Orbe, Spanish Hotel, Nampa, Idaho; etc. This movement towards narrative culminates in the voiceover’s identification of the director’s ancestor as aitxitxe (grandfather in Euskara). The study of the cinematic voice and its implications for the audience has received considerable attention from film scholars.23 Mary Ann Doane’s theorization of the voiceover has this as, ‘in

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It is its radical otherness with respect to the diegesis which endows this voice with a certain authority. As a form of direct address, it speaks without mediation to the audience, bypassing the ‘characters’ and establishing a complicity between itself and the spectator – together they understand and thus place the image. It is precisely because the voice is not localizable, because it cannot be yoked to a body, that it is capable of interpreting the image, producing its truth.24

The narrative discourse that this film’s voiceover articulates in Euskara (and via the English subtitles) is as follows: There are mountains far away, but few people know of the Basque people who live there, and have for many years. In the Pyrenees Mountains, in Euskal Herria; the Basque Country it’s called. Have you heard their stories, their language, Euskara? Have you seen their faces? Do you know the Basque people? Do you know of the mountains in America where Basque men worked? Under hot summer suns and cold winter moons they herded sheep. For brighter futures, they gave away their youth. Your grandfather herded sheep in those American hills. Too many years alone will turn a man quiet, and they all say grandfather was a man of few words. He passed before your time, but let’s try and imagine. You’ve heard stories and tales, but, do you know your grandfather?

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effect, a disembodied voice’ and is most relevant to the study of diasporic cinema because of its assertion that instead of affirming the homogeneity and dominance of diegetic space the voiceover is presented outside that space:

Thus, what sounds at first to be a voiceover conveying facts in an informative tone switches to a second person narrative which addresses the audience – ‘Have you heard their stories?’ – only to be once again transformed into a second person narrative voice that represents the director’s internal monologue: ‘Your grandfather herded sheep.’ Following Doane, Zuretzako’s initial words are somewhere in between the disembodied voice absent from the diegetic filmic space and the interior cinematic body, in which the filmmaker chooses to insert himself to take a more active position in the narrative development. These words are followed by the film’s title – Zuretzako (For You) – which confirms Zubizarreta’s stated purpose of honouring his grandfather. As Zubizarreta explained to the authors: The voiceover was inspired by the tradition of the bertsolari [the Basque poet who improvises rhyming verses] and we originally wanted it to be sung by a bertsolari. The voiceover was certainly a way for me to speak as the director and insert myself into the film; again, this was part of my desire to tell my understanding of 167

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my grandfather. It also became a sort of self-affirmation. As this film became a way to reflect on how I got here, the voiceover became a message to myself, to remember those who came before, to give thanks, and so on.

The voiceover thus functions in the sense described by Doane: it establishes a complicity between itself and the spectator, who feels addressed and incorporated into the discourse. Zubizarreta chooses a device that confers authority on this opening discourse but simultaneously includes his subjectivity in the diegetic universe of the film. The reference to the bertsolari tradition also further locates the film in the community of sentiment as Zuretzako associates itself with the unifying sentiment of Basqueness that is essential to the performance system of this improvising Basque poet. The film’s title is followed by the names of its actors – Josu Zubizarreta and Luis Zubizarreta – thus reaffirming that the film is a family project because the director’s brother plays his father and young grandfather, Joaqu´ın, and his father plays Joaqu´ın as a middle-aged man. After the credits and a brief explanation in English inter-titles about young men from the Basque Country moving to the American West to herd sheep, the intra-narrative begins with the declaration: ‘My grandfather Joaqu´ın first came to America when he was nineteen years old.’ Oiarzabal explains that diasporic Basques are frequently associated with a tendency to idealize and mythologize the homeland and its identity by ‘reproducing ideal, nostalgic, and timeless images and memories from an inherited lost past.’25 For this reason, the Basque government tends to assume that the Basque diaspora is culturally outdated and removed from the modernization of the homeland, whereas ‘the Basque diaspora communities are evolving identity-based communities, far from being isolated as the increase of communication and the flow of daily information works against the assumption that they are stagnated, frozen in time, as postcards from the past.’26 Zubizarreta’s understanding of his Basqueness illustrates this: We keep in close contact with uncles, aunts, cousins, friends – and travelling to the Basque Country today isn’t a journey back in time, but a flight (or a series of flights) away. I keep in touch with my cousin in Bilbao through Facebook the same way I talk to a friend here in the city. And of course, I grew up in Boise, Idaho, surrounded by a strong Basque community. So for me, Basque culture has always been a mix of past, present, and future. It’s always been an easy, natural part of my life. I grew up in a place and with a community where I could easily be American-Basque or Basque-American. That hyphen was never an either/or distinction, but a simple conjunction. Nor did the order of words really matter. It’s who I am. So it very naturally became a part of my work in film.

Consequently, Zubizarreta refuses to make any distinction between the Basque diaspora and the Basque Country. The Basque community of sentiment uses the 168

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hyphen to validate affiliation, alliance and union instead. Facebook is just one example of the new screen technologies and social media that have enhanced these links between members of the Basque diaspora and their ancestral homeland, to the extent that in 2000 an AT&T television commercial that was part of a campaign headed by the slogan ‘Your world. Close at hand’ featured a Basque immigrant named Dionisio Choperena, who had come to the United States when young to work as a shepherd. The commercial known as AT&T Wireless Shepherd depicts the now aged Choperena in a rural location communicating via cellular phone with people all over the planet as the voiceover asks: ‘What if you could be far away and still be close to everyone and everything that’s important to you?’27 While Zuretzako is composed of the silences, loneliness and disconnection that characterized the lives of the Basque migrants and exiles herding sheep in America during the early part of the twentieth century, it is remarkable that one of them should be chosen to represent the instant connection and access to family and friends that enriches the Basque community of sentiment almost a century later. The shepherd is clearly vital to the iconography of the Basque diaspora, which tends towards the romantic-nostalgic idealisation and even mythopoeia of the homeland via supposedly timeless yet memory-laden visual signifiers. In this context, the AT&T commercial and films like Zuretzako can be seen to illustrate a strategy whereby ‘the use of images recreating a lost past has a more profound meaning, as they attempt to recreate memories that directly connect to their childhood, family members, ancestors, and homeland.’28 Yet, as Sorenson warns, challenges to the resulting community of sentiment abound in a new context characterized by globalization and the transnational relations.29 Following Anthony Giddens, Sorensen proposes that the creation of individual identity becomes a project requiring its construction out of an evaluation and selection of ideologies and values. Consequently, ‘when identity is something that has to be actively created and sustained by individuals, the attachment to the national community of sentiment can no longer be taken for granted.’30 However, in the case of Zuretzako the diasporic condition of its director is what inspires and strengthens the film’s affiliation with the Basque cinema of sentiment, for it is Zubizarreta’s individual evaluation and selection of ideologies and values that leads him to his ancestors and a connection with an identity in the Basque community of sentiment that is arguably both fabricated and inherited. When the film’s first colour footage appears behind the text reading ‘Mountain Home, Idaho, 1935’ it is of the young Joaqu´ın arriving and being picked up by a fellow Basque worker who immediately connects Joaqu´ın with other members of the Basque diaspora by reeling off the names of other immigrants who arrived from villages in the Basque Country close to that of Joaqu´ın. This scene not only reproduces the habitual practices of members of diasporas, who exchange information about fellow members of the community in order to establish links and test a newcomer’s aptness for integration, but also

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identifies Joaqu´ın as a man of few words who answers in monosyllables and has one adamant reply to the testing question of whether he will look for an American girl to be his wife: ‘Ez’ (No). The minimalist Zuretzako follows Joaqu´ın herding sheep for a time until he returns to his native Basque Country and marries Emilia. Then in 1955 financial hardships force him to abandon his family and return to America until his son Aitor joins him in 1975 with the intention, subsequently abandoned, of attending university. The final credits explain that Joaqu´ın left his American herds aged 62 and returned to his family but that his son eventually graduated from university as would nine of his grandchildren. Long, mostly static shots convey the protagonist’s experience of shepherding in America by means of the Deleuzian time-image, which allows ‘a little time in its pure state to rise to the surface of the film’ and therefore serves as a vehicle for the routine and tedium of Joaquin’s life.31 The time-image, which resembles a prolonged pause or digression from narrative, also informs the emotional conflict between father and son that promises but never delivers catharsis, as well as moments that prompt reflection upon the condition of the post-Civil War Basque Country. The time-image has the potential to foster empathy with the characters caught in stasis as well as to foreground the juxtaposition of idyllic views of the homeland and the diasporic territory. However, while emphasizing temporal, geographical and narrative ellipses that the film suggests are the result of social and political conditions and changes in the Basque Country, the film’s time-images also provide spaces for the establishment of new emotional bridges between these ellipses that equate to the reconstruction of familial bonds. Deleuze offers no rigid definition of the time-image; however he suggests a postwar transition was made from a cinema marked by movementimages carrying narrative action and plot development that were advanced by the actions of the protagonists to a new kind of cinema where the subordination of time to movement was reversed, wherein ‘time ceases to be the measure of normal movement, it increasingly appears for itself and creates paradoxical movements.’32 He offers examples of such moments, which he associates with time-images, in films directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni among others and argues that they represent ‘a cinema of the seer and no longer of the agent.’33 Zuretzako offers long takes in which Joaqu´ın learns to herd sheep by himself, simply watches the animals, or follows trails in the steep mountains that comply with ‘timeimages [that] may be excruciatingly long, extending far beyond the time taken to register awareness of their own duration.’34 Such shots create a meditative mood and reveal the isolation experienced by the protagonist for long periods of time. The camera dwells on Joaqu´ın not to show his actions or reactions, but to construct his physical and subjective presence outside of dramatic narration. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, the evocation of his isolation combines longing and belonging, for he is clearly estranged from and at the same time consumed by the Basque community

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When life passes by on the backs of woolly sheep, when can the heart find rest? Confined by the sun’s coming and going, the days can define us and not the other way around. Grandfather Joaqu´ın, he herded so long, away and by himself. He grew old before he could be young. He came for a better life, but life passed him by. Each morning turns to darkness, but each night turns to day.

This rhetorical address prompts the conceit of the film within a film, whereby the young Joaqu´ın, (Josu Zubizarreta) is replaced by his elder self (Luis Zubizarreta), thereby suggesting transition from youth to adulthood occurring despite the unchanging tedium experienced by the protagonist. The time-images invite reflection upon this transformation while simultaneously denying any sense of activity or spectacle in the shift from one to the other. Whereas the cinema of the movement-image offers ‘a setting which is already specified and presupposes an action which discloses it, or prompts a reaction which adapts to or modifies it’, that of time-images tends to express dislocation or even emptiness.36 In Zuretzako, the territory of such time-images extends beyond the vast, deserted spaces of the North American landscape to encompass the Basque Country in its community of sentiment as as an inter-title announces ‘Gernika, Euskal Herria, 1955’. Joaqu´ın is now married with three children, but heading back to Idaho because of economic hardship, whereupon slow, gentle, observational scenes reduce life in the Basque Country to Joaqu´ın speaking with his wife and the village priest. The decision to return to America is a difficult one but narrated without trauma. Both his wife and the priest tell Joaqu´ın ‘you are a good man’ and their repetition of such simple thoughts as this and ‘you will come back’ carry incantational force and foster empathy in the audience. Far from the abrupt emotional responses characteristic of the cinema of the movement-image, spectacle and conflictive dialogue, these scenes connect in such a way that, as Deleuze describes similar moments in films by Fellini, they disclose ‘higher, more important problems than commonplaces about solitude and incommunicability.’37 Zuretzako includes one further ellipsis. Joaqu´ın’s son, Aitor, arrives and the voiceover anticipates the conflict to come: ‘Never was a father so unhappy to see his son.’ This is followed by the inter-title: ‘Mountain Home, Idaho, 1975’. The emotional and generational distance between this father and son, who have

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of sentiment. Although he is always alone, his early doubts and fearfulness diminish as elliptical time-images show him becoming increasingly confident in his knowledge of the land and the animals in a context of inactivity that is nonetheless fixed in its repetition and continuity. Deleuze notes that time-images can reveal something intolerable to characters, which is simply their very everydayness.35 Such is the situation of Joaqu´ın, whose repetitive ways inspire the reappearance of voiceover:

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Figure 15. Josu Zubizarreta and Luis Zubizarreta in Zuretzako (For You, Javi Zubizarreta, 2011). (By the Old Bridge Productions).

not seen each other in 20 years, is expressed by both characters appearing in separate frames within the screen. Lacking physical contact, their communication is reduced to a bare minimum until Joaqu´ın finally admits to Aitor, ‘you shouldn‘t be here.’ Aitor then expresses his feelings of abandonment and describes the void that he experienced growing up in the Basque Country without his father. Emotional estrangement works both ways within the community of sentiment. He tells the story of a friend who fell off his bike and broke his front teeth: ‘His dad came running and picked him up in his arms and took him to the doctor, and I thought, where‘s my father? So, I thought that you’d want to see me.’ The speech exemplifies the trauma of many Basque children who were orphaned or fatherless because of the Civil War or left to grow up without direct paternal guidance because their fathers had had to leave the Basque Country to find work elsewhere. Joaqu´ın feels guilty but still cannot connect with his son. Nothing can be taken for granted and emotional bridges have to be built, but this process can only be accomplished via self-awareness, which leads to regret, apology and the implicit reaching for forgiveness: ‘I’m sorry I didn’t have that time with you.’ Consequently, both are then shown together in a shot in which the father passes his arm over his son’s shoulder before the film cuts to scenes of the birth of several lambs, a symbol of cyclical renewal and new beginnings. Finally, Joaqu´ın declares an intention to return once more to the Basque Country and to send Aitor to university and Aitor comforts his father by telling him that his wife and children never blamed him for leaving them. Clearly the community of sentiment not 172

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If you want an ending, perhaps something happy, Look around at all that you’d call luck and good fortune And know that it is because of Grandfather. With each breath, each step, each day, say thank you to those who’ve come before. For Grandfather Joaqu´ın, and all that he gave. For you (Zuretzako).

By these means does Zuretzako succeed in delivering a personal view of a life and its legacy in the Basque community of sentiment, which is represented by the film itself, which exemplifies the Basque cinema of sentiment. The film’s gentle tone, slow pace, time-images and subdued characterizations are not obstacles to the conveyance of a message of thankfulness and respect. Rather, they allow for empathy and avoid simplistic portrayals of solitude and incommunicability. The Basque cinema of sentiment reveals and entails the process of emotion that calls our attention to thinking towards perception and it is in Zuretzako that this emotion explores the realm of the family in order to reach catharsis by overcoming temporal, spatial and affective ellipses.

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only reinforces identity but enables healing too. Thus, as the concluding inter-title explains, reconciliation and connectedness are engendered by mending threadbare links and creating new ones:

We Were from No-One: Amaren ideia The denomination ‘children of the war’ has been applied to all the minors who lived through the Spanish Civil War and suffered its consequences. However, it has also been specifically applied to those who had to leave Spain when a strategy of evacuation moved many children towards the Mediterranean coast and abroad. Although there is evidence that child refugees were entering France in September 1936, the first official expedition took place on 20 March 1937, when 450 children were sent to the island of Ol`eron off the French Atlantic coast, followed by the march of 72 children to the Soviet Union. The bombing of the Basque town of Guernica on 26 April 1937 and the fall of Bilbao on 17 June 1937 hurried the exile of 4,000 Basque children to England that followed the successful voyage of 451 children on 10 June 1937 to Bordeaux and on to Veracruz (one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District comprise the federative entities of Mexico) under the patronage of Mexico’s President C´ardenas. As well as to England and Mexico, children were also sent to France, Belgium, Russia, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway. At first, such displacements were conceived as transitory stays, but the victory of Francoism turned them into definitive exile for the majority. 173

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In sum, about 30,000 evacuees left Spain during the Civil War and more than 70,000 children departed after 1939.38 It is not possible to know how many of these children were Basque; but what can be witnessed today is an effort on the part of filmmakers to recuperate such experiences and to give a voice to those children forced to leave their homeland and families behind and begin their lives in unfamiliar territories defined by distinct languages and all-pervasive differences. Recent films and documentaries on this theme include Els nens de R´ussia (Russian Children, Jaime Camino, 2001) and Ispansi! (Spaniards!, Carlos Iglesias, 2010) but there are also features that focus specifically on Basque children such as Los ni˜nos de Gernika tienen memoria (The Children from Guernica Do Remember, Roberto Men´endez, 2007), which tells of the Basque children who went to England, the aforementioned Agur estasea, and the documentary Amaren ideia (Mum’s Idea, Maider Oleaga, 2010), which tells the stories of just three of the numerous children sent to Mexico. All baserriak or traditional farmhouses in the Basque Country are named. Amaren ideia (Mum’s Idea) is that of the house where one of the characters in the eponymous film grew up until she had to leave during the Civil War. The title is ironic in that it refers to the decision made by many mothers who had to send their children away in order to escape violence and bombings. In its development and realization, Amaren ideia fits into the fourth category of documentary filmmaking as classified by Bill Nichols, that of participatory mode, which ‘emphasizes the interaction between filmmaker and subject. Filmmaking takes place by means of interviews or other forms of even more direct involvement from conversations to provocations. Often coupled with archival footage to examine historical issues.’39 The film began as a commission for its director from an association called the Idi Ezkerra (The Left-Handed Ox), which wanted to produce a tribute to these children, footage of which appears in the documentary. As Oleaga was living in Mexico at the time, she was asked to film the interviews that would be incorporated into the tribute. At first there were seven interviewees but it later transpired that only three of them wanted to attend the tribute: Luc´ıa Michelena, Jos´e Henales Bermejillo and Alfredo Gonz´alez Olaskoaga. The documentary intersperses the answers of these three with interventions from other family members and supports the various testimonies with photographs, posters, home movies and other documentation provided by Mexico’s Archivo General de la Naci´on (National Archive), Fundaci´on Idi Ezkerra, Bizkaiko Artxibo Forala (Biscay Autonomous Archives) and the Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca (Basque Film Archive). As Nichols explains, documentaries in general claim to address the historical world and to possess the capacity to intervene by shaping how we regard it.40 Amaren ideia fulfills this description by communicating the trauma experienced by Basque children uprooted from their homeland and the consequences they endure as adults. Luc´ıa, Jos´e and Alfredo were in their eighties at the time of filming. They divulge their inner lives before the camera, thereby

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revealing complicity with the director. Moreover, via a series of visual strategies that break with the traditional notions of hierarchy and normative standardization of anthropological documentaries, Oleaga facilitates a direct approach to her subjects since the film is introduced by means of a double revealing absence. There is a lack, first of all, of what Nichols has denominated the ‘arrival scene’ in classical documentary in which the director enters the scene and explains the meaning of the project.41 The second absence is that of the voiceover. By these dual absences, Oleaga seeks to avoid having any authoritarian presence and instead locates the protagonists as unique and independent cinematic subjects. Her aspiration, which is arguably and demonstrably futile but still a valid ambition, is to erase herself from the diegetic text to the benefit of an audience’s direct bonding with the subjects of the history. This is not insignificant: the presence or absence of the filmmaker in the story, the acoustic relations of the diverse voices inside and outside the screen and the positions of the audience with respect to the images constitute not only an aesthetic approach, but also an ethical and political stance. Because the three characters speak to camera directly, a bond is formed at the formal level, which is transmitted to the content through the implication of the audience via diverse processes of sympathetic reflection and empathetic identification. By these means does Amaren ideia insert itself into the Basque cinema of sentiment through an articulation of the feelings of displacement, nostalgia and lack of identity. Rather than attempting to represent the consequences of the Civil War through the authoritative voice of historians, politicians and other agents implicated in understandings of the historical period, this documentary gives a voice to subjects who lived the experience and its consequences but are very rarely heard. The first feeling admitted by the three interviewees is a lack of identity. Jos´e begins by saying how agonizing it is ‘to feel that you are from nowhere. We were from no-one; not from God, nor the Devil, nobody.’ He uses the simile of a leaf to explain that for him to try to find out about his past is a kind of comfort because it makes him feel more part of a tree than that lone leaf on the wind. Such symbolism is immediately reiterated by the song that Alfredo sings: ‘Far I am from my birth land/great homesickness clouds my mind./Finding myself alone and sad, as a leaf floating./I would like to cry or die of sadness.’ The original Spanish verse ends with ‘llorar o morir de sentimiento’ but ‘sentimiento’ is erroneously translated as sadness in the subtitles, when this sentiment reflects the longing and need to reconnect that the three subjects express in relation to their homeland. Luc´ıa speaks in a similar fashion: ‘They brought us without identity; we had no passport, neither Mexican nor Spanish papers.’ This lack of identity is a referent throughout the film, particularly in association with two unremitting preoccupations: the lack of papers that might provide a sense of belonging (Jos´e says his ID stated ‘No citizenship. I was citizen of no country. I was a stateless person, and that feels really bad’) and the typical sense of exile and displacement that arises from being between two or

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more cultures but belonging to none. ‘There, in France and Spain, they call me the Mexican. Here they call me Spanish. Where am I from then?’ asks Alfredo, while Jos´e, who was first sent to Russia and then to Mexico, reaffirms this sentiment: ‘When they ask you if you are from here or from there, it is difficult. We are from nowhere and from three places, like me.’ Only after these initial declarations does the film identify the three speakers by showing their full names onscreen. Amaren ideia continues with a scene in which the journey to an airport is composed of a series of travelling shots that end in International Departures, thereby anticipating the subjects’ return to the Basque Country for the tribute that is engineered at the film’s end. In addition, the soundtrack at this moment reinforces the emotions that the characters have already expressed, for the song by Ruper Ordorika is Enbaxadore hodeieiertzan (Ambassadors on the Horizon), which asks: ‘Where are you from? / Who do you represent? / We do not remember anymore / whom we represent without a flag, / without a country. / Ambassadors on the horizon.’ Jos´e, Alfredo and Luc´ıa resemble ‘ambassadors’ at first but they also reveal themselves as capable of partly transcending trauma to find a sense of belonging by recuperating lost ties in physical and emotional terms. Although they demonstrate affinities and express similar understandings of their past experiences, there are also disparities that suggest there is no single homogeneous experience that defines the ‘children of the war’. Regarding their parent’s decision to send them away, Jos´e has never forgiven his mother and even confronts her, trying to make her feel guilty when they are reunited. However, Alfredo understands the decision: ‘Planes, artillery, all that. To get killed? It was better to leave. It feels bad to leave your children but it is better to leave a son alive than to have a dead one? Who can I blame? It was my life. I had to deal with it.’ Luc´ıa, who gave birth to ten children and was widowed young, seems more ambivalent, but nevertheless claims to understand her mother’s decision. They also behave very differently regarding their understanding of the passing of time. Jos´e is reflective and needs to think constantly about the past, even if it is painful. When speaking about his constant efforts to return to his origins, he admits, ‘the more you think about it, the worse it gets’ and his sense of entrapment is confirmed by his daughter: ‘He remembers the past a lot. He lives in the past most of the time.’ Conversely, Alfredo marks the slow, draining passage of time: ‘Time passed on, passed on, and went on.’ Only Luc´ıa is able to concentrate on the present and to transform past experiences into stories of success for her family. Although to a greater or lesser extent these three show an ability to overcome difficulties and adapt to new environments, they also want their audience to know about the hardships they had to endure. Luc´ıa suffered from a serious heart condition as a young girl, which she attributes to the voyage to Mexico, when her mother put her in charge of her younger siblings, because ‘it is impossible for a child to come through all these troubles in good shape.’ Alfredo admits that, ‘the beginning was hard for us’ but concludes that ‘to enjoy life you have to suffer. If you do not suffer you do not know what is good.’

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Jos´e speaks of a hard time adjusting to life in Russia, where his brother died, but admits to finding some familiarity and comfort in Mexico. For each of them, the Basque community of sentiment is tenuous but its links are renewed by the tribute in which they participate. The final section of the film portrays their return to the Basque Country. As Miriam Cooke has noted, returns may even be ‘more difficult than the journey out, for it forces an irrevocable break with the world as it was before the journey. But it has created the conditions necessary for the construction of a new world, a new self.’42 Jos´e announces the return in such terms: ‘There will be a reunion of the Basque children, those who left the country because of the Civil War. We will face the past like an historic settlement, let’s say. It is going to close a circle and open a new one.’ He anticipates ‘a bittersweet moment. We are going to suffer more than when we left. Back then we did not realise the magnitude of the event. But it will be positive because it will finally end. A new circle is going to start. No more complaints, no nostalgia, nothing. Only quiet, still memories.’ Finally, however, the aesthetic and ethical intentions of the film’s director are inscribed with force, for, as Nichols notes, even in those documentaries in which there is no voiceover, the voice of the filmmaker is always present: It is a voice that issues from the entirety of each film’s audio-visual presence: the selection of shots, the framing of subjects, the juxtaposition of scenes, the mixing of sounds, the use of titles and inter-titles – from all the techniques by which a filmmaker speaks from a distinct perspective on a given subject and seeks to persuade viewers to adopt this perspective as their own.43

In this old/new location of the Basque Country, Oleaga seeks to emphasize the atrocities of the war with two shots. Firstly, after the arrival at Bilbao airport she inserts a shot of the face of a giant Olentzero (the Basque equivalent of Santa Claus), which is actually a playground slide that children enter through the mouth. This ostensibly innocent toy becomes a nightmarish, Goyaesque monster physically and literally devouring children in an analogy of all those forced to leave the Basque Country during the war. Secondly, while Luc´ıa and her son wander Bilbao, Oleaga overlays the sound of the sirens that warned of bombings during the Civil War. Both shots are dramatic and didactic. They replace sentiment (genuine feeling) with sentimentality (unearned yet provoked emotional response) but the heavyhandedness is brief. Despite this insistence that a homecoming is rarely idyllic or simple, which is also symbolized by Alfredo’s inability to find a particular cake shop that might complete his Proustian quest, the return, as anticipated by Jos´e, is bittersweet. Jos´e returns to his hometown of Balmaseda and declares: ‘I am 100 per cent from here. I only know I feel a deep love for everything Basque.’ Alfredo finally tastes his longed-for cakes and Luc´ıa finds her ancient home, Amaren ideia, and meets a cousin in Baiona. Everyone cries and those who never returned are commemorated. The film concludes with an explicit authorial image of the 177

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Figure 16. Devouring children in Amaren ideia (Mother’s Idea, Maider Oleaga, 2010).

hands of the director shaking those of the interviewees while the song Esku biak (Both Hands) by Ruper Ordorika is played. It thus ends, like all those from the Basque diaspora, with a sense of renewed belonging, of being and feeling Basque, of reacquaintance with citizenship and sentiment restored.

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9 Funding Films, Finding Audiences: Contemporary Basque Cinema Basque cinema is currently booming, though not in a way that might be easily noticed. This is because, with a few exceptions, contemporary definitions of Basque cinema must retreat from traditional commercial circuits and conventional formats and genres in order to enter the open and inclusive arena of filmmaking in the digital era that exhibits a unifying and yet centrifugal sentiment of Basqueness. Contemporary Basque cinema is often online, transnational and diasporic and otherwise engaged in activities that do not fit traditional concepts of film. The commercial exceptions are crowd-pleasing comedies with social bite such as the Basque-language Aupa Etxebeste! (Hooray for Etxebeste!, Asier Altuna & Telmo Esnal, 2005) and Sukalde kontuak (Kitchen Matters, Aitzpea Goenaga, 2009) and, in Castilian, Pagafantas (Friend Zone, Borja Cobeaga, 2009) and the blockbuster ´ Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (Witching and Bitching, Alex de la Iglesia, 2013). But whereas Basque cinema might still be plotted on a sliding scale of exclusionist and inclusionist criteria that consider nationalist tactics, individual and collective associations, funding criteria and linguistic and cultural initiatives, as indicated in the introduction, any rigid definition has long since given way to a fluid dialogue. For example, critical, industrial and popular perception of Blancanieves (Snow White, Pablo Berger, 2012), which is an Andalusian fairytale directed by the Bilbao-born Berger, and Las brujas de Zugarramurdi, which is heavy with Basque folklore and directed by Bilbao-born de la Iglesia, are informed but not limited by the factors most often cited in the argument over whether or not Basque cinema actually exists. To the extent that contest between inclusion and exclusion is an artificial yet constantly evolving construct determined by fluctuations in bureaucratic criteria, the whims as well as crusades of critics, social trends and legal challenges, any hierarchy of verifiable characteristics is irrelevant to a contemporary Basque cinema that is only partly about the Basque Country and consumed by the 179

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audiences who live there, only partly made by Basque-born filmmakers who may work in far-flung areas of the world, only partly in the Basque language and only partly in lieu to the experimentation with a particular aesthetic and film grammar of Basque artists and philosophers. In attempting to orchestrate a portrait of contemporary Basque cinema, this chapter engages directly with filmmakers and institutional representatives. It then moves to an analysis of the Basque audiovisual sector with a comparison of data from the 2003 Libro blanco del sector audiovisual en Euskadi: documento para el desarrollo de un plan con el sector (White paper on the audiovisual sector in the Basque Country: a development document of a sector-wide plan), which warned against the dangers of perpetuating a feeble industry, with more recent data from 2011, when, despite the economic crisis, improvements could be noticed in most areas. This section then prompts a case study of EIKEN, a cluster of audiovisual companies created in 2004 in order to follow the recommendations of that Libro blanco, which has grown to represent the entire audiovisual industry from content generation to distribution and exhibition, including its development and use of new technologies in conventional and digital environments. Looking closer, the focus shifts to the independent production company Moriarti Produkzioak (Moriarty Productions) in order to understand how small-scale efforts are at the heart of contemporary Basque cinema. Subsequently, the chapter examines the proliferation of documentaries on Basque cultural heritage in a context determined by economic constraints yet marked by their celebration in the San Sebastian International Film Festival (hereafter SSFF) and thriving film societies such as the Cineclub FAS in Bilbao. Finally, new ways of funding and distributing films that add up to survival strategies are explored, offering comparative analysis with other small cinemas and an appraisal of the continuing need to create stories that reflect the reality and dreams of the Basque people.

New Dialogues Current practices, strategies and initiatives have established new dialogues with decades of argument over whether or not Basque cinema actually exists. Compared to Catalan cinema, where the linguistic imperative is more often clear-cut in the films themselves and the recent move towards gallery spaces and art house cinemas by the likes of Jos´e Luis Guer´ın, Albert Serra and Isaki Lacuesta has provided fresh evidence of Catalan enterprise, the definition of Basque cinema remains elusive in its provenance and, in part, deliberately unresolved by a preference for constant redefinition via argument. In exploring the oft-contested criteria for the demarcation and promotion of an open, plural and mixed Basque cinema that illustrates many topics of enduring and contemporary discussion, the many interviews carried out by the authors for this chapter provided evidence of 180

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both the continuation of selective criteria to define Basque cinema and efforts to provide a wider categorization. To prove that the everlasting tensions and contradictions in the trajectory of Basque cinema remain stubbornly present, one of the most representative filmmakers of the current generation of filmmakers, Asier Altuna, unambiguously referred to ‘Euskal Zinea’ in his answers, which implies Basque cinema in Euskara. Indeed, he added that ‘the Basque language is the only thing that we have in common, because both themes and formal approaches greatly differs.’ Altuna therefore objects to the inclusion of films such as Operaci´on E (Operation E, Miguel Courtois, 2012) and 15 a˜nos y un d´ıa (15 Years and One Day, Gracia Querejeta, 2013) in the Semana de Cine Vasco de Vitoria (Basque Film Week in Vitoria). Such dubious inclusion, he contends, is barely justified by the fact that Courtois’ mother was born in San Sebastian, for example, while mainstream Spanish-language films by Basque-born directors ´ also miss the cut. ‘Does Alex de la Iglesia make Basque films?’ he asked and answered, ‘I don’t think so.’ Another interviewee, Carlos Ju´arez, President of Euskal Produktoreen Elkartea/Asociaci´on de Productores Vascos (Association of Basque Producers), affirmed that Basque cinema is that produced by Basque companies with at least 20 per cent of Basque participation in the case of a coproduction, which ‘must be differentiated from films directed by a Basque director or which may contain Basque themes or topics. If they do not have the participation of a Basque company in production then they cannot be defined as Basque cinema.’ Interviewing the Deputy Minister for Culture of the Basque government, Joxean Mu˜noz, provided further insight into both perspectives and added more layers to the definition. Mu˜noz began with a technical definition, stating that Basque cinema consists of films whose production has been accomplished by a company or firm located in the Basque Country, thus agreeing with Ju´arez. He then affirmed that this is the only objective criteria by which Basque cinema can be judged, but added that any film made in Euskara, no matter wherever it is produced, shot or located, is also a Basque film, ‘which is very different from films made in English or in Spanish.’ In a third category (after production and language), Mu˜noz believes that from the viewpoint of the Euskal Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca (Basque Film Archive, hereafter EF/FV), films may be classified as Basque by dint of Basque screenwriters, directors, actors or themes. Joining the debate, the Director of the EF/FV, Joxean Fern´andez, pointed out that discussions concerning the nature of Basque cinema developed mainly in the volatile years of the transition to democracy, when all matters relating to Basque identity were discussed and disputed, if less so as democracy wore on. Nevertheless, he perceives three distinct elements that still differentiate Basque cinematography from others and claimed that Basque cinema has often centred on Basque themes and topics such as traditions, customs, symbols, landscapes and the history of the Basque Country.

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Fern´andez also recognizes that Basque filmmakers have attempted to create a narrative style and even an aesthetic of their own, which is evident in Ama Lur (Motherland, N´estor Basterretxea & Fernando Larruquert, 1968), for example, but he admitted that such a project has not endured. Despite the exodus of many promising filmmakers in the 1990s due to the lack of technical and material resources, Fern´andez cited a significant number of relatively successful production companies as evidence that Basque cinema is very much alive. At the same time, he readily acknowledged the difficulty of classifying films as Basque, supposing that any survey of ‘say, the ten best Basque films’ would be scuppered by disagreement about the comparative Basqueness of works that might be included in such a hypothetical list. Fern´andez and other interviewees all offered criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of films that ranged from their quality, success and international projection to considerations of language, location and production. Fern´andez concluded that in his role as Director of the EF/FV he holds a lax definition of Basque cinema and prefers to talk about Basque filmmakers: ‘I am concerned about everything being done by Basque filmmakers and it is irrelevant if they are making films in Hernani [a small village in Gipuzkoa] or in Melbourne. I don’t care if films are in Euskara or in Russian. It doesn’t matter. I care about Basque filmmakers and reject any essentialist and reductive criteria.’ Nevertheless, a technical definition of Basque cinema as being wholly or partly produced by a Basque company still stands as the criteria for institutional funding, whether in the Basque Country, Spain or as part of international co-productions. There is also universal agreement that a film in Euskara is and always will be part of Basque cinema, no matter where it may be shot, located or produced. Yet there is also evidence of some willingness to expand previous categories beyond those of production and language that claim a Basque cinema of citizens. Increasingly, films that are shot by Basque filmmakers are being defined by the inclusion of Basque actors and other Basque artists such as cinematographers and composers, for example, amounting to a kind of consensus in its labelling. Dissolution is prevented by the suggestion that such films must still offer some evidence of exploring Basque traditions and themes, while consideration is also afforded diasporic Basque cinema, which, as Chapter Eight contends, points most decisively to the reach of a Basque cinema of sentiment. Admittedly, there is a tendency to speak about contemporary Basque cinema in terms of Basque directors, which ignores, perhaps conveniently, the complexity of filmmaking collaboration and reflects instead the commerce of auteurism and the displacement of meaning from one difficult category to another that is much less ambiguous. In avoiding any fixed and essentialist categorisation of Basque cinema, however, we shall turn from consideration of individual artists towards the context of the contemporary Basque audiovisual industry in search of a possibly more inclusive landscape.

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The history of the audiovisual industry in the Basque Country has taken several sharp turns since 2003. Until the twenty-first century the precarious state of this industry forced many filmmakers to leave, mainly for Madrid, in order to find access to new modes of production and distribution. The Basque government responded by charging representatives of Euskal Telebista (Basque Television, hereafter EiTB) and a team of consultants with the elaboration of a white paper that would be published as the aforementioned Libro blanco del sector audiovisual en Euskadi.1 This publication presented a series of proposals, initiatives and strategies to be followed in all areas in order to shore up and promote a highly dispersed sector. The Libro blanco was aimed at reorganizing the sector in an attempt to improve the business model. It sought to promote the national and international market by formulating a comprehensive policy in which all the public and private parties involved could collaborate and its plan of action was laid out under the following sub-headings: Organizing the Sector, Improving the Business Model, Promoting Resources, Strengthening the Market, and Promoting the Audiovisual Culture. According to figures included in the study, Biscay, Alava and Gipuzkoa generated just 1 percent of the total income of the audiovisual industry in Spain, compared to 74 per cent in Madrid and 16 per cent in Barcelona.2 This negative balance was partly attributed to the dispersion of the sector, which was composed of around 400 companies and 3,000 professionals that together made up 0.36 per cent of the total number of people employed in the Basque Country. Of these companies, only four had more than 50 people on staff with EiTB by far the biggest company with 600 employees. Close to 250 companies had only one or two workers. The problems identified at that point included a lack of any quantitative analysis of the Basque audiovisual industry, which had a fragmented structure with little ability to fund itself, scarce opportunity for expansion abroad, and over-dependency on EiTB. The report called for a system of marketing and distribution that was addressed to local, national and international markets and established five essential elements in its success: access to new markets, optimization of investments, a coordinated strategy for public organizations within the sector, a global and segmented vision of the sector that would ensure pluralism and the creation of an interconnected network, and opportunities for professional training and recycling. This last point recognized the general lack of knowledge about new technologies in all phases of production, which the report explained, ‘has affected all the stages of production: with regard to creation, little new talent has emerged, there is limited experience in global content and there is a lack of know-how when it comes to creating multi-format products.’3 The report ended with the formulation of seven spheres in which its policy would have an impact: culture, industry, funding, fiscal, employment, training, and public television.

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Best Laid Plans

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If the situation at the time of the report is compared to the recent situation described by the data of 2011, then major transformations may be perceived in several areas.4 In less than ten years, the percentage of Basque participation in the total income of the audiovisual industry in Spain rose from less than 1 per cent in 2003 to 6 per cent in 2011. More dramatic still is the increase in the percentage of the total number of people employed in the sector in the Basque Country, which rose from 0.36 per cent in 2003 to 7 per cent in 2011. Whereas the Libro blanco admitted that no reliable information regarding the annual turnover of the audiovisual industry in the Basque Country in 2003 could be sourced, in 2009 this turnover was €211 million with more than 4,400 productions completed. In addition to television, which accounted for the majority of productions, cinema and advertising now occupied a prominent place in the industry, with 23 films and 111 promotional features completed according to the Directory of the Basque Audiovisual Industry produced by the Instituto Vasco Etxepare.5 The number of production and multimedia companies included in the 2012 Directory of the Basque Audiovisual Industry amounted to 31 in Biscay, 28 in Gipuzkoa and 5 in Alava, alongside seven distribution companies for the Comunidad Aut´onoma de Euskadi (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, hereafter CAE) and 14 television broadcasters. Professional associations in the sector included EPE/APV (Association of Basque Producers), IBAIA (Association of Independent Production Companies of the Basque Country), GIDOI (Professional Association of Scriptwriters of the Basque Country) and EIKEN (Basque Audiovisual Cluster). This final organization is a non-profit business association supported by the Basque government with members drawn from firms in the Basque Country that create and broadcast content, products and services for the audio-visual sector. EIKEN was created in 2004 as a direct response to the Libro blanco and has since consolidated a wide range of services related to strategic analysis, business management, internationalization and commercialization, as well as talent promotion and advisory services on innovation. For example, the annual EikenTALENT contest provides opportunities for young artists, as well as fellowships and formative opportunities. Efforts to expand the market and promote internationalization have also been implemented in recent years at the same time as the fortunes of EiTB, upon which the majority of the audiovisual workforce has traditionally depended, have declined, with the company losing €55 million between 2009 and 2013. As a result, the amount that EiTB dedicated to financing independent film and television productions for 2014 was only €4.1 million euros, two million less than the previous year and a substantial decrease from the €9.1 million awarded in 2010. To compensate for such cuts, EiTB no longer claims the credit or rights of associate producer and only acquires the broadcast rights, leaving copyright to the independent producers. Further complications resulted from the harmful hike in tax on commercial and professional activities engineered by the Partido Popular, which raised IVA (VAT) to 21 per cent in 2012, which resulted in a

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steep increase in the price of cinema admission. Despite this and other recent cuts, however, the main representatives of production companies in the Basque Country are not overly pessimistic, partly because the Basque government has so far kept its commitment to funding films and other audiovisual works, especially those in Euskara, and partly because they perceive new local and global opportunities. In an effort to expand the audiovisual industry and engage in European opportunities, EIKEN is participating in the European project ‘Smart Culture’ in which nine European regions work together to create a platform that will allow people universal access to their cultural heritage. EIKEN has duly intensified international campaigns and in 2013 it presented diverse audiovisual initiatives in Ireland, Israel and Singapore, amongst other places. However, in interviews, Carlos Ju´arez, President of EPE/APV, advised that ‘if we want to defend our own culture we need enough support for the Basque audiovisual industry to achieve a neat, productive fabric, which includes companies, producers, actors, and technicians, so that films with enough capacity to attract both local and international audiences can be made.’ To complete this mapping of the contemporary audiovisual landscape, the commissioning offices in the CAE must be recognized for channelling the funding from the Basque government to the creation and production of Basque audiovisual works. In March 2014 a new plan was presented by Joxean Mu˜noz, Deputy Minister for Culture of the Basque government, to promote culture and heritage preservation in the Basque Country for the years 2014–15 and this included amongst its core strategies new audiovisual technologies and formats and new business models for filmmaking in Euskara. The plan describes the need to analyse the audiovisual sector and insists upon new opportunities for its development. However, there remains a bitter footnote to this optimistic tale of transformative policies, financial investment and good intentions, which takes the shape of a building on the outskirts of Oiartzun, close to San Sebastian. Covering 18,000 square metres, Zinealdea was conceived by Kike Santiago in 2000 as an audiovisual and scenic industrial park that would create a multidisciplinary space specializing in production with the capacity to provide locations for cinema and advertising productions in addition to hosting performances of music, theatre and opera. After several delays, Zinealdea was completed in 2011 at a cost of €24 million. It boasts six recording studios with additional space for the setting of backdrops and decorations; and it remains unused to this day. What was conceived as the Basque Hollywood is an abandoned and unequipped building, a well-meant project to invigorate the audiovisual industry whose failure Santiago attributes to the prevailing economic downturn. At its inception, the Basque economy was booming and resources for this and similar enterprises were relatively easy to find. As happened elsewhere in Spain, however, a number of ambitious and expensive projects were undertaken that have become spectacular failures, such as the Ciudad Real airport, which cost 1,100 million Euros to build and closed in 2012, just three

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years after opening. Zinealdea may serve as a warning sign for projects formed from optimism but lacking content, contingency plans or awareness of practicalities. Nevertheless, we shall seek to contrast the stalling of this overblown project with the progress of a small, smart and successful company in the next section.

Small and Perfectly Formed: Moriarti Produkzioak Moriarti Produkzioak was founded in 2001 when 18 year-old Jorge Gil met Jos´e Mari Goenaga, Jon Gara˜no, Xabier Berzosa, Asier Acha and Aitor Arregi at a one year course in Sarobe, a film school located in Urnieta, which no longer exists. Most of the older course members had finished university, having graduated in Business Studies, and were just following a creative impulse to learn about making short films. But Gil and his friends would subsequently form Moriarti Produkzioak as a collective endeavour with the intention of allowing each member to produce his own short film and experience various production roles on those of each other. Gil pursued further formal training in the Escuela de Cinematograf´ıa y del Audiovisual (School of Cinematography and Audiovisual Studies) in Madrid and Gara˜no studied Journalism and Advertising, but the group continued to use the equipment and facilities provided by the Centro Cultural Larrotxene in San Sebastian during a period in which lightweight HD cameras and laptop editing programmes were becoming affordable. The Moriarti collective made shorts and micro-shorts that they submitted to competitions until Tercero B (3B, Jos´e Mari Goenaga, 2002) catalyzed the ambitions and means of the group in its recruitment of well-known actors Blanca Portillo, Mariv´ı Bilbao and Ram´on Agirre and its involvement in the Kimuak initiative that is examined in Chapter Seven. Shot on a Betacam digital camera following careful storyboarding and rehearsal, Tercero B is a thriller shot on location in San Sebastian that exudes a richly gothic atmosphere, which has received over 45 awards and was one of the 12 short films included in the prestigious Kimuak DVD package of 2007. Moriarti Produkzioak has since moved on from short film productions to documentaries and feature films without ever abandoning the collective practice and ethos. Representative short films by Moriarti members include Sinton´ıa (In Tune, Jos´e Mar´ıa Goenaga, 2005), which was also part of the Kimuak selection and which has received over 85 national and international awards. Its apparent simplicity conceals a delicate story of a coincidence and love that illustrates the possibility of establishing a connection with a stranger in the middle of a daily urban routine in which individualism and loneliness are accentuated. The multiaward winning On the Line (Jon Gara˜no, 2008) is typical of several works by the collective because it focusses on social problems and denounces global injustices, much like Haurralde: Ethiopia (Jon Gara˜no, 2008), which denounces the practice of female genital mutilation. On the Line is a faux documentary that juxtaposes the experiences of Mexicans trying to cross the border with the United States 186

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Figure 17. The man (Ram´on Agirre) considers his options in Tercero B (3B, Jos´e Mar´ıa Goenaga, 2002) (Moriarti Produkzioak).

with the discourse of Adam, a young member of the American border patrol, whose brutality is finally dissolved when confronted with a Mexican woman and her infant son, who summon up sudden empathy by bringing to mind his own wife and child. Recent productions by Moriarti Produkzioak include the feature-length documentaries Lucio (Aitor Arregi & Jos´e Mari Goenaga, 2007) and El m´etodo Arrieta (The Arrieta Method, Jorge Gil, 2013) as well as the Euskaralanguage film 80 egunean (For Eighty Days, Jon Gara˜no & Jos´e Mar´ıa Goenaga, 2010), which is analysed in Chapter One. The ability of the members of this group to perform several different functions while maintaining their collective enterprise points to a survivalist approach to surmounting precarious conditions and overcoming periods of financial crisis. Moriarti Produkzioak has even managed to submit proposals that have received funding from such entities as the Basque government, EiTB, RTVE (Spanish National Radio and Television), ICAA, the European Commission, STV (Swedish Public Television), YLE (Finnish Public Television) and the Eastman Kodak Company as well as several NGOs, such as the two documentaries commissioned by the NGO Ingenier´ıa para la Cooperaci´on (Engineering for Cooperation) in Venezuela with the support of the Basque goverment entitled El m´etodo Julio (Julio’s Method, Jon Gara˜no, 2011) and La casa del Nazareno (The Nazarene’s House, Jon Gara˜no, 2011). Their works are mostly filmed in Euskara, Castilian and English and their locations have included the Basque Country, Madrid, the United States, the Sahara, 187

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Bhutan and Latin America. The prolific team also make promotional videos for events and associations as well as corporate videos and have enjoyed further success in the field of animated films with Glup (Aitor Arregi & I˜nigo Berasategi, 2004), Supertramps (Jos´e Mari Goenaga & I˜nigo Berasategi, 2004) and Crist´obal Mol´on (Cool Cristopher, Aitor Arregi & I˜nigo Berasategi, 2006). Moriarti Produkzioak has also written scripts for Basque public television programmes such as Kronikak (Chronicles), Mihiluze (Shrew) and Una historia del Zinemaldia (A History of the Film Festival). The crowd-pleasing Loreak (Flowers, Jon Gara˜no y Jos´e Mari Goenaga, 2014), which had its premiere in the 2014 SSFF, marked a return to feature-length filmmaking that offered poignant reflections on memory in its tale of three women connected through the motif of flowers. Visually accomplished but sparse of dialogue, Loreak married minimalism to marketing savvy and duly attracted the approbation of critics and audiences and the interest of foreign festivals. In interview with the authors, Goenaga reflected upon the evolution of Moriarti Produkzioak and described a progressive sense of the collective finding its own way and place in the landscape of contemporary Basque audiovisual production. He perceives ‘a humane and candid approach to the lives of their protagonists, whether they are real or fictional’ in the works of the group and a recurring positioning in defence of human rights. As an example and purveyor of the Basque cinema of sentiment, Moriarti Produkzioak is exemplary. Although located in the Basque Country, its members are highly mobile in terms of filming in other regions and countries. They develop a great number of works in Euskara but do not hesitate to write and produce in other languages. Pressed to define this new breed of cinema, Goenaga acknowledged that it resembles present-day society, which he described as variopinta (diverse), therefore demanding that Basque cinema should be equally mixed and diverse: The aim of Basque cinema should be to provide the testimony of our times, and it should be open to embrace different stories. There is room in Basque cinema for people born outside who are here. There is also room for people born here who are now outside. There is room for stories told by people from here who are here, for stories about here told by people from outside, and for stories from the outside told by people from here.

Economic Reality Each year, as part of the SSFF, the Zinemira sidebar, which is co-organized by the festival and the Ministry of Culture of the Basque government and supported by EiTB, offers a snapshot of the condition of Basque cinema and awards the Premio Irizar and €20,000 to the best Basque film. The 2013 programme featured just eight films, seven of which were documentaries on Basque subjects. These included Alardearen seme-alabak (Sons and Daughters of the Alarde, Eneko Olasagasti & 188

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Jone Karres, 2013), which examines the participation of women in a local festival, Asier eta Biok (Asier and I, Amaia Merino & Aitor Merino, 2013), that explores the friendship between the filmmakers and a childhood friend who became an ETA militant, Encierro (Bull Running, Olivier Van Der Zee, 2013), which is shot partly in 3D, Una esv´astica sobre el Bidasoa (A Swastika over the Bidasoa River, Alfonso Andr´es & Javier Barajas, 2013) about the Nazi fascination with Basque culture, and Izenik gabe, 200 × 133 (Untitled, 200 × 133, Enara Goikotetxea & Monika Zumeta, 2013) which studies the working methodology of the painter Jos´e Luis Zurneta Etxeberria. Documentaries based on personal, local, regional and archival themes dominate because they are inexpensive and comparatively easy to make at a time when the Spanish government has reduced funding for film production from €71 million to €50.8 million (compared with €120 million in the UK, €340 million in Germany and €770 million in France) despite a rise in the export of Spanish films in 2012 of 19.2 per cent on 2011. Documentaries are shot, edited, screened, marketed and most often seen via low-to-no budget digital technologies that create new channels and forms of production and distribution, whether online or as part of resurgent and emergent film societies and festivals enabled by popular demand for relevant, socially conscious audio-visual stimulii and the assumption and acceptance of creative commons licenses by audiences and filmmakers respectively. At a time of austerity and growing social unrest, the prevalence of documentaries that provide knowledge, invite reflection and incite debate may seem introspective, but they also broaden the definition of popular film and Basque cinema in particular. In addition, it should be noted that the Zinemira documentaries are almost all co-directed, which reflects the same collective endeavour and collaborative ethos in the arena of filmmaking in the Basque Country that was previously illustrated by Moriarti Produkzioak as well as fresh emphasis on the identity of a community that is not just Basque but crucially one that both invites and extends empathy towards similarly sedimented filmmaking cultures around the world. The current proliferation of documentaries responds to financial constraints, but also heralds the opportunity they provide in terms of opening up new perspectives on Basque heritage while exploring innovative formats such as 3D. Many might argue that the baton of filmmaking ingenuity in the Iberian peninsula has largely returned to the art house or been passed to gallery spaces, but aesthetic and technological innovations are apparent in new filmmaking initiatives in the Basque Country that have little to do with traditional viewing practices. The e-cartelera website displaying the schedules of cinemas in Bilbao lists seven cinemas but four of those links (now in ghostly grey) are dead, including that for the Renoir Deusto of the national art-house chain.6 Nevertheless, at a 2013 event organised by the Cineclub FAS, the oldest film society in Spain, which plays to capacity audiences every Tuesday evening in a downtown church hall in Bilbao, a showcase of Basque short films and documentaries had little thematic coherence

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except a sense of collective endeavour and a sentiment of collaborative Basqueness that meant the filmmakers participating in the following Q&A agreed on three key matters: that none of them were making films to make money, that they were not even certain if what they were making were ‘films’ and that whatever it was they were making was the kind of thing they watched. Kindred initiatives throughout the Basque Country include the phenomena of resurgent film clubs, filmmaking competitions and festivals sprouting up in localities and online, as well as a plethora of crowdfunding strategies that continue a tradition of such ventures throughout the history of Basque cinema. However, even such a democratic initiative came under threat from the national Spanish government of the Partido Popular, which in 2014 announced its intention to regulate crowdfunding by imposing suffocating fiscal restrictions. Yet despite such constraints, contemporary Basque cinema seeps beyond the frame of any attempt to define it. Any examination of all this off-circuit activity cannot hope to support or provide any definition of Basque cinema to which filmmakers, academics and audiences may subscribe because close observation reveals a billiard-break of whatever passes for Basque cinema, whose impact creates pixellated arguments for its recognition in terms of industry, community, politics, art and sentiment, but whose disparity also insists that ideas of Basque cinema will always be mobile, especially when being streamed and shared amidst the white noise of the internet.

The Worldwide Community In recent years, financial support for filmmaking has evaporated and Basque films with commercial ambitions have struggled to define themselves as co-productions, transnational ventures or synergetic media strategies with television deals. The effect of the Spanish government’s reduction of funding for film production to just €50.8 million and the increase in tax on ticket prices to 21 per cent has contributed to the aforementioned closure of cinemas and the migration of audiences to online and community ventures. Nevertheless, in a country where DVDs and Blu-rays are absurdly expensive and piracy is so rife that Netflix surrendered its plans to introduce its online system of film rentals while extending it to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, the most creative filmmaking activity is often online, cheap to make and free to watch.7 Bypassing competitive funding, traditional screening venues and, to a large extent, the attention of critics and any quantifiable audience, this activity still counts as Basque cinema. Moreover, at a time when funding for the arts, education and public services is being cut back, investments by the Basque government still surface such as that in December 2012, when a much-needed €60,000 for the EF/FV was announced alongside channelling of €260,000 to special grants for cultural initiatives in Euskara that included a subsidy of €60,000 to the Sociedad Festival Internacional de Cine de Donostia–San Sebasti´an (SSFF Society) to boost Basque-language filmmaking. This 190

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consideration of the function and worth of the cinema within the Basque Country and, indeed, within any community or region stumbles when industry, statefunding, linguistic dogmatism and protectionism is demanded, but contemporary Basque cinema still responds to the link between cultural representation and the identity of the nation. Where one can now make the case for Basque and Catalan cinema, albeit differently, and hear those of Galician and even Andalusian cinema too, the notion of an all-inclusive Spanish cinema does not elide internal tensions. Nevertheless, political economy, industrial structure and audience demographics remain valid indicators of the viability of Basque cinema within a context of so much flux that within current global contexts of filmmaking and filmwatching Basque cinema is being transformed. This occurs at both the commercial level, where the prevailing economic model has fostered international co-productions and transnational distribution agreements, and in the online environment, which has enabled those making short features and documentaries in the Basque Country with the aid of hosting sites, editing programmes and the interest of loggedon audiences. Indeed, these latest configurations of Basque cinema have allowed for the recognition of commonalities along a layer of economic sedimentation common to many interconnected areas of the globe. To wit, festivals and seasons of Basque films have recently played in Barcelona, Birmingham, London, Frankfurt, Mexico City, Warsaw, Puerto Monte in Chile, Posadas in Argentina and Salto in Uruguay. It is not merely that new means of production, distribution and reception are enabling Basque films to be seen. It also suggests that the concept of exclusive citizenship, which defines a people as those with common political, legal, social and economic obligations and rights and a shared idea of itself as a subject with a separate historical, cultural and even linguistic identity, loses importance when films are shared, traded and possibly lost amidst the internet. On the other hand, the relatively unregulated dissemination of ideas beyond any legislative control has meant that what might be theorized as Basque cinema is no longer autonomous in relation to Spain or the rest of the world, but a platform upon which to perform ideas of nationhood that extend and invite empathy in response to post-colonial and/or trans-national contexts where such sentiments might be integral to ideological sustenance. Instead of seeking a binding definition that determines a film’s inclusion or exclusion within funding schemes, festivals, catalogues, popular canon and academic texts, contemporary Basque cinema validates instability, plurality and relativity in the description of modern Basque identity. Recent Basque cinema has provided, for example, sensitive illustrations of the economic downturn in the Basque Country in Aupa Etxebeste! (Hooray for Etxebeste!, Asier Altuna & Telmo Esnal, 2004), reconciliation with its violent past in Asier eta Biok, the integration of previously marginalized sexualities in Ander (Roberto Cast´on, 2009), a warmly satirical approach to the urban-rural divide in Kutsxidazu bidea, Ixabel! (Show Me the Way, Ixabel, Fernando Benues & Mireia Gabilondo, 2006), the resistance of its youth in Pagafantas and Zuloak

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(Holes, Ferm´ın Muguruza, 2012), urban renewal in Bypass (Aitor Mazo & Patxo Teller´ıa, 2012) and lesbianism and old age in 80 egunean. Despite their settings and even at times their language, none of these films display any of the restrictive criteria relative to being Basque but offer themes of love, hope, regret and rebirth that are universal, enabling socio-political correspondence between communities in Europe and elsewhere because such films still function for audiences as prisms or frameworks for analysis of wider issues. In turning to the question of audiences, the irrepressible activities of Bilbao’s Cineclub FAS attest to the fact that many screenings, festivals and symposia are now taking place away from the commercial circuit at a time when industrial traditions are in decay. Consequently, the precise audiences for films are difficult to pin down or track, especially when their distribution includes the internet. Despite or because of this, Basque cinema is a species in rapid evolution and currently enjoying a growth spurt represented by the packed screenings and post-film debates at Cineclub FAS, online activity, the Kimuak initiative, animation, documentary, street-level filmmaking and local screening activities and competitions that illustrate the belief that communities within Europe (and elsewhere) would not have to be racially or politically determined if their understanding and expression of citizenship were based on an empathy comprising shared emotions, experiences and knowledge of economic and social equivalence with other communities.8 This empathy may be seen in the documentaries, short films, online ephemera and features that perform the role of carrier for the narrative of Basque nationhood, although not without questioning the conventions, iconography and repercussions that come from believing in the social and political role of a national cinema. In their Trojan horse guise as comedies, Aupa Etxebeste!, Bypass and Pagafantas still express how it feels to be living at a time when everything appears to be commoditised, when the evolution of the European Union has resulted in entrenchment on the part of the most powerful nations as well as the sedimentation of the proletariat alongside displaced and migrant communities. However, it may be argued that these individuals and communities are also more liable to discover affinities with these ‘others’ on the same sub-strata of economic sedimentation in other parts of the world via films and new media, which includes the possibility of coordinating an international sentiment of resistance. New screen technologies allow people to resist the homogeneity of globalisation and transcend the heterogeneity of localism. The creative strategy exemplified by Moriarti Produkzioak and shared by many other Basque filmmakers is to seek funding, collaborators and audiences beyond the nation state, just as the determinedly non-mainstream Cineclub FAS seeks to programme Basque films, documentaries and shorts alongside similar types of features from many areas of the world. In this way, the Cineclub FAS not only fulfils the need to express and debate the Basque view of the world, but engenders and enjoys a dialogue with other viewpoints offered by films from many parts of that

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shared world. When interviewed, Txaro Landa and Txus Retuerto, the directors of Cineclub FAS insisted that the key to the success of the film society, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2013, was indeed this conscious exploration of Basque and international films because what seems like a juxtaposition on paper becomes a potent mix in the post-screening debates chaired by Basque filmmakers and academics. Aligning the evolution of the Cineclub FAS with that of Basque cinema, moreover, Landa and Retuerto note that in the 1980s and 1990s its regular audience included those who would go on to become leading Basque filmmakers ´ such as Enrique Urbizu, Alex de la Iglesia, Julio Medem, Pablo Berger, Antton Merikaetxebarria, Aitzol Aramaio, Borja Cobeaga and Koldo Serra, among others, each of whom return to present their latest films to an audience of their peers. Thus was formed a sense of communal spectatorship that was influential in facilitating discussions and artistic projects. Nevertheless, they express concern that young audiences today will choose to watch films online rather than attending the public screenings of Cineclub FAS, thereby eliminating such collective experiences and the opportunity to learn in a more structured and supported manner about films and filmmaking.

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Figure 18. The weekly colloquium and screening of Cineclub FAS.

An End to the Beginning of Basque Cinema San Sebastian is not the only place in the Basque Country to host a film festival. There is also the Muestra Internacional de Cine y Mujeres in Pamplona, the Festival Internacional de Cine Documental in Navarre, the Festival Internacional de Cine de Animaci´on in Basauri in April and the Festival Internacional de Cine Documental y Cortometraje in Bilbao in November. In addition, there is a horror 193

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and fantasy film festival in October in San Sebastian, the International Gay, Lesbian and Transsexual Film and Performing Arts Festival in Bilbao in February, the Human Rights Film Festival in San Sebastian in April, the Bilbao Fantasy Film ´ Festival in May and the Festival de Cine Opera Prima Ciudad de Tudela for debut filmmakers in Pamplona in the autumn, as well as several online festivals and one-off events that have emerged in recent years. One of the most engaging is the emblematic Festival Cine Express in Portugalete, a district of Bilbao, that celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2013. This is a hands-on festival, a guerrilla party and a celebration of ingenuity and guile that sees dozens of teams plot short films on a surprise theme, shoot them in at least three local settings, edit and screen them within ten hours on a single day in June. The festival rejects traditional means of distribution and ignores the emphasis on commercial recompense. Instead it captures the zeitgeist of mischievous creativity in the face of economic crises, indifferent mass media and contempt for politics. Its carnivalesque reverie responds to indebted nations stealing the savings of its people, youth unemployment adding up to a lost generation, the collapse of welfare, the privatization of education and the replacing of an expectation that governments would regulate banks with the realization that banks now regulate governments. As the official website declares: ‘To participate, one does not have to be a professional or have any special technical skill, only enthusiasm, creativity and the ability to experiment with story-telling.’ Sponsored by local businesses as well as the Basque government and the local council, the 2013 festival was a riot of creativity, where the free public screening started at 8 p.m. and the 30 teams containing 130 members applauded every short as much as the eventual winner of the €1,000 prize: Si no puedes con el enemigo . . . acaba con e´l (If You Can’t Join Your Enemy . . . Beat Him, 2013) made by the four-man team of T-Rec. A Tarantinoesque rampage on a sunny day, the film, which can be found on YouTube, is a macho frolic with a body count that takes care of all the other competitors in the festival and a post-modern d´enouement in which the sole-surviving T-Rec stroll into an empty hall to collect their uncontested prize. Definitions of what constitutes Basque cinema will never keep pace with what is happening right this minute in the Basque Country, where adventures such as Festival Cine Express attest to how digital technologies have enabled an optimistic and collaborative ethos of creativity that sees contemporary Basque cinema at its best when, despite or because of the post-modern irony of its champion film, hand-held and holding hands. Some institutional representatives and filmmakers may still insist on the need to find ways of screening full-length feature films in well-equipped cinemas, but other kinds of work, such as short films, must find their audiences too. Filmmaker Asier Altuna, who has seen six of his short films selected for the annual Kimuak catalogues, acknowledges that the Kimuak model examined in Chapter Seven has been revolutionary in this regard, since the presence of Basque short films in international festivals and competitions has propitiated awareness of the Basque

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Country and motivated mutual empathy with other places where they are screened. In 2013 the number of short films submitted to the Kimuak competition rose to 75, which points to a creativity in the genre of short films that is independent and even dismissive of any presumption that the filmmakers might be using the scheme as merely a trampoline to make full-length features. The relocation of the EF/FV to the Tabakalera building in San Sebastian in 2015 promises to provide new screening spaces for these films as well as more specialist Basque features such as avant-garde animation, ethnographic documentaries and experimental works that have no access to commercial theatres. Meanwhile, the directors of Cineclub FAS promise to continue screening Basque films that are more likely to play in foreign film festivals than anywhere accessible to domestic audiences. What matters is that all these activities add up to enough films and filmmaking activity to make the case for Basque cinema as an ongoing concern with a bright and unpredictable future. Basque cinema has always been characterized by resilience, impulse, illusion and enthusiasm, even or especially when the scarcity of material resources posed severe problems for its development. All those interviewed for this chapter offered optimistic views of the future of Basque cinema. Joxean Mu˜noz concluded by asserting that each society has a need to tell stories about itself to its own community and to others: ‘Basque cinema is the result of a community that needs to see its own reflection onscreen, and to tell the world what its own universe is like.’ Asier Altuna made a similar point when invoking the way that other nations might acquire knowledge of the Basque Country through film, while the directors of Cineclub FAS affirm that there will always be suitable and surprising stories to be told in the Basque cinema of sentiment because, as Jorge Gil of Moriarti Produkzioak explains, ‘we will always need someone tell us stories that move us.’ Other predictions for Basque cinema tend to focus on the need for flexibility in a changing world that is assailed or enabled daily by new screen technologies. Transnational experiences will become part of local productions and Basque films in English and other languages will become frequent in Basque cinema, while Euskara-language films will enjoy significant success as new generations schooled in the language graduate and seek entertainment and provocation. The Basque cinema of citizens has come and gone in accordance with periods of radical thought and enquiry, experimentation with film form and the criteria of exclusion and inclusion that apportioned funding, while the Basque cinema of sentiment has proved itself resilient, ebbing and flowing but always expanding across decades of artistic production and critical debate. As this book has examined, there are currently three generations or waves of Basque filmmakers at work, ranging from that of V´ıctor Erice, Imanol Uribe, Montxo Armend´ariz, Pedro Olea, Ana D´ıez and others which emerged in the 1970s and ´ 1980s, to that of Julio Medem, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, Helena Taberna, Alex de la Iglesia, Daniel Calparsoro, Enrique Urbizu and their like which came to the fore in the 1990s, and on to the so-called Kimuak generation of the 2000s that includes Asier Altuna, Borja Cobeaga, Koldo Almandoz, Isabel Herguera, Gorka Merchan,

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Pablo Malo and many more. Meanwhile, the next generation is currently active and online to the extent that what they are making may never be seen unless our Google searches get lucky or they catch a break and attract the interest of an institution or production company, win a grant or scholarship and ultimately join the throng of filmmakers that is recognized for making Basque cinema. The history, politics, culture and art of the Basque Country will, it may be supposed, still provide them with stories, ideas and a cinematic heritage that ties them to a place in the world without limiting their reach. After all, this combination of regionalism with universalism is a powerful means of identity and association with other cinemas, audiences and films. Thinking globally and acting locally is just one characteristic of contemporary Basque cinema. Another is the exact opposite.

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10 Inside Out and Outside In: Two Concluding Views of Basque Cinema Equations that explain the Basque Country are tricky. There are those who hold that the three regions of the Comunidad Aut´onoma de Euskadi (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, hereafter CAE) should join with Navarre to make the Basque Country, meaning three plus one equals one. Some hold that the three Basque provinces in France and the four in Spain make up Euskal Herria, the land of the Basque people, which gives seven divided into two equals one. Alternatively, there are those who maintain that the recognition of the CAE with its three provinces of Alava, Gipuzkoa and Biscay is enough for a Basque community and that Navarre should have its own separate autonomy, reasoning one multiplied by one is three, with one left over. Equation after equation only takes us further from reality, however, to a place or time where ideology formulates definitions that slide off the backs of all those busy labouring in this thing called Basque cinema. As stated in the introduction, this book is the result of a collaboration that was recognized as necessary in order to match a view from inside out with one from outside in. Like building a bridge from opposite sides of a river simultaneously, the aim of its co-authors was to meet in the middle, but where equations like those above informed and also diverted the book’s construction, so the feasibility of a single conclusion, of meeting in the middle of the river or at the end of this book, at times appeared na¨ıve, even impossible. As previous chapters have argued and demonstrated, Basque cinema is not something fixed or rigid, it bullies up to restrictions and takes limitations as challenges, shedding definitions as it evolves through generations and successive waves. The theoretical underlay of Georg Sorenson’s notions of a community of citizens and a community of sentiment, when transformed into this new theorisation of a cinema of citizens and a cinema of 197

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sentiment, provided a foundation for the research and construction of this volume that became stronger and steadier with each new viewing or draft. To the point where it is possible to recognize aspects and periods of Basque cinema as pertaining to either one form of cinema or the other, whether simultaneously or successively, it is hoped that comparative analyses of other cinemas might be seen and even understood as evoking citizenship and/or sentiment in relation to the territories that birth them. Yet all the scrutiny and reflection that has been brought to bear on Basque cinema for this book cannot and probably should not entirely avoid the equation that began and finally closes this cultural and political history of Basque cinema; namely, that a concluding view from inside out was equal to one from outside in.

Inside Out The Basque Country in the 1980s was a difficult place. In 1980, the year in which the first democratic elections to the Autonomous Parliament took place and were won by Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea/Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party), ETA killed 90 people. In that same year there were only two television channels in Spain, no autonomous networks or private broadcasters. Neither was there any place for discussion or vox populi on the radio and, of course, there was no internet. Yet even though the media was untroubled, the streets were increasingly frantic. Pro-ETA demonstrations attracted the support of a large sector of the population. Spanish security forces responded and violence in the streets became a part of daily life. Euskadi was immersed in the community of citizens, where contending forces were trying to impose upon others a model that affected the definition of the state, the social configuration of its citizens and its cultural practices. Rather than emulate the movida madrile˜na, Basque youth established what became known as Basque Radical Rock with groups such as Kortatu, Hertzaina, Eskorbuto and Negu Gorriak, among others, which were much closer to The Sex Pistols and to The Clash in tone and anger than to the New Wave stylings of Alaska or Radio Futura. They sang in Euskara and their lyrics raged against the system, the police, all kinds of repression and capitalism. Basque cinema and other Basque cultural activities became politically charged in a volatile situation that was fuelled by screenings in alternative venues such as gaztetxes (youth clubs) and the discourse of free radio stations and fanzines as well the cultural section of the Egin newspaper. The 1990s brought radical change. ETA continued killing and demonstrations supporting ETA still took place, but in 1997 the kidnapping and killing of ´ councillor Miguel Angel Blanco marked a turning point for the Basque population, which began to reject the violence carried out by ETA. Major transformations in Basque cinema occurred. Films such as Vacas (Cows, Julio Medem, 1991), Alas de mariposa (Butterfly Wings, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, 1991) and Salto al vac´ıo (Jump into the Void, Daniel Calparsoro, 1995) revealed a second Basque wave 198

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and provided audiences with previously unexplored aural and visual sensations, complex aesthetics and innovative narrative strategies, thereby shifting Basque culture towards a community of sentiment that rejected the radical dichotomies of the community of citizens of the previous decade. These films portrayed the violence that had remained sealed off and secret within families, while films such as Urte ilunak (The Dark Years, Arantxa Lazcano, 1993) and Secretos del coraz´on (Secrets of the Heart, Montxo Armend´ariz, 1997) looked back at recent Basque history and diagnosed the sediment of trauma and resolve that the brutality of the Francoist regime had visited on children. These were personal and local stories, which nevertheless crossed borders to impact consistently upon international film festivals. At the same time, the media was developing increasing diversity in its political, social and cultural views that opposed binary thinking and diluted excessive polarization. The San Sebastian International Film Festival was also bringing other worlds, stories, voices, languages and accents to the Basque Country, just as Basque cinema was booming alongside cultural events and celebrations that would have been considered unthinkable a decade before. Basque films of this period were now appearing frequently in such events as the annual Spanish Film Festival in New York and winning prestigious prizes such as the British Film Institute’s Sutherland award for the maker of the most original and imaginative first feature screened at the National Film Theatre, which went to Julio Medem for Vacas in 1993. In 1997 the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum was inaugurated, setting off Bilbao’s dramatic and costly urban transformation. The first years of the new millennium bore witness to a surge of critical and academic writing on Basque cinema, which extended beyond local borders and attracted a relatively high number of researchers from other countries, who expressed fascination with this comparatively small place in the world. In 2014 the Basque Country can be said to have entered a new political scenario that is marked by the end of cycles of political violence. After several provisional ceasefires, ETA formally announced its decision to unilaterally disarm in October 2011. Political and social forces subsequently focussed on the peace and reconciliation processes required to consolidate this new stage in Basque history and a degree of social coexistence. A qualitative increase in the recognition awarded victims of ETA is taking place. The constitutional admission of a new political status for the Basque Country in the upcoming years is open and possible as it is for Catalonia. In this context, the first decades of the twenty-first century have been characterized by smaller works in the world of Basque cinema. The Kimuak initiative that lends its name to the third Basque wave enabled the emergence of a production system and channels for short films. Documentaries are more common, while films from the Basque diaspora have posited a return to traditional Basque themes and symbols that reveal yet another approach to Basque history through the recovery of familiar but distant and unknown stories. Several Basque directors have settled in other parts of the world, such as Julio Medem and Luiso Berdejo,

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Figure 19. Claudia (Sabrina Garciarena) and Chema (Gorka Otxoa) in Bilbao’s Loiu airport in Pagafantas (Friend Zone, Borja Cobeaga, 2009).

who moved to Los Angeles, and this displacement often brings a creative freedom and fresh outlook on the Basque Country that is enabled by distance. Others have located their short and long films in distant geographical landscapes and even the virtual worlds of the internet. Such fresh and refreshed viewpoints engage in dialogue with those of previous generations of Basque filmmakers who have never stopped working, such as Imanol Uribe and Montxo Armend´ariz, who headed the first Basque wave of the 1980s. Throughout the decades, Basque cinema has dealt with so many topics that the resultant panorama resembles a kaleidoscopic array of reflections of rural and urban worlds, public and private conflicts, family affairs, political and cultural problems and conditions, which are often concerned with Basque youth. It may be argued that the history of Basque cinema has been lacking in humour, particularly when contrasted with the recent spate of comedies, but a particular sense of humour is present, for example, in many of the Kimuak shorts, such as those directed by Asier Altuna, who would go on to co-direct Aupa Etxebeste! (Hooray for Etxebeste!, Asier Altuna & Telmo Esnal, 2004), and Borja Cobeaga, who would write and direct Pagafantas (Friend Zone, 2010) and Negociador (Negotiator, 2014). At times, Basque cinema has also been accused of being unable or unwilling to confront its political demons and of showing a certain equidistance with the topic of terrorism, but the mere enumeration of the films that have dealt with this topic counters this assumption. What is absent, nevertheless, is a more active presence of female subjectivities in Basque cinema. There have been a limited number of female directors in comparison with the proliferation of males at all levels, 200

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including academic research on the subject, although notable exceptions include the directors Helena Taberna and Ana D´ıez and the women whose short films have been selected for inclusion in the various annual Kimuak catalogues. Nevertheless, Basque films keep offering stories dominated by sexuality and a social imaginary linked to projections of male subjectivity. In a community of sentiment in which flexibility and malleability are defining elements, new perspectives along relevant and progressive gender lines are needed. The future of Basque cinema is already in the making and its most talented representatives are eager to participate in the production and distribution of whatever forms it may take. The Basque community of sentiment has always been receptive to films and filmmakers, forming a wilfully captive audience at the Cineclub FAS every week and sell-out screenings at the San Sebastian International Film Festival every year. The new home for the Euskal Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca (Basque Film Archive) will provide new opportunities for increasing citizen participation and interaction and the policies due to be implemented by the Basque government during the upcoming years are taking the need to nurture artistic and cultural productions into consideration. At a time when new initiatives are exceeding setbacks, ideological perspectives are being revised and traditional concepts are acquiring new meanings, the dialogue that Basque cinema enjoys and sometimes suffers with the cultural and political history of the Basque Country, as well as with other cinemas of sentiment worldwide, is unstoppable.

Outside In The most successful Spanish film ever made is Ocho apellidos vascos (Spanish Affair, Emilio Mart´ınez L´azaro, 2014), a culture clash comedy of manners in which an Andalusian Romeo pursues a recalcitrant Basque Juliet. Written by Borja Cobeaga and Diego San Jos´e, the film both parodies and brings into focus provocative questions about the definition and categorisation of regional and national identities in Spain, not least in relation to cinema. In one scene the lovestruck and libidinous Rafa (Dani Rovira) falls asleep on his north bound coach and dreams himself into a nightmarish landscape racked by lightning. This idea of the Basque Country as a Hades through which the timid Andalusian warrior must bumble in order to win the love of the Basque Amaia (Clara Lago) strikes a chord because his expectations of her homeland as belligerent, hermetic and bleak rather chimes with prejudicial views of Basque cinema. However, while several of the films discussed in this volume do conform somewhat to the stereotypical structural ploy of combining a rural setting and its contrast with urban decay, simmering violence, everyday brutality in response to oppression and a propensity for sacrifice that resembles martyrdom, Basque films are so varied, even disparate, that they disobey more than they heed the notion of a conformist, united, national cinema. In effect, 201

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therefore, it is precisely the centrifugal efforts of filmmakers and the examples of their films that make the case for a relevant and resonant Basque cinema rather better than any centripetal, introspective body of work. This should by no means be construed as relating exclusively to the use of Euskara, because the Basque language is a fascinating signifier of difference and cultural expression that adds texture and meaning to films of all kinds. But whereas the Basque cinema of citizens has been extrapolated and theorized from the study of a group of films and filmmakers who responded to nationalist ideas and state funding to make films that supported the weight of a particular history and the responsibility of representing Basque ideals and problems, the Basque cinema of sentiment carries ambitions for more universal impact, even purpose. Ocho apellidos vascos takes potshots at oversimplified Basque stereotypes and offers a feast of ripe clich´es before descending into the well-worn territory of the romantic-comedy complete with farcical antics at a wedding; but it also strikes blows at the upkeep of insularity and satirises the sacrosanct. While pretending to be Basque, Rafa is shocked to hear Amaia’s inflexible father Koldo (Karra Elejalde) admit that he once allowed his precious daughter to date a boy from the South. ‘From the South?’ ‘Yes, from Vitoria’ admits Koldo in one of the brightest gags of the film, although the joke will be lost on anyone unaware that Vitoria is the capital of the southern Basque province of Alava, which is about as far south as this Basque’s mind-map of the world extends. Rafa learns quickly to impress Koldo with tales of having travelled ‘the world’ by reeling off the names of towns dotted around the Basque Country. This and many other jibes reveal the Basque archetype as wilfully hermetic, proudly hedonistic, vain and prone to any argument or scrap. ´ That the film was co-written by Borja Cobeaga, who wrote and directed Eramos pocos (One Too Many, 2005), Pagafantas and Negociador, does not allow Ocho apellidos vascos to be labelled a Basque film, however; for it was directed by veteran Madrid-born Emilo Mart´ınez L´azaro and produced (and expertly marketed) by Telecinco. Why the hesitation to claim a film for Basque cinema that plays with definitions of Basqueness? Perhaps it is not just the non-Basque director and funding that prevents this but the novelty of the humour because, beyond the several short films with punchlines that populate the Kimuak catalogues, Basque cinema can claim many things but the ability to laugh at itself is not yet one of them. Vacas (Cows, Julio Medem, 1991) spits satire from its surrealism but its visual gags such as the scything scarecrow, the naked deserter being birthed from a mess of lifeless limbs, and the woodsman played by Carmelo G´omez standing barefoot on a log and striking his axe at the increasingly vaginal gash between his feet, are morbid and horrific. Only Bazt´an (I˜naki Elizalde, 2012) offers amusement at the foibles of Basque cinema, turning its tale of ten centuries of traditions of bigotry and torture in a Navarrese valley into a sly and warm consideration of cinematic representations of Basque heritage. As Bazt´an pulls back from its film-within-a-film, it reveals a framing device that engages with the actors Carmelo G´omez, Txema Blasco

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and Kandido Uranga, who all featured in Vacas, as they return to the setting of that film. G´omez in particular confronts his screen persona and its relation to a performance of Basqueness as the film undoes any pretensions to this non-Basque actor ever representing authentic Basqueness: ‘You should have seen him with an axe!’ laughs Blasco and G´omez joins in the nostalgic chuckle: ‘I almost cut my foot off!’ Otherwise, the lack of self-deprecating humour in Basque cinema does not denote a lack of self-awareness, which arguably overflows to disparate ends in the more mythic, introspective or surrealist Basque films, but of confidence. After decades of debate over its existence, Basque cinema unsurprisingly trails the scars of an existential crisis. The films directed by Julio Medem apart, Basque cinema lacks eroticism too, which, as examined in relation to martyrdom and terrorism in Chapter Five of this book, has much to do with a tradition of saving the body for a greater cause. But if the twin pleasures of eroticism and humour, which might be expected to feature prominently in a cinema of sentiment, are largely absent from Basque cinema, recent years have seen its films unwinding. Comedies such as Aupa Etxebeste!, Pagafantas, Bypass (Aitor Mazo & Patxo Teller´ıa, 2012) and Negociador, abetted by the popular television sketch show Vaya semanita! (What a Week!) on EiTB, are proving that Basque cinema has begun to shake off its self-imposed stigma and resultant neurosis. What this means, perhaps, is that Basque cinema has matured to the extent that it can laugh at itself, because this presupposes that there is something there to laugh at after all. The time has come that Basque cinema need not justify itself. No longer forced to fall back on ideas or evidence of itself as a cinema of citizens, it can

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Figure 20. Carmelo G´omez, Txema Blasco and Kandido Uranga play themselves revisiting the baserri of Vacas (Cows, Julio Medem, 1991) in Bazt´an (I˜naki Elizalde, 2012).

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function as a cinema of sentiment that enjoys sex and a chuckle too. This is not to risk vulgarity or triviality, though such things are welcome too, for a cinema that can be recognized as one has room for high-brow, low-brow and middlebrow fare alike. Instead, the Basque cinema of sentiment that extends beyond place, categorisation and the deadline of this book might finally be learning to relax. The mindfulness that can be perceived in such events as the Zinemira sidebar of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the Kimuak initiative, investment in the EF/FV and the three-day conference Euskal Zinema: Zinegileen Hiru Belaunaldi/Cine Vasco: Tres generaciones de cineastas (Basque Cinema: Three Generations of Filmmakers) organized by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and the EF/FV in San Sebastian in July 2014, suggests that Basque cinema no longer has a need or compulsion to justify its existence. There will always be those who demur, even denounce the label. There will also be those who claim or co-opt it for opposite reasons. Regardless, Basque cinema shows signs of unclenching without losing its grip on that which Bel´en Vidal has described as ‘the return to traditional conceptions of the national.’1 Yet instead of treating these conceptions as inviolable, as tends to occur in a subservient cinema of citizens, the contemporary Basque cinema of sentiment has taken to prodding these sacred cows in a manner that hints at increasing fearlessness. Tim Bergfelder has noted that the return to rigid conceptions of national identity happens in countries ‘that feel beleaguered in their political or cultural identity, and in countries which see themselves as either economically excluded or culturally independent from the developments of central and Western Europe.’2 Recourse to stereotype, in other words, helps shore up a threadbare sense of self. Such recourse, however, can also call attention to whatever might be holding a country back. In this, Ocho apellidos vascos is extremely healthy. Its outsized box-office, which belies its sitcom-stylings and narrative dissipation, will generate sequels, copycats and academic papers for many years to come. Despite its weaknesses, it positions Basqueness as the object of desire and inveigles the audience in its seduction with a barrage of good humour. With a few exceptions, such as the criticism offered by the Basque nationalist newspaper Gara, Ocho apellidos vascos also got Basque audiences to laugh longest, loudest and last.3 Its humour, romanticism and box-office success could therefore justify it as an exemplary film, if only it were clearly not Basque. Then again, if the argument can be made that it is not a Basque film, this presupposes that other films are. All things considered, perhaps the most enduring signifier of Basque cinema is this eternal questioning of its definition, which to some extent ensures its abiding relevance as a subject of considerable contention. The debate continues, the arguments never end. This is, after all, Basque cinema.

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Notes Chapter 1 Basque Cinema: Citizenship and Sentiment 1. See Alberto L´opez Echevarrieta, Cine Vasco, de Ayer a Hoy (Bilbao: Mensajero, 1984); Santos Zunzunegui, El Cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco: Historia, Pr´actica, Teor´ıa (Leioa: Universidad del Pa´ıs Vasco, 1985); Juan Miguel Guti´errez, ‘Euskal zinea, cine vasco’, RIEV: Revista Internacional de los Estudios Vascos. Donostia: Eusko Ikaskuntza, 42: XXXIX, (1994), pp. 277–295; Jes´us Mar´ıa Lasagabaster, ‘The promotion of cultural production in Basque’, in Helen Graham & Jo Labanyi (eds), Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 351–5; Santiago de Pablo, Cien A˜nos de Cine en el ´ Pa´ıs Vasco (1896–1995) (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Diputaci´on Foral de Alava, 1996); Santiago de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen: Cinema, Nationalism, and Political Violence (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2012); Carlos Rold´an Larreta, El Cine del Pa´ıs Vasco: de “Ama Lur” (1968) a “Airbag” (1997) (Donostia: Eusko Ikaskuntza, ´ 1999); Casilda de Miguel Mart´ınez, Jos´e Angel Rebolledo Zabache & Flora Mar´ın Murillo, Ilusi´on y Realidad: La Aventura del Cine Vasco en los A˜nos 80 (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 1999); Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Longman, 2001); Rob Stone, Julio Medem (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); Joseba Gabilondo, ‘Uncanny identity: violence, gaze and desire in contemporary Basque cinema’, in Jo Labanyi (ed.), Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) pp. 262–79; Jaume Mart´ıOlivella, Basque Cinema: An Introduction (Reno: Center for Basque Studies–University of Nevada, 2003); Mar´ıa Pilar Rodr´ıguez, Mundos en Conflicto: Aproximaciones al Cine Vasco de los Noventa (San Sebasti´an: Universidad de Deusto-Filmoteca Vasca, 2002); Ann Davies, Daniel Calparsoro (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2009); Ann Davies, ‘Woman and home: gender and the theorisation of Basque (national) cinema’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 10: 3 (2009), pp. 359–72; Joxean Fern´andez, Euskal Zinema/Cine Vasco/Basque Film (Donostia: Etxepare Basque Institute, 2012). 2. Nuria Triana-Toribio, Spanish National Cinema (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 115. 3. Ibid., p. 146.

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4. Casilda de Miguel Mart´ınez, Rebolledo Zabache & Mar´ın Murillo, Ilusion y Realidad, p. 20. 5. Nicolas Bourriaud, ‘Altermodern explained: manifesto’ (2005). Available at http://www.tate.org.uk/whatson/tate-britain/exhibition/altermodern/explainaltermodern/altermodern-explainedmanifesto (accessed 23 October 2013). 6. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 7. Georg Sorenson, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 8. Gobierno Vasco, ‘Propuesta de estatuto pol´ıtico de la Comunidad de Euskadi’, Ajuria-Enea, 25 October 2003. Available at http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/ 2003/10/estatuto vasco.pdf (accessed 4 January 2014). 9. Dunja Fehimovi´c, Contemporary Cuban Documentary and National Identity (unpublished thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011), p. 5. 10. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, pp. 83–102. 11. Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies (London: Harper Collins, 1996); Ernst-Otto Czempiel, ‘Internationalizing politics: some answers to the question of who does what to whom’, in Ernst-Otto Czempiel & James N. Rosenau (eds), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s (Lexington, Massachussetts: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 117– 35. 12. Czempiel, ‘Internationalizing politics’, p. 132. 13. Anderson, The Transformation of the State; Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York & London: Routledge, 1994). 14. Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago, Il.: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 15. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 5. 16. Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 82. 17. Murray Smith, ‘The logic and legacy of Brechtianism’, in David Bordwell & Noel Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), p. 133. 18. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 90. 19. Ibid., pp. 90–1. 20. Ibid. p. 91. 21. Anthony D. Smith, ‘National identity and the idea of European unity’, International Affairs, 68.1 (1992), p. 74. 22. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 91. 23. Ibid., p. 94. 24. Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1998), p. 8. 25. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 101.

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NOTES

26. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (USA: Citadel Press, 1992), p. 21. 27. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema. Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001). 28. Tim Bergfelder, ‘The nation vanishes: European co-productions and popular genre formulae in the 1950s and 1960s’, in Mette Hjort & Scott MacKenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 131. 29. Alex Marlow-Mann, The New Neapolitan Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), p. 5. 30. Stephen Crofts, ‘Concepts of national cinema’, in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 387. 31. Bergfelder, ‘The nation vanishes’, p. 131. 32. Paul Cooke & Rob Stone, ‘Crystallising the past: slow heritage cinema’, in Jorge Nuno Barradas & Tiago de Luca (eds), Slow Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). In press. 33. Susan Hayward, ‘Framing national cinemas’, in Mette Hjort & Scott MacKenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 93. 34. Crofts, ‘Concepts of national cinema’, p. 390. 35. Andrew Higson, ‘The limiting imagination of national cinema’, in Mette Hjort & Scott MacKenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 63. 36. Ibid., p. 74. 37. Crofts, ‘Concepts of national cinema’, pp. 385–86. 38. See, for example, Zunzunegui, El cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco; Juan Miguel Guti´errez, ‘Euskal zinea, cine vasco’, RIEV: Revista Internacional de los Estudios Vascos, 42: XXXIX, (Donostia: Eusko Ikaskuntza, 1994), pp. 277–295; Rold´an Larreta, El cine del Pa´ıs Vasco; Susana Torrado, El Cine Vasco en la Bibliograf´ıa Cinematogr´afica (1968–2007) (Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, 2009). 39. Anon., ‘EiTB a la carta’. Available at http://www.eitb.com/eu/kultura/zinemaeuskaraz/ (accessed 10 October 2013). 40. Bego˜na del Teso, ‘Cobeaga, a tope en Gij´on’, El Diario Vasco, 28 November 2010. Available at http://www.diariovasco.com/v/20101128/cultura/cobeaga-tope-gijon20101128.html (accessed 14 March 2014). 41. Bel´en Vidal, ‘Negociador’ (24 September 2014). Facebook posting available at https://www.facebook.com/belen.vidal.75?fref=nf (accessed 24 September 2014).

Chapter 2 Melodramatic Beginnings: Early Basque Cinema 1. Miriam B. Hansen, ‘The mass production of the senses: classical cinema as vernacular modernism’, Modernism/Modernity, 6:2 (1999), p. 60. 2. Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 19.

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3. Santiago de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen: Cinema, Nationalism, and Political Violence (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2012), p. 45. 4. See, for example, Santos Zunzunegui, Euzkadi: un Film de Teodoro Ernandonea, 1933– 1983 (Bilbao: Certamen Internacional de Cine Documental de Bilbao-Caja de Ahorros Vizca´ına., 1983); Alberto L´opez Echevarrieta, Cine Vasco, de Ayer a Hoy (Bilbao: Mensajero, 1984); Jos´e Mar´ıa Unsain, El Cine y los Vascos (San Sebasti´an: Eusko Ikaskuntza, 1985); Jos´e Mar´ıa Unsain, Hacia un Cine Vasco (San Sebasti´an: Eusko Ikaskuntza, 1985); Manu Pagola, Bilbao y el Cine (Bilbao: Ayuntamiento de Bilbao, 1990); Santiago de Pablo, Cien A˜nos de Cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco (1896–1995) (Vitoria´ Gasteiz: Diputaci´on Foral de Alava, 1996) and Joxean Fern´andez, Euskal Zinema/Cine Vasco/Basque Film (Donostia: Etxepare Basque Institute, 2012). 5. Fern´andez, Euskal Zinema, p. 13. 6. de Pablo, Cien A˜nos de Cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco, p. 20. 7. Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Longman, 2001), p. 65. 8. Singer, Melodrama and Modernity, p. 40. 9. Mathew S. Buckley, ‘Refugee theatre: melodrama and modernity’s loss’, Theatre Journal, 61: 2 (2009), p. 188. 10. L´opez Echevarrieta, Cine Vasco, de Ayer a Hoy, p. 62. 11. Fern´andez, Euskal Zinema, p. 21. 12. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). 13. Christine Gledhill, ‘Rethinking genre’, in Christine Gledhill & Linda Williams (eds), Reinventing Film Studies (London: Arnold, 2000), p. 228. 14. Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 297. 15. Linda Williams, ‘Melodrama revised’, in Nick Browne (ed.), Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 65. 16. Ibid., p. 66. 17. Ibid., pp. 66, 69. 18. Ibid., p. 77. 19. L´opez Echevarrieta, Cine Vasco, de Ayer a Hoy, pp. 134–5. 20. Ibid., p. 49. 21. Buckley, ‘Refugee theatre’, p. 182. 22. For biography and analysis see Javier Corcuera, La Patria de los Vascos: Or´ıgenes, Ideolog´ıa y Organizaci´on del Nacionalismo Vasco (1876–1903) (Madrid: Taurus, 2001); Diego Muro, Ethnicity and Violence: The Case of Radical Basque Nationalisms (London, Routledge, 2008); Santiago de Pablo, Jos´e Antonio Ludger Mees & Jos´e A. Rodr´ıguez Ranz, El P´endulo Patri´otico. Historia del Partido Nacionalista Vasco II: 1936–1979 (Barcelona: Cr´ıtica, 2001). 23. Muro, Ethnicity and Violence, p. 53. 24. Ibid., p. 54. 25. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), p. 51.

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32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56.

Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 49. Ibid., p. 52. Muro, Ethnicity and Violence, p. 59. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 50. Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity (trans. John Moore) (London: Verso, 1995), p. 224. L´opez Echevarrieta, Cine Vasco, de Ayer a Hoy, p. 41. Ibid., p. 48. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 49. Ibid. Ibid. Pagola, Bilbao y el Cine, pp. 132–3. de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, p. 47. Pagola, Bilbao y el Cine, p. 132. Buckley, ‘Refugee theatre’, p. 180. Singer, Melodrama and Modernity, p. 40. de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, p. 47. Buckley, ‘Refugee theatre’, p. 175. Zunzunegui, Euzkadi, pp. 9–15. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid. Ibid., p. 17. Fern´andez, Euskal zinema, p. 29. de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, p. 49. Ibid., p. 48. Andoni Elezcano, ‘“Sinfon´ıa vasca” (1936). Un documental con historia. De pel´ıcula comercial a instrumento pol´ıtico’, Sancho el Sabio, 36, (2013), p. 90. Ibid., p. 61. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 50. Georg Sorenson, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Basingstoke: Palgrave: Macmillan, 2004). Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, in Joanne Hollows, Peter Hutchings & Mark Jancovich (eds), The Film Studies Reader (London: Arnold, 2000), p. 241. Craig Calhoun, Nations Matter. Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (London: Routledge, 2007).

NOTES

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

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Chapter 3 Taking The Initiative: The San Sebastian Film Festival and the Transition 1. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (trans. H´el`ene Iswolsky) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 9.

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2. Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2005), p. 88. 3. Ibid., p. 82. 4. Ibid., p. 83. 5. Marijke de Valck & Skadi Loist, ‘Film festival studies: an overview of a burgeoning field’, in Dina Iordanova & Ragan Rhyne (eds), Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit (St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies, 2009), p. 181. 6. Elsaesser, European Cinema, p. 84. 7. Jos´e Luis Tuduri, San Sebasti´an: un Festival, una Historia (1953–1966) (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 1989), p. 16. 8. Ibid., p. 28. 9. Ibid., pp. 33–5. 10. Elsaesser, European Cinema, p. 89. 11. Amaia Lamikiz Jaregiondo, ‘Ambiguous “culture”: contrasting interpretations of the Basque film “Ama Lur” and the relationship between centre and periphery in Franco’s Spain’, National Identities, 4: 3 (2002), p. 291. 12. Tuduri, San Sebasti´an: un Festival, una Historia (1953–1966), p. 75. 13. Marijke de Valck, Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), pp. 186–7. 14. Tuduri, San Sebasti´an: un Festival, una Historia (1953–1966), p. 43. 15. Jonathan Rosenbaum, ‘“Some festivals I’ve known”: a few rambling recollections’, in Richard Porton (ed.), Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals (London: Wallflower, 2009), p. 157. 16. de Valck and Loist, ‘Film festival studies’, p. 185. 17. Ibid., p. 186. 18. Jos´e Luis Tuduri, San Sebasti´an: un Festival, una Historia (1967–1977) (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 1992), p. 68. 19. Lamikiz Jaregiondo, ‘Ambiguous “culture”’, p. 300. 20. Tuduri, San Sebasti´an: un Festival, una Historia (1967–1977), p. 70. 21. J. A. P´erez cited in Lamikiz Jaregiondo, ‘Ambiguous “culture”’, p. 301. 22. Joxean Fern´andez, Euskal Zinema/Cine Vasco/Basque Film (Donostia: Etxepare Basque Institute, 2012), p. 55. 23. Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Longman, 2001), p. 9. 24. J. G. A., ‘La Filmoteca Vasca celebra su 35o aniversario con V´ıctor Erice y “Ama Lur”’, Noticias de Gipuzkoa, 8 May 2013. Available at http://m.noticiasdegipuzkoa.com/ 2013/05/08/ocio-y-cultura/cultura/la-filmoteca-vasca-celebra-su-35-aniversariocon-victor-erice-y-39ama-lur39 (accessed 26 July 2013). 25. Santiago de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen: Cinema, Nationalism, and Political Violence (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2012), p. 62. 26. Ibid., p. 64. 27. Ibid., pp. 209, 189. 28. Eceiza cited in Carlos Rold´an Larreta, ‘Antton Ezeiza en el debate cine-euskera’, Fontes Linguae Vasconum, 74 (1997), p. 131.

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NOTES

29. de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, p. 67. 30. Jes´us Angulo, Maialen Beloki, Jos´e Luis Rebordinos & Antonio Santamarina, Antxon Eceiza: Cine, Existencialismo y Dial´ectica (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2009); de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, pp. 202–5. 31. Homi K. Bhabha, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 2. 32. de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, p. 69. 33. Roldan Larreta, ‘Antton Ezeiza en el debate cine-euskera’, p. 140. 34. Fern´andez, Euskal Zinema, p. 69. 35. Diego Gal´an, Jack Lemmon Nunca Cen´o Aqu´ı (Barcelona: Plaza y Jan´es, 2001), p. 27. 36. Paddy Woodworth, Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy (New Haven and London: Yale Nota Bene, 2003). 37. Diego Gal´an, Jack Lemmon Nunca Cen´o Aqu´ı, p. 50. 38. Jonathan Rosenbaum, ‘The then and now of the San Sebastian International Film Festival’, 30 April 1989. Available at http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1989/04/thenand-now-the-san-sebastian-international-film-festival/ (accessed 28 September 2014). 39. de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, p. 161. 40. Source: EF/FV. 41. Ibid. 42. See Rob Stone, Julio Medem (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 192–4. 43. de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, p. 384. 44. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (trans. H´el`ene Iswolsky) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 5–7. 45. Ibid., p. 9. 46. Gal´an, Jack Lemmon Nunca Cen´o Aqu´ı, p. 310.

Chapter 4 Past Tense, Present Tensions: History, Heritage and the First Basque Wave 1. Erwin Schr¨odinger, ‘The present situation in quantum mechanics’ (trans. John D. Trimmer), Proceedings of The American Philosophical Society, 124 (1935), pp. 323–8. 2. Luigi Bruni, ETA: Historia Pol´ıtica de una Lucha Armada (Tafalla, Navarra: Editorial Txalaparta, 1987), p. 50. 3. Juan Miguel Guti´errez, ‘“Ama Lur”: una pel´ıcula diferente’, in Gurutz Jauregeui, F´elix Mara˜na & Juan Miguel Guti´errez (eds), Haritzaren Negua/‘Ama Lur’ y el Pa´ıs Vasco de los A˜nos 60 (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 1993), p. 72. 4. Ibid., p. 76. 5. Santiago de Pablo, Cien A˜nos de Cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco (1896–1995) (Vitoria-Gasteiz: ´ Diputaci´on Foral de Alava, 1996). p. 68. 6. Linda White, ‘Orality and Basque nationalism: dancing with the devil or waltzing into the future?’, Oral Tradition, 16: 1 (2001), p. 19. 7. Rob Stone, ‘Song-shaped Cinema: the performance of Gypsy and Basque songs in relation to film form’, in Rob Stone & Lisa Shaw (eds), Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), p. 126.

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8. Rob Stone, ‘The coding of aesthetic & thematic discourse in a cinematic mnemonic: the case of “Ama Lur”’ (1968)’, Journal of European Studies, 40: 3 (2010), pp. 230–42. 9. Mikel Insausti, ‘Ama Lur’, in book accompanying DVD of Ama Lur (Ir´unea: Herritar Berri S.L.U., S.A., 2007), p. 19. 10. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Suffolk: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1983), p. 124. 11. Ibid., p. 134. 12. Amador Vega, ‘La “est´etica negativa” de Oteiza: lectura de ‘Quousque tandem . . . !’ (Fundaci´on Museo/Oteiza Fundazio Museoa, 2007), p. 23. Available at http://www .museooteiza.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FMJO-Quousque-Tandem1.pdf (accessed 2 April 2014). 13. Jorge Oteiza, ¡Quousque tandem . . . ! Ensayo de interpretaci´on est´etica del alma vasca (Fundaci´on Museo Oteiza/Fundazio Museoa, 2007), pp. 76, 91. Available at http://www.museooteiza.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/FMJO-QuousqueTandem1.pdf (accessed 23 October 2013). 14. Ibid., p. 136. 15. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (New York: New York Philosophical Library, 1959), p. 122. 16. Christian Metz, ‘Some points in the semiotics of the cinema’, in Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen (eds), Film Theory and Criticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 65–72. 17. Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, p. 122. 18. Guti´errez, ‘“Ama Lur”: una pel´ıcula diferente’, pp. 67–140. 19. Jacques Derrida, Positions (London: The Athlone Press, 1981), p. 29. 20. Wimal Dissayanake, ‘Issues in world cinema’, in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 528–9. 21. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 2006) p. 6. 22. Jos´e Mar´ıa Unsain, El Cine y Los Vascos (San Sebasti´an: Eusko Ikaskuntza, 1985), p. 27. 23. Mikel Insausti, ‘Ama Lur’, p. 14. 24. Carlos Roldan Larreta, Los Vascos y el S´eptimo Arte: Diccionario Enciclop´edico de Cineastas Vascos (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2003), p. 30. 25. de Pablo, Cien A˜nos de Cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco, p. 65. 26. Amaia Lamikiz Jauregiondo, ‘Ambiguous “culture”: contrasting interpretations of the Basque film “Ama Lur” and the relationship between centre and periphery in Franco’s Spain’, National Identities, 4: 3 (2002), pp. 291–306. 27. Carlos Rold´an Larreta,‘Fernando Larruquert Aguirre’, Au˜namendi Eusko Entziklopedia. Fundaci´on Eusko Media, 2010). Available at http://www.euskomedia.org/ aunamendi/86795 (accessed 12 April 2013). 28. Borja Hermoso, ‘El tesoro “porno” de Jorge Oteiza: el lado m´as desinhibido de un genio’, El Pa´ıs, 17 May 2013. Available at http://cultura.elpais.com/ cultura/2013/05/17/actualidad/1368811430 456828.html (accessed 12 March 2014). 29. Robin Fiddian, ‘“El esp´ıritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive” (V´ıctor Erice, 1973): “To Kill a Mockingbird” as neglected intertext’, in Mar´ıa Delgado & Robin

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34. 35.

36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

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Fiddian (eds), Spanish Cinema 1973–2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 21. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 21–34. Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Longman, 2001), p. 90. Carmen Arocena, ‘Ana en el cine: el momento esencial’, in Julio P´erez Perucha (ed.), El Esp´ıritu de la Colmena . . . 31 A˜nos Despu´es (Valencia: Ediciones de la Filmoteca, 2005), p. 311. Erice cited in Julio P´erez Perucha (ed.), El Esp´ıritu de la Colmena . . . 31 A˜nos Despu´es (Valencia, Ediciones de la Filmoteca, 2005), p. 452. J. G. A., ‘La Filmoteca Vasca celebra su 35o aniversario con V´ıctor Erice y “Ama Lur”’, Noticias de Gipuzkoa, 8 May 2013. Available at http://m.noticiasdegipuzkoa.com/ 2013/05/08/ocio-y-cultura/cultura/la-filmoteca-vasca-celebra-su-35-aniversariocon-victor-erice-y-39ama-lur39 (accessed 26 July 2013). Roldan Larreta, Los Vascos y el S´eptimo Arte, p. 28. Simona Monticelli, ‘Italian Post-War Cinema and Neo-Realism’, in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 455. Ibid., p. 457. Ian Aitken, European Film Theory and Criticism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), p. 247. de Pablo, Cien A˜nos de Cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco, p. 98. Unsain, El Cine y los Vascos, p. 39. Lamikiz Jauregiondo, ‘Ambiguous “culture”’, pp. 299–300. Alberto L´opez Echevarrieta, El Cine de Pedro Olea (Valladolid: 51 semana internacional del cine, 2006), p. 74. Ibid., p. 74. Aitken, European Film Theory and Criticism, p. 245. Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2005), p. 21. N´estor Garc´ıa Canclini, ‘Will there be a Latin American cinema in the year 2000?: visual culture in a postnational era’ (trans. Adriana X. Tatum & Ann Marie Stock), in Ann Marie Stock (ed.), Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Approaches (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 246. Jaume Mart´ı-Olivella, Basque Cinema: An Introduction (Reno: Center for Basque Studies-University of Nevada, 2003), p. 13. de Pablo, Cien a˜nos de cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco, 95, 94, 99. Frederic Jameson, ‘Post-modernism and consumer society’, in Hal Foster (ed.) PostModern Culture (London: Pluto Classics, 1985), p. 125. Ram´on Sola, ‘El comit´e europeo recoge que Beatriz Etxebarria fue violada en los calabozos espa˜noles’, La mancha obrera (2014). Available at http://lamanchaobrera.es/elcomite-europeo-recoge-que-beatriz-etxebarria-fue-violada-en-los-calabozosespanoles/ (accessed 15 March 2013).

NOTES

30. 31. 32. 33.

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52. Bel´en Vidal, Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 5. 53. Jameson, ‘Post-modernism and consumer society’, p. 125. 54. Richard Dyer, ‘Heritage cinema in Europe’, in Ginette Vincendeau (ed.), Encyclopedia of European Cinema (London: Cassell, 1995), p. 205. 55. Paul Cooke & Rob Stone, ‘Crystallising the past: slow heritage cinema’, in Jorge Nuno Barradas & Tiago de Luca (eds), Slow Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015). 56. L´opez Echevarrieta, El Cine de Pedro Olea, pp. 111–7. 57. Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory (London and New York: Verso, 1994), p. 243.

Chapter 5 Broken Windows: Representations of Terrorism 1. BBC, ‘Full text: Basque ceasefire declaration’, 20 October 2011. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15395157 (accessed 26 April 2013). 2. Alan O’Leary, Tragedia all’italiana: Italian Cinema and Italian Terrorisms, 1970–2010 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 1–2. 3. Ibid., pp. 11–2. 4. Paddy Woodworth, Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy (New Haven and London: Yale Nota Bene, 2003), p. 19. 5. Ibid., pp. 34–5. 6. Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End (trans. Chris Turner) (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), p. 26. 7. Ibid., p. 1. 8. Jes´us Angulo, Jos´e Luis Rebordinos & Antonio Santamarina, Breve Historia del Cortometraje Vasco (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2006), p. 105. 9. Jes´us Angulo, Carlos F. Heredero & Jos´e Luis Rebordinos, El Cine de Imanol Uribe: Entre el Documental y la Ficci´on (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca 1994), pp. 36, 58. 10. John Izod & Richard Kilborn, ‘The documentary’, in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 426–7. 11. Ibid., p. 427. 12. Antonio Malalana Ure˜na & Gonzalo Fern´andez Gonz´alez, ‘Eta y el cine: las fuentes de informaci´on de los profesionales del cine’, Revista General de Informaci´on y Documentaci´on, 16: 2 (2006), pp. 195–216. 13. Izod & Kilborn, ‘The documentary’, p. 427. 14. Anon., ‘El proceso de Burgos’. Available at http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/fuenoticia-en-el-archivo-de-rtve/proceso-burgos-1970/540902/ (accessed 12 November 2013). 15. O’Leary, Tragedia all’italiana, p. 18. ´ 16. Angel Amigo, Veinte A˜nos y un D´ıa (San Sebasti´an: Ikeldo KomunikazioaCommunication, S. L., 2001), p. 17.

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17. Robert W. Nay & Richard E. Nay, ‘Issues for Behavioral Assessment in Psychotherapy Research’, in Michel Hersen, Larry Michelson & Alan S. Bellack (eds), Issues in Psychotherapy Research (New York: Plenum Press, 1984), p. 69. 18. See Joram Ten Brink & Joshua Oppenheimer, Joshua (eds) Killer Images: Documentary Film, Memory and the Performance of Violence (London: Wallflower Press, 2013). 19. O’Leary, Tragedia all’italiana, pp. 239, 241. 20. Chris Homewood, ‘The return of “undead” history: the West German terrorist as vampire and the problem of “normalizing” the past in Margarethe von Trotta’s “Die bleiherne Zeit” (1981) and Christian Petzold’s “Die innere Sicherheit” (2001)’, in Stuart Taberner & Paul Cooke (eds), German Culture, Politics and Literature into the TwentyFirst Century: Beyond Normalization (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Camden House, 2006), pp. 122–4. 21. Georg Sorensen, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 14. 22. Carlos Rold´an Larreta, Los Vascos y el S´eptimo Arte: Diccionario Enciclop´edico de Cineastas Vascos (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2003), pp. 45–58. 23. Amigo, Veinte A˜nos y un D´ıa, p. 70. 24. John Hooper, The New Spaniards (London: Penguin, 1995), p. 399. 25. Jes´us Angulo, Pilar Mart´ınez-Vasseur & Antonio Santamarina, Los Para´ısos Perdidos: Ana D´ıez (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca and Filmoteca Navarra, 2012), p. 120. 26. Ibid. 27. Thomas, G. Deveny, Cain on Screen: Contemporary Spanish Cinema (New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1993). 28. Jaume Mart´ı-Olivella, Basque Cinema: An Introduction (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2003), p. 70. 29. Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (New York and London: Routledge, 1994). 30. Joseba Gabilondo, ‘Uncanny identity: violence, gaze and desire in contemporary Basque cinema’, in Jo Labanyi (ed.), Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 264. 31. Ibid., p. 267. 32. Ibid., p. 276. 33. Mart´ı-Olivella, Basque Cinema, pp. 70–1. 34. Jes´us Angulo, Maialen Beloki, Jos´e Luis Rebordinos & Antonio Santamarina, Antxon Eceiza: Cine, Existencialismo y Dial´ectica (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2009), p. 187. 35. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, pp. 127–8. 36. Ibid., p. 128. 37. Gorka Merchan, ‘La casa de mi padre’. Available at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?feature=player embedded&v=T2O6XczBGxY (accessed 20 May 2013).

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38. Santiago de Pablo, ‘Banderas de libertad: cine y nacionalismo vasco en el exilio’, in Mar´ıa Pilar Rodr´ıguez (ed.), Exilio y el Cine (San Sebastian: Universidad de Deusto, 2012), p. 31. 39. O. L. F., ‘ETA aleccion´o al “comando” de la T-4 sobre c´omo denunciar torturas’, El P´ublico, 14 January 2008. Available at http://www.publico.es/37038/eta-alecciono-alcomando-de-la-t-4-sobre-como-denunciar-torturas (accessed 26 April 2013). 40. Michaela De Soucey, Jo-Ellen Pozner, Corey Fields, Kerry Dobransky, & Gary Alan Fine, ‘Memory and sacrifice: an embodied theory of martyrdon’, Cultural Sociology, 2 (2008), pp. 99–101. 41. Jo Labanyi, ‘Memory and modernity in democratic Spain: the difficulty of coming to terms with the Spanish Civil War’, Poetics Today, 28: 1 (2007), pp. 89–116. 42. Jos´e Mar´ıa Unsain, Hacia un Cine Vasco (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 1985), p. 29. 43. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2004), p. 67. 44. Ibid., p. 5. 45. Ibid., p. 6. 46. Jeremy Wisnewski, Understanding Torture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p. 50. 47. Gabilondo, ‘Uncanny identity’, p. 268. 48. Ibid., p. 263. 49. Ibid., p. 263. 50. Rob Stone, ‘Remaining bodies: the time-image as terrorist act’, in Mar´ıa Pilar Rodr´ıguez (ed.), Basque and European Perspectives on Media and Cultural Studies (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2009), pp. 81–99. 51. Mar´ıa Pilar Rodr´ıguez, ‘Female visions of Basque terrorism: “Ander eta Yul” by Ana D´ıez and “Yoyes” by Helena Taberna’, in Ofelia Ferr´an & Kathleen Glenn (eds), Women’s Narrative and Film in Twentieth Century Spain: A World of Difference (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 162. 52. Ann Davies, ‘Woman and home: gender and the theorisation of Basque (national) cinema’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 10. 3 (2009), p. 359. 53. Rob Stone & Helen Jones, (2004). ‘Mapping the gendered space of the Basque Country’, Studies in European Cinema, Intellect, 1: 1 (2004), p. 49. 54. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 131. 55. Davies, ‘Woman and home’, p. 359. 56. O’Leary, Tragedia all’italiana, p. 14. 57. Ibid. 58. Alberto Moyano, ‘Sobre “Ventanas al interior”’. Available at http://blogs. diariovasco.com/eljukebox/2012/09/11/sobre-ventanas-al-interior/ (accessed 4 April 2013). 59. Carlos Roldan Larreta, ‘“Yoyes”: historia y vicisitudes de un proyecto cinematogr´afico’, Sancho el Sabio, 34 (2011), pp. 135–56; Ann Davies, ‘Ana D´ıez: Basque cinema, gender and the (home)land’, in Juli´an Daniel Gut´ıerrez-Albilla & Parvati Nair (eds), Hispanic and Lusophone Women Filmmakers: Theory, Practice and Difference (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 115–25.

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60. Santiago de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen: Cinema, Nationalism, and Political Violence (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2012). 61. Gabilondo, ‘Uncanny identity’, p. 268.

Chapter 6 Elastic Basqueness: The Second Basque Wave 1. Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization (New York: Prometheus Books, 1987), p. 321. 2. Timothy Corrigan, A Cinema without Walls: Movies and Culture after Vietnam (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991), p. 101. 3. Rosanna Maule, New Directions in Authorial Film Practices in France, Italy and Spain since the 1980s (Bristol: Intellect, 2008), p. 36. 4. See Parvati Nair & Juli´an Daniel Guti´errez-Albilla (eds), Hispanic and Lusophone Women Filmmakers: Theory, Practice and Difference (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 5. Corrigan, A Cinema without Walls, p. 105. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 108. 8. Carlos, F. Heredero, Espejo de Miradas: Entrevistas con Nuevos Directores del Cine Espa˜nol de los A˜nos Noventa (Madrid: Festival de Cine de Alcal´a de Henares, 1997), pp. 128, 674–7, 255, 566. ´ 9. Peter Buse, Nuria Triana-Toribio and Andy Willis, The Cinema of Alex de La Iglesia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 26. 10. Barry Jordan & Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, Contemporary Spanish Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 182. 11. Joxean Fern´andez, Euskal Zinema/Cine Vasco/Basque Film (Donostia: Etxepare Basque Institute, 2012), p. 95. 12. David Martin-Jones & Mar´ıa Soledad Mont´an˜ ez, ‘Afterthoughts on auto-erasure’, Afterthoughts and Postscripts, SCMS, 53.1 (2013). Available at http://www.cmstudies .org/general/custom.asp?page=CJ after531 jonesmon#.UoYuzcFuyj8.facebook (accessed 2 April 2014). 13. Carlos Rold´an Larreta, Los Vascos y el S´eptimo Arte: Diccionario Enciclop´edico de Cineastas Vascos (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2004), p. 39. ´ de La Iglesia, p. 27. 14. Buse, Triana-Toribio & Willis, The Cinema of Alex 15. Ibid., p. 28. 16. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). 17. Jo Evans, Julio Medem (London: Grant & Cutler, 2007), p. 138. 18. See. for example, Anne M. White, ‘Manchas negras, manchas blancas: looking again at Julio Medem’s “Vacas”’, in Rob Rix & Roberto Rodr´ıguez Saona (eds), Spanish Cinema: Calling the Shots (Leeds: Trinity and All Saints, 1999), pp. 1–14; Mar´ıa Pilar Rodr´ıguez, Mundos en Conflicto: Aproximaciones al Cine Vasco de los Noventa (San Sebasti´an: Universidad de Deusto-Filmoteca Vasca, 2002); Jes´us Angulo & Jos´e Luis

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19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

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Rebordinos, Contra la Certeza: el Cine de Julio Medem (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2005); Jo Evans, Julio Medem (London: Grant & Cutler, 2007); Jo Evans, ‘Foundational myths, repressed maternal metaphors and desenga˜no iconography in “Vacas” (1992)’, Hispanic Research Journal, 10: 2 (2009), pp. 122–40; Luis Mart´ın-Estudillo, ‘El hacha en la sangre: nacionalismo y masculinidad en “Vacas”’, de Julio Medem’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 8: 3 (2007), pp. 341–55; Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Longman, 2001); Rob Stone, Julio Medem (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). Joseba Gabilondo, ‘Uncanny identity: violence, gaze and desire in contemporary Basque cinema’, in Jo Labanyi (ed.), Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 264. Stone, Julio Medem, pp. 45–6. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1978). Georg Sorenson, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 86. Hugo Radice, ‘The national economy: a Keynesian myth?’, Capital and Class, 22, (1984), p. 113. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 85. Ann Davies, Daniel Calparsoro (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), p. 62. Mar´ıa Pilar Rodriguez, ‘On the function of punk aesthetics in “Salto al vac´ıo” and “Historias del Kronen”’, in Lisa Shaw & Rob Stone (eds), Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), p. 84. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 87. Nancy Berthier & Jean-Claude Seguin, ‘Introducci´on’, in Nancy Berthier & JeanClaude Seguin (eds), Cine, Naci´on y Nacionalidades en Espa˜na (Madrid: Casa de Vel´azquez, 2007), p. xvi. Ibid., p. xvii. Jean-Claude Seguin,’El cine en la formaci´on de la conciencia nacional’, in Nancy Berthier, & Jean-Claude Seguin (eds), Cine, Naci´on y Nacionalidades en Espa˜na (Madrid: Casa de Vel´azquez, 2007), p. 10. Davies, Daniel Calparsoro, pp. 42–7, 36. Santiago de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen: Cinema, Nationalism, and Political Violence (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2012), p. 331. Medem cited in Isabel Aguirre, ‘Julio Medem, Euskadi en el ojo de una vaca’, Diario Deia, 5 April 1992, p. 2. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 87. Ricardo Aldarondo, ‘Aregi acab´o con el cine vasco’, El Diario Vasco, 25 May 1996, p. 63. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘The future of the state’, Development and Change, 27 (1996), pp. 267–78.

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37. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 88. 38. Isabel Santaolalla, ‘Far from home, close to desire; Julio Medem’s landscapes’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, lxxv (1998), p. 333. 39. Carlos Rold´an Larreta, El Cine del Pa´ıs Vasco: de “Ama Lur” (1968) a “Airbag” (1997) (Donostia: Eusko Ikaskuntza, 1999), p. 359. 40. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 89. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., pp. 89–90. 43. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 5. 44. Ibid., p. 82. 45. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 90. 46. Davies, Daniel Calparsoro, p. 186. 47. EFE, ‘Bajo Ulloa: ya no nos dejan ni gastar bromas’, El Diario Vasco, 25 September 2009. Available at http://www.diariovasco.com/zinemaldia/noticias/bajo-ulloadejan-gastar-201309251605.html (accessed 3 April 2014). 48. Theodor Adorno, ‘Minima moralia: reflections from damaged life’ (1915). Available at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1951/mm/ch01.htm (accessed 21 March 2014). 49. Ross Wilson, Theodor Adorno (Oxon: Routledge Critical Thinkers, 2007), p. 95. 50. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 95. 51. Anon, ‘Propuesta de estatuto pol´ıtico de la Comunidad de Euskadi’, Ajuria-Enea, 25 October 2003. Available at http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2003/10/ estatuto vasco.pdf (accessed 4 January 2014). 52. Ibid., p. 5. 53. See Stone, Julio Medem, pp. 178–206; de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen, pp. 379– 91. 54. Julio Medem, ‘Epitafio a ETA’ (2011). Available at http://www.juliomedem. org/noticias/Images/11 epitafio a eta.pdf (accessed 4 May 2014). ´ 55. Guillermo Abril, ‘15 espa˜noles en Los Angeles’, El Pa´ıs Semanal, 22 December 2013, pp. 54-63. Available at http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/12/19/eps/1387468434 711241.html (accessed 23 March 2014). 56. Julio Medem, Aspasia, amante de Atenas (Madrid: Espasa, 2012). 57. Oskar, L. Belategui, ‘Quiero volver y estar cerca de Euskadi’, Diario Vasco, 29 March 2012. Available at http://www.diariovasco.com/v/20120329/cultura/quiero-volverestar-cerca-20120329.html (accessed 3 March 2014). 58. John Hopewell, ‘Medem set to portray Balenciaga (exclusive)’, Variety, 4 November 2013. Available at http://variety.com/2013/film/international/medem-set-toportray-balenciaga-exclusive-1200793978/ (accessed 10 January 2014). 59. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 102. 60. Theodor Adorno, ‘Negative dialektik’, Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 6. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), p. 192.

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61. Wolfgang Welsch, ‘Transculturality. The puzzling form of cultures today’, in Mike Featherstone & Scott Lash (eds), Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World (London: Sage Publications, 1999), pp. 197–8. 62. Stone, Julio Medem, pp. 8, 9, 139, 168. 63. Robert Stam, Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 7. 64. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, ‘Forms of time of the chronotope in the novel: notes towards a historical poetics’, Michael Holquist (ed.), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays By M. M. Bakhtin (trans. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist) (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), p. 84. 65. Lucia Nagib & Anne Jerslev, ‘Introduction’, in Lucia Nagib & Anne Jerslev (eds), Impure cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014), p. xxix. 66. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. 97.

Chapter 7 Boxed In and Breaking Out: Short Films and The Third Basque Wave 1. Jes´us Angulo, Jos´e Luis Rebordinos & Antonio Santamarina, Breve Historia del Cortometraje Vasco (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2006), p. 43. 2. Santos Zunzunegui, El Cine en el Pa´ıs Vasco: Historia, Pr´actica, Teor´ıa (Leioa: Universidad del Pa´ıs Vasco, 1985), p. 98. 3. Angulo, Rebordinos and Santamarina, Breve Historia del Cortometraje Vasco, p. 27. 4. Karl G. Heider, Ethnographic Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), p. 3. 5. David MacDougall, ‘Ethnographic film: failure and promise’, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 7 (1978), p. 405. 6. Angulo, Rebordinos and Santamarina, Breve historia del Cortometraje Vasco, p. 45. 7. See Rob Stone, Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Longman, 2001), pp. 1-13; Tom Whittaker, El´ıas Querejeta: A Producer of Landscapes (Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 2012). 8. See M. J. Olaziregi, Waking the Hedgehog. The Literary Universe of Bernado Atxaga (Reno: University of Nevada, 2005). 9. Rob Stone, ‘Song-shaped cinema: the performance of Gypsy and Basque songs in relation to film form’, in Rob Stone & Lisa Shaw (eds), Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), pp. 114–33. 10. Bego˜na Vicario, Breve Historia del Cine de Animaci´on Experimental Vasco (Madrid: Semana de Cine Experimental, 1998), p. 9. 11. Ibid., p. 39. 12. Ibid., pp. 13–4. 13. Jos´e Mar´ıa Unsain, Hacia un Cine Vasco (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 1985), p. 26. 14. Vicario, Breve Historia del Cine de Animaci´on Experimental Vasco, p. 29. 15. Ibid., p. 30. 16. Kimuak website. Available at http://www.kimuak.com/en (accessed 1 October 2014).

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17. Jara Y´an˜ ez, La Medida de los Tiempos. El Cortometraje Espa˜nol en la D´ecada de los 2000 (Madrid: Festival de Cine de Alcal´a de Henares, Comunidad de Madrid, 2010), p. 179. 18. Nekane Zubiaur, ‘Presencias del cine vasco en el mercado internacional. Aportaciones del programa de difusi´on de cortometrajes Kimuak’, Actas del III Congreso Internacional de la Asociaci´on Espa˜nola de Investigaci´on de la Comunicaci´on: Comunicaci´on y Riesgo (Tarragona: Publicaciones del Congreso, 2012), p. 39. 19. Y´an˜ ez, La Medida de los Tiempos, pp. 180–2. 20. Ibid., p. 25. 21. Ira Jaffe, Hollywood Hybrids (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), p. 6. 22. James Walters, Fantasy Film: A Critical Introduction (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001), pp. 1–2. 23. Thomas M. Sipos, Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2010), p. 6. 24. Tony Magistrale, Abject Terrors: Surveying the Modern and Post-Modern Horror Film (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), p. xii. 25. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 70–9. 26. Barbara Creed, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 6. 27. Ibid. 28. Steven Cohan, Masked Men: Masculinity and Movies in the Fifties (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 35. 29. Nekane Zubiaur,, I˜naki Lezcano & Ainhoa Fern´andez de Arroyabe, ‘El arte del ´ cortometraje: “7.35 de la ma˜nana”, un esperpento musical’, Area abierta, 29 (2011), pp. 1–16. 30. Jane Feuer, ‘The self-reflexive musical and the myth of entertainment’, in Rick Altman (ed.), Genre: The Musical (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1999), p. 161. 31. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Post-Modernism (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 93. 32. Susanne Kord & Elisabeth Krimmer, Contemporary Hollywood Masculinities: Gender, Genre and Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 6. 33. Steve Neale & Frank Krutnik, Popular Film and Television Comedy (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 3. 34. Masahiro Kitano, ‘Aristotle’s theory of comedy’, Bulletin of Gunma Prefectural Women’s University, 22 (2001), p. 200. 35. See Mar´ıa Pilar Rodr´ıguez, Mundos en Conflicto: Aproximaciones al Cine Vasco de los Noventa (San Sebasti´an: Universidad de Deusto–Filmoteca Vasca, 2002). 36. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (Paris: Gallimard, 1943). 37. Vicky Lebeau, Childhood and Cinema (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), p. 137. 38. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2004), p. 14. 39. Idit Aphandary, ‘Radical hope or the moral imperative of images in the work of Susan Sontag and Jean-Luc Godard’, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural

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Research, 1 (2009), pp. 493. Available at http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v1/ a28/cu09v1a28.pdf (accessed 17 December 2013). 40. Lebeau, Childhood and Cinema, p. 176.

Chapter 8 Longing and Belonging: Transnational and Diasporic Cinema 1. Wolfgang Welsch, ‘Transculturality: the puzzling form of cultures today’, in Mike Featherstone & Scott Lash (eds), Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World (London: Sage Publications, 1999), p. 200. 2. Vijay Devadas, ‘Rethinking transnational cinema: the case of Tamil cinema’, Senses of Cinema, 41 (2006). Available at http://sensesofcinema.com/2006/41/transnationaltamil-cinema/ (accessed 8 February 2013). 3. Georg Sorenson, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 90. 4. Gus Summers, ‘Luiso Berdejo: interview’, The ‘IN’ Show’, 2014. Available at http://www.theinshow.com/2014/FilmFestivals/SantaBarbaraFilmFest/Violet.html (accessed 23 February 2014). 5. Pedro J. Oiarzabal, ‘The Basque diaspora: finding a digital home’. Available at http://www.facebookstories.com/stories/1580/the-basque-diaspora-findinga-digital-home (accessed 15 January 2013). 6. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema. Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 15. 7. Ibid., p. 12. 8. See Santiago de Pablo, The Basque Nation On-Screen: Cinema, Nationalism, and Political Violence (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2012), p. 121–50. 9. Gloria Totoricag¨uena, Basque Diaspora: Migration and Transnational Identity (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, 2005), p. 17. 10. Argitxu Campos Echecopar, The North American Basque Organizations Incorporated (NABO) Ipar Amerikako Elkarteak 1973–2007 (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Servicio Central de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco, 2007), p. 17. 11. Jana Evans Braziel & Anita Mannur, Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 1. 12. St´ephane Dufoix, Diasporas (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), p. 2. 13. William Safran ‘Diasporas in modern societies: myths of homeland and return’, Diaspora, 1: 1 (1991), pp. 83–99; Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and DoubleConsciousness (London: Verso, 1993); Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2008). 14. See Totoricag¨uena, Basque Diaspora. 15. Ibid., p. 19. 16. Pedro J. Oiarzabal, ‘Diaspora Basques and online social networks: an analysis of users of Basque institutional diaspora groups on Facebook’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 38:9 (2012), p. 1469.

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17. Emily Lobsenz, ‘Ipuina Kontatu (a feature length documentary)’. Available at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/daggewood/ipuina-kontatu-a-feature-lengthdocumentary (accessed 16 January 2013). 18. Campos Echecopar, The North American Basque Organizations Incorporated, p. 25. 19. Sorenson, The Transformation of the State, p. xiv. 20. Ibid., p. 83. 21. Ibid., p. 14. 22. Totoricag¨uena, Basque Diaspora, p. 23. 23. See Michel Chion. The Voice in Cinema (trans. Claudia Gorbman) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); Kaja Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988); Rick Altman (ed.), Sound Theory, Sound Practice (New York and London: Routledge, 1992). 24. Mary Ann Doane, ‘The voice in the cinema: the articulation of body and space’, in Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen (eds), Film Theory and Criticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 369. 25. Oiarzabal, The Basque Diaspora, p. 105. 26. Ibid., p. 106. 27. ‘AT&T Wireless Shepherd’. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= KCesrtthqF0 (accessed 14 March 2014). 28. Oiarzabal, The Basque Diaspora, p. 106. 29. Sorensen, The Transformation of the State, p. 90. 30. Ibid., p. 91. 31. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2 (London: Continuum. 2005), p. xii. 32. Ibid., p.11. 33. Ibid., p. 2. 34. Rob Stone, ‘Remaining bodies: the time-image as terrorist act’, in Mar´ıa Pilar Rodr´ıguez (ed.), Basque and European Perspectives on Media and Cultural Studies (Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada Press, 2009), p. 91. 35. Deleuze, Cinema 2, p. 39. 36. Ibid., p. 5. 37. Ibid., p. 6. 38. Anon., ‘Ni˜nos de la Guerra. Portal de Memoria Hist´orica’ (2014). Available at http://www.ciudadaniaexterior.empleo.gob.es/es/destacados/ninios/index.htm (accessed 2 February 2014). 39. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), p. 31. 40. Ibid., p. 38. 41. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 280. 42. Miriam Cooke, ‘Introduction: journeys real and imaginary’, Edebiyat: The Journal of Middle Eastern Literatures, 4:2 (1993), p. 151. 43. Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, pp. 4–5.

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Chapter 9 Funding Films, Finding Audiences: Contemporary Basque Cinema 1. Anon., ‘How to promote the Basque audiovisual industry: summary of the white paper on the sector in the Basque Country’, Quaderns del Consell de l’Audiovisual de Catalunya, 17 (2003), pp. 83–91. This is an English-language summary of Anon., Libro blanco del sector audiovisual en Euskadi. Documento para el desarrollo de un plan con el sector (2003), pp. 60–2. Available at http://www.kulturklik.euskadi.net/wpcontent/uploads/2010/02/LIBRO-BLANCO-audiovisual-fin-200306.pdf (accessed 3 October 2014). 2. Anon., Libro blanco del sector audiovisual en Euskadi. Documento para el desarrollo de un plan con el sector (2003), pp. 60–2. Available at http://www.kulturklik.euskadi.net/wpcontent/uploads/2010/02/LIBRO-BLANCO-audiovisual-fin-200306.pdf (accessed 3 October 2014). 3. Anon., ‘How to promote the Basque audiovisual industry’, p. 87. 4. FAPAE, Memoria FAPAE 2012 (2012). Available at http://fapae.es/archivos/ memoria2012/memoria2012 fapae.html (accessed 2 October 2014). 5. Instituto Vasco Etxepare, Eiken, Epe-Apv, Ibaia y Media Antena Euskal Herria, Directory of the Basque Audiovisual Industry (San Sebasti´an: Instituto Vasco Etxepare, 2009). Available at http://www.kulturklik.euskadi.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ basque audiovisual industry 2012.pdf (accessed 25 March 2014). 6. http://www.ecartelera.com/cines/0,50,28.html (accessed 2 October 2014). 7. Jason Hughes, ‘Netflix expanding into six European countries by late 2014’, The Wrap, 21 May 2014. Available at http://www.thewrap.com/netflix-announces-expansioninto-six-european-countries-by-late-2014/ (accessed 21 May 2014). 8. Georg Sorenson, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Chapter 10 Inside Out and Outside In: Two Concluding Views of Basque Cinema 1. Bel´en Vidal, Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 60. 2. Tim Bergfelder, ‘National, transnational or supranational cinema?: rethinking European film studies’, Media, Culture and Society, 27:3 (2005), p. 319. 3. Mikel Insausti, ‘La vuelta al humor regionalista de Chomin el Regato’, Gara, 16 March 2014. Available at http://www.naiz.info/es/hemeroteca/gara/categories/criticaocho-apellidos-los-vascos (accessed 24 March 2014).

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, Los Vascos y el S´eptimo Arte: Diccionario Enciclop´edico de Cineastas Vascos (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2003). , Los Vascos y el S´eptimo arte: Diccionario Enciclop´edico de Cineastas Vascos (San Sebasti´an: Filmoteca Vasca, 2004). , “‘Yoyes”: historia y vicisitudes de un proyecto cinematogr´afico’, Sancho el Sabio, 34 (2011), pp. 135–56. ,‘Fernando Larruquert Aguirre’, Au˜namendi Eusko Entziklopedia, Fundaci´on Eusko Media, 2010. Available at http://www.euskomedia.org/aunamendi/86795 (accessed 12 April 2013). Rosenbaum, Jonathan, ‘“Some festivals I’ve known”: a few rambling recollections’, in Richard Porton (ed.), Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals (London: Wallflower, 2009), pp. 151–165. , ‘The then and now of the San Sebastian International Film Festival’, 30 April 1989. Available at http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1989/04/then-and-now-the-sansebastian-international-film-festival/ (accessed 28 September 2014). Safran, William, ‘Diasporas in modern societies: myths of homeland and return’, Diaspora, 1: 1 (1991), pp. 83–99. Samuel, Raphael, Theatres of Memory (London and New York: Verso, 1994). Santaolalla, Isabel, ‘Far from home, close to desire; Julio Medem’s landscapes’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, LXXV (1998), pp. 331–8. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (Paris: Gallimard, 1943). Saussure, Ferdinand de, Course in General Linguistics (New York: New York Philosophical Library, 1959). Schrodinger, Erwin, ‘The present situation in quantum mechanics’ (trans. John D. Trimmer), Proceedings of The American Philosophical Society, 124 (1935), pp. 323–38. Schweitzer, Albert, The Philosophy of Civilization (New York: Prometheus Books. 1987). Seguin, Jean-Claude, ‘El cine en la formaci´on de la conciencia nacional’, in Nancy Berthier, & Jean-Claude Seguin (eds), Cine, Naci´on y Nacionalidades en Espa˜na (Madrid: Casa de Vel´azquez, 2007), pp. 3–11. Silverman, Kaja, The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988). Singer, Ben, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). Sipos, Thomas M., Horror Film Aesthetics. Creating the Visual Language of Fear (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2010). Smith, Anthony D., ‘National identity and the idea of European unity’, International Affairs, 68: 1 (1992), pp. 55–76. Smith, Murray, ‘The logic and legacy of Brechtianism’, in David Bordwell & Noel Carroll (eds), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), pp. 130–148. Sola, Ram´on, ‘El comit´e europeo recoge que Beatriz Etxebarria fue violada en los calabozos espa˜noles’, La mancha obrera (2114). Available at http://lamanchaobrera.es/el-comite-

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Index 40 ezetz, 10, 153 80 egunean, 17–19, 154, 187, 192 800 balas, 127 15 a˜nos y un d´ıa, 181 7 d´ıas en la Habana, 129, 160 7:35 de la ma˜nana, 145, 150–2 7:35 in the Morning see 7:35 de la ma˜nana Aberri Eguna, 36, 162 Acci´on Mutante, 114–16, 124 Adivina qui´en soy, 126 Adorno, Theodor W., 23, 128, 130 aesthetic, 1, 2, 4, 23, 29, 35, 37, 46, 49, 63–4, 66–70, 73, 77, 107, 115, 120, 121, 130, 134, 135, 139–42, 156, 161, 175, 177, 180, 182, 189, 199 ´ Africa, 58 Aguirre, Javier, 142, 143 Aguirresarobe, Javier, 50, 53, 83, 160 Agur estasea, 174 Ahate pasa, 147 Airbag, 123, 124, 126 Aitor, 108, 128–9 aizkolariak (woodsmen), 36, 66 Aizpuru, I˜naki, 49 Akelarre, 79–81, 84, 97, 127 Alardearen seme-alabak, 188 Alas de mariposa, 57, 113, 114, 118–19, 198 ´ Aldarondo, Angel, 152

Almandoz, Koldo, 144, 147, 195 Altuna, Asier, 10–12, 58, 59, 146, 152–4, 179, 181, 191, 194, 195, 200 Ama lur, 4, 13, 28, 30, 39, 46–8, 63, 64–72, 75–6, 78, 79, 84, 103, 111, 135, 142, 166, 182 censorship in, 46, 47, 68 crowdfunding for, 47, 64 amantes del C´ırculo Polar, Los, 123, 160 Amaren ideia, 159, 164, 165, 173–8 ´ Amigo, Angel, 91–2 Amnesty Law see Ley de Amnist´ıa Amona putz!, 154 amor de ahora, El, 76, 95 Amor de madre, 148 Ander, 191 Ander eta Yul, 92, 93, 107, 112 Anderson, Benedict, 6, 9, 32, 33–4, 69 Andr´es, Alfonso, 189 animation, 140, 147, 149, 192, 195 abstract, 4 experimental, 136, 142–4, 147 a˜nos oscuros, Los, 57 Anticine, 143 Antiterrorist Liberation Groups see GAL Aramaio, Aitzol, 193 Arana, Sabino, 23, 32–3, 38, 51, 86, 90, 109 Arandia, Izaskun, 164, 174

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ardilla roja, La, 121–4 Aresti, Gabriel, 53, 54, 96 Argamasilla, Joaqu´ın, 42–3 Armend´ariz, Montxo, 20, 50, 56, 58, 63–4, 77–8, 94, 119, 195, 199, 200 Around the World with Orson Welles, 28 Arrantzale, 19, 49 Arraunketa!, 47 Arrebato, 112 Arregi, Aitor, 186–8 Arrival of the Spanish Royal Family on its Summer Holidays to San Sebastian see Llegada de la familia real espa˜nola de veraneo a San Sebasti´an Artalde, 153 Arteta, I˜naki, 107 asesinato de Carrero Blanco, El (television series), 90 Asfalto, 58, 124 Asier eta Biok, 189, 191 Association of Independent Production Companies of the Basque Country see IBAIA Atxaga, Bernardo, 141, 164 audiences, 1, 4, 8, 14, 16, 19, 20, 30, 36, 38–40, 42, 46–8, 59, 60–2, 71, 74, 79, 87, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112–15, 118, 120, 122, 127, 130, 133, 135, 142, 145, 149, 156, 179–96, 195, 199, 204 international, 3, 83, 104, 185 Aupa Etxebeste!, 10–12, 18, 19–20, 152, 179, 191–2, 200, 203 Ausentes, 126 auteur/auteurism, 2–3, 5, 14, 41, 68, 110–14, 118, 121–3, 125, 128, 182 autonomy, 4, 5, 9, 15, 42, 49, 53, 63, 70, 87, 110–12, 197 declaration of, 42, 64 avant-garde aesthetic, 37, 46 documentary of, 4 Avignon, 138

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Axut, 49 Azcona, Mauro and V´ıctor, 13, 30, 31, 33 Bajo la almohada, 147 Bajo Ulloa, Juanma, 57, 58, 111, 112–4, 118, 121, 123, 124, 126, 195, 198 Bakedano, Juan Jos´e, 50 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 41, 61–2 Balada triste de trompeta, 127 Barajas, Javier, 189 Bardem, Juan Antonio, 111, 139, 140 Barras, Brent, 164 Barrura begiratzeko leihoak, 28, 61, 105, 106–7 Barthes, Roland, 66 Basque aesthetic, 49, 67, 134, 142 Basque-American, 168 Basque Ball see pelota vasca, La: la piel contra la piedra Basque Ball Player see Pelotari Basque community of citizens, 6, 17–22, 46, 69, 76–7, 93, 95, 99, 101, 103, 111, 119, 120 linguistic identity, 6, 38, 115, 191 re-imagined community, 4 of sentiment, 47, 50, 58–9, 61, 68, 71, 86–7, 138, 146, 158, 164–5, 168–9, 173, 177, 201 Basque diaspora, 3, 5, 7, 20, 103, 158, 162–4, 168–71, 178, 199 Basque Film Archive see Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca Basque Homeland and Freedom see ETA Basque Hotel, 164 Basque Language Academy see Euskaltzaindia Basque nationalism, 11, 23–7, 32–8, 48, 51, 64, 70, 78, 86, 97–8, 100, 101, 103, 108–11, 116–17, 120 anti-Basque, 98, 101, 109 Basque Nationalist Party see Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV)

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brujas de Zugarramurdi, Las, 13, 127–8, 130, 179 Bullet in the Head see Tiro en la cabeza Burgos Trial, The see proceso de Burgos, El Butterfly Wings see Alas de mariposa Bypass, 192, 203

INDEX

Basque Scenes see Euzko Ikusgayak Basques in the West, 164 Basque waves first, 4, 10, 19, 53, 58, 63–109, 115, 132–3, 160 second, 5, 10, 19, 57, 58, 83, 110–33 third, 5, 10, 20, 58, 112, 115, 134–57, 199 Basterretxe Estate, The see mayorazgo de Basterretxe, El Basterretxea, N´estor 4, 28, 46–7, 53, 60, 63, 64, 72, 111, 135, 137, 140–2, 166, 182 Bastida, Ricardo de, 135 Baudrillard, Jean, 88–9 Bazt´an, 13, 116, 202–3 Beerbug, 147 Berasategi, I˜nigo, 188 Berasategi, Juan Bautista, 50, 56 Berbaoc, 147 Berdejo, Luiso, 146, 148, 155, 160, 199 Berger, Pablo, 179, 193 Bergson, Henri, 2, 13, 23, 83 Bernab´e, Francisco, 47, 137 Bertan Filmeak, 50 Bertsolari (film), 58, 59 Bertsolari (improvising Basque poet), 58, 64, 65, 67, 138, 141–2, 167 Berzosa, Xabier, 186 Betiko borroka, 19, 49 Bilbao, 7, 21, 23–5, 27, 28–9, 32, 45, 46, 48, 58, 76, 86, 92, 94, 95, 97, 119, 120, 135, 141, 153, 162, 168, 173, 177, 179, 180, 186, 189–90, 192, 193–4, 199, 200 Guggenheim, 120, 199 Museo de Bellas Artes, 141 Biscay Autonomous Archives see Bizkaiko Artxibo Forala Bizkaiko Artxibo Forala, 174 Blancanieves, 179 Bosch, Eduardo, 103

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Cachito, 123 Caja de Ahorros Municipal de Bilbao, 135 caja 507, La, 126 Calparsoro, Daniel, 58, 76, 103, 111–14, 120, 121, 124, 125–6, 195, 198 Camino, Jaime, 174 Ca´otica Ana, 129, 160 Carlist Wars, 30, 32, 34, 86 Carta abierta de ETA a los intelectuales, 51, 64 cartas de Alou, Las, 56 casa de mi padre, La, 94, 96–7 Casanova, Manuel, 42 Cast´on, Roberto, 191 Certamen Internacional de Cine Documental de Bilbao, 46 Chaotic Ana see Ca´otica Ana Charcoal Burners of Navarre see Nafarrroako ikazkinak Chartered Community of Navarre see Comunidad Foral de Navarra Chillida, Eduardo, 51, 65, 66, 140 Choque, 150 Chronicle of the Carlist War see Cr´onica de la Guerra Carlista ciegas, A, 103, 121, 122 Cineclub FAS, 180, 189, 192–3, 195, 201, 135 cinema of citizens, 9–10, 13–19, 29, 39, 42, 52–3, 68, 70, 79, 94–8, 103–26, 133, 144, 154, 182, 195, 197, 202–4 cinema of sentiment, 8–20, 29, 39, 50–2, 68–70, 74, 79, 83, 87, 97, 104–5, 109–11, 115–18, 121, 125–6, 129, 133, 144–6, 152–4, 157–9, 169–75, 182, 188, 195, 202–4

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cinephilia, 60, 179 Civil Guard, 66, 73, 89 Cobeaga, Borja, 21–2, 146, 151, 154, 179, 193, 195, 200–2 Combusti´on, 126 Committee for Classification and Censorship see Junta de Calificaci´on y Censura Common Wealth see comunidad, La community of citizens, 6–8, 10, 17–22, 46–7, 50, 69, 71, 76–7, 86–7, 93–6, 99–107, 111, 114, 119–20, 125, 129, 162, 165, 197–9 community of sentiment, 8–14, 17, 20–2, 47–52, 58–9, 61, 64, 68–71, 76, 86–7, 95, 99, 103–7, 120–2, 125, 130, 133–4, 138, 146, 150, 153, 156–9, 163–73, 177, 197–201 C´omo ser infeliz y disfrutarlo, 121 Comunidad, La, 58, 127 Comunidad Foral de Navarra, 78 conquista de Albania, La, 16, 79–84, 112 Cows see Vacas crimen de Cuenca, El, 97 Crimen ferpecto, 58, 127 cr´ımenes de Oxford, Los, 127 Cr´onica de la Guerra Carlista, 56 Cuba, 71, 86, 100, 159–60 Cuernos de mujer, 122 Curfew see Toque de queda Daisy Cutter, 147 Dark Years, The see Urte ilunak Day of the Beast, The see D´ıa de la bestia, El Days of Smoke see Ke arteko egunak Dead Mother, The see madre muerta, La Debord, Guy 104 ´ de la Iglesia, Alex, 13, 57, 58, 111–15, 118, 122, 124–7, 160, 179, 181, 193, 195 Deleuze, Gilles, 16, 170–1 Derrida, Jacques, 67–9, 93 D´ıa, El, 36

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D´ıa de la bestia, El, 58, 122, 128 Diario Vasco, El, 21, 129 D´ıas contados, 57, 94, 101, 109 dictatorship, 4, 17, 34, 40, 42, 44, 48, 49–50, 54, 61, 63–70, 73–5, 77, 80, 84–90, 100, 102, 111–13, 121, 128, 136, 138, 141–2, 156, 158, 161 D´ıez, Ana, 92–3, 112–13, 195, 201 Direcci´on General de Cinematograf´ıa Espa˜nola, 54 Donostia Zinemaldia see San Sebastian International Film Festival Dorado, Jorge C., 156 drama en Bilbao, Un, 25–6, 135 Dying of Laughter see Muertos de risa Eceiza, Antxon, 5, 19, 49–52, 56, 94–5, 139–40 Echarri, Miguel de, 43, 45 Edurne, modista en Bilbao, 25–30, 35, 39 Edurne, Seamstress inBilbao see Edurne, modista en Bilbao EF/FV, 53, 60, 76, 137, 144–5, 181–2, 190, 195, 204 Egea, Jos´e Luis, 50 EGI, 162 Egin, 198 Eguiraun, Luis, 92 EIKEN (Basque Audiovisual Cluster), 180, 184–5 EiTB see Euskal Telebista, 4, 20, 60, 79, 83, 96, 183–4, 187–8, 203 Eizmendi, I˜naki, 50 EKIN 85, 86; see also ETA Elai Alai, 162 Elburua Gernika, 137–8 Elejalde, Karra 123, 126, 202 Elezcano, Andoni, 37 Elizalde, I˜naki, 13, 116, 202, 203 Elorriaga, Xavier, 50 Elorza, Gotzon, 137–8, 162 Encierro, 189 ´ Eramos pocos, 21, 146, 154, 202

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Euskara eta kirola, 19, 49 Eusko Alkartasuna, 17 Eusko Ikaskuntza, 3, 25 Euzkadi, 36–8 Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea (EAJ) see Partido Nacionalista Vasco Euzko Deya, 162 Euzko Gaztedi see EGI Euzko Ikusgayak, 36–8 Everything for the Bread see Todo por la pasta exile, 2, 3, 34, 35–6, 63, 71, 81, 92, 93, 94, 103, 107, 112, 121, 138, 158–63, 169, 173–5 in France, 32, 137, 140 in Mexico, 50, 102, 173 Extra˜nos, 58 Eye of the Storm, The see ojo de la tormenta, El Ez: centrales nucleares, 19, 49, 89

INDEX

Ereagatik Matxitxakora, 137 Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren, 143–4 Erice, V´ıctor, 15, 47, 63, 74–6, 92, 111, 118, 140, 195 Erreferenduma (Ikuska series), 51 Erria, 138–9 Esnal, Telmo, 10, 12, 152–4, 179, 191, 200 espa˜nolizaci´on, 32 esp´ıritu de la colmena, El, 47–8, 63, 73–6, 77–8, 84, 92, 111, 116, 118, 140 Estado de excepci´on, 49, 98–100, 105 esv´astica sobre el Bidasoa, Una, 189 ETA, 7, 17, 21–2, 49, 50, 51–3, 55–6, 58, 61, 64, 68, 72, 80, 85–109, 111, 115, 122, 129, 148, 189, 198–9 anti-ETA demonstrations, 58 ceasefire, 85, 129, 199 ETA-V, 90 ´ Miguel Angel Blanco, killing of, 88, 106, 122, 198 pro-ETA demonstrations, 198 Etchepare, Jean, 166 ethnographic films, 36, 38–9, 64, 77, 136–7 European Union, 7, 41, 132, 192 Euskadihors d’etat, 100 Euskadiko Filmategia/Filmoteca Vasca see EF/FV Euskadi Ta Askatasuna see ETA Euskalerria, 64 Euskal Herri Musika, 19, 49 Euskal Media, 5, 122 Euskal Telebista see EiTB, 4, 20, 60, 79, 83, 96, 183–4, 187–8, 203 Euskaltzaindia, 20 Euskara, 4–6, 8–11, 19–21, 32–3, 37–9, 43, 46, 49–55, 58–9, 64–8, 70, 78, 79, 85–6, 89, 96, 100, 103–4, 106, 114, 118, 131, 135, 137–9, 141–6, 155, 159, 164, 166–7, 181–2, 185, 187–8, 190, 195, 198, 202 Euskara Batua see Euskara

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Faugeres, Jean, 37 F´ed´eration Internationale des Associationsde Producteurs de Films see FIAPF Fern´andez, Inaz, 152 Fern´andez, Joxean 113, 181–2 ´ Fern´andez Santos, Angel, 92 Festival (journal), 62 festivals (international film festivals) Berlin, 42 Cannes, 15, 42, 44 Clermont-Ferrand, 148 Karlovy Vary, 18, 42 Locarno, 42 Oberhausen, 42 Rotterdam, 42 Venice, 42, 43 festivals (national film festivals) Festival Cine Express (Portugalete), 194 ´ Festival de Cine Opera Prima (Tudela), 194 Festival Internacional de Cine de Animaci´on (Basauri), 193

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festivals (national film festivals) (cont.) Festival Internacional de Cine Documental (Navarre), 193 Festival Internacional de Cine Documental y Cortometraje (Bilbao), 193 Muestra Internacional de Cine y Mujeres (Pamplona), 193 FIAPF, 43–4, 55 Filmoteca Espa˜nola, 37 First Symposium on Basque Film see Primeras Jornadas de Cine Vasco Fix, The see pico, El Fix 2, The see pico 2, El Flowers see Loreak For Eighty Days see 80 egunean For you see Zuretzako Forty Says No see 40 ezetz Fr´agil, 126 Francoism, 4, 63, 65, 66–9, 73, 76, 78, 90, 110–11, 114, 127, 143, 147–8, 161, 173–4 Carrero Blanco, killing of, 87–8, 90, 100 censorship, 19, 44–7, 68, 139, 142, 143 Franco, Francisco (General), 4, 19, 36, 38, 43–5, 48, 51, 54–5, 72, 75, 83, 86–90, 98, 112,162 Frankenstein, 73–4 Fr`eres Lumi`ere, 3 Friend Zone see Pagafantas Fr´ıo sol de invierno, 144 Frontera Films, 64, 140 Fuego eterno, 80, 83–4 fueros, 32 Gabilondo, Mireia, 28, 61, 105, 191 GAL, 55, 88, 94, 99–100, 103–4, 109 Gal´an, Diego, 55, 60 Gara, 204 Gara˜no, Jon, 17, 18, 147, 154, 186–8 Garc´ıa, Enrique, 147 Garc´ıa Escudero, Jos´e Mar´ıa, 65, 136 Garc´ıa Leoz, Jes´us, 37

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Gasca Burges, Luis, 54 Gaur group, 140 Gaztambide, Michel, 60, 126 gender, 8, 10, 17, 21, 71, 98, 103, 112, 127, 131, 148, 149, 150–1, 153, 201 in Ama lur, 68–71, 73 genre, 1, 8, 15, 25, 27, 29, 46, 82, 90, 91, 110, 113, 120, 121, 122, 125–6, 127, 130, 143, 146–8, 153, 179, 195 of Basque tragedy, 105 Gernika (short), 97 Gernika bajo las bombas, 97 GIDOI (Professional Association of Scriptwriters of the Basque Country), 184 Gil del Espinar, Telesforo, 25 Gil, Jorge, 186, 187, 195 Gil, Xavier, 58 Glup, 188 Goenaga, Aitzpea, 179 Goenaga, Jos´e Mar´ıa, 17, 18, 154, 186–8 Goikoetxea, Enara, 28, 61, 105 Golfo de Vizcaya, 94 G´omez, Carmelo, 94, 96, 101, 116–17, 203 Gonz´alez, Aureliano, 25 Gonz´alez, Felipe, 51 Gonz´alez, Tinieblas, 154 government Basque, 4–6, 7–8, 16, 53, 64, 79, 80, 82, 83, 86, 92, 110, 114, 118, 123, 124, 126, 135, 144–5, 158, 161, 168, 181, 183–8, 194, 201 Spanish, 4, 7, 21, 43, 55–7, 60, 63, 79, 87, 90, 93, 104, 127, 136, 162, 189, 190 Goya (award), 61, 118 Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberaci´on see GAL gudari, 51–2, 103 Guernica (painting), 47, 98

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Habitacion del ni˜no, La, 127 Habitaci´on en Roma, 129–33, 160 HB, 51, 55, 87 Heinink, Juan Bernardo, 19, 49 Herguera, Isabel, 147, 195 heritage cinema, 64, 77, 79–84 Hernandorena, Teodoro, 36 Herri Batasuna see HB Hezurbeltzak, 147 Hierro (newspaper) hijos de Gernika: la lucha del pueblo vasco por su libertad, Los, 162 Hispania Films, 25 historia del Zinemaldia, Una, 188 hombre llamado Flor de Oto˜no, Un, 56 Homenaje a Tarz´an (el cazador inconsciente), 143 IBAIA, 184 Ib´an˜ ez, Gabe, 148, 150 Ibarretxe, Juan Jos´e, 7, 17 ICAA, 57, 187 iconography costumes, 34, 37, 39, 43, 67, 166 dances, 25, 30, 37, 39, 43, 54, 71, 149 landscapes, 28, 34, 36, 37, 39, 46, 49, 51, 52, 54, 64–6, 77, 89, 108, 126, 129, 136, 137, 139, 181, 200 songs, 39, 50, 68, 104 sports, 8, 19, 24, 37, 39, 49, 68–9, 72, 104, 135, 153, 166 identity, 3, 6, 8, 9–16, 20–1, 25, 38, 43, 46–51, 54, 68, 69, 77, 79, 86, 94, 104, 115–22, 125, 128, 33, 142,

148, 158, 161–5, 169, 173, 175, 191, 196, 204 Basque, 1–2, 18, 24, 34–8, 51, 67, 76, 94, 106, 130–1, 135, 138, 142, 158, 162–6, 168–9, 181, 189, 191 European, 132 lack of, 1, 175 Idi Ezkerra, 174 Iglesia, Eloy de la, 57, 76 Iglesias, Alberto, 57, 83 Iglesias, Carlos, 174 ikastolas (Basque schools), 51 ikurrina (Basque flag), 32, 34 Ikurrinaz filmea, 19, 49 Ikuska, 5, 19–20, 49–54, 77, 87–8, 95, 111–12, 134 Inchausti, Manuel, 25 Independent Association of Basque Producers see Asociaci´on Independiente de Productores Vascos infierno vasco, El, 107 Institutefor the Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts see ICCA Instituto Vasco Etxepare, 184 International Federation of Film Producers Associations see FIAPF In the Basque Country see Pays des Basques, Au Invasor, 126 Ipuinak kontatu: The Basque Way, 164 Irrintzi (film), 49, 53 irrintzi (Basque cry), 37, 53, 54, 81 Izagirre, Koldo, 19, 49, 50 Izenik gabe, 200 × 133, 189

INDEX

Guernica, 97, 100, 108, 156, 162 bombing of, 97, 173 Tree of, 32, 46 Guernika (1937), 135, 162 guerra, La, 155–6 Guerreros, 58, 124 Guerricaechevarr´ıa, Jorge, 127 Guti´errez, Juan Miguel, 50, 68

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Jardines deshabitados, 144, 148 J´uarez, Carlos, 181, 185 Jump into the Void see Salto al vac´ıo Junta de Calificaci´on y Censura, 47 Kalabaza tripontzia, 56 Karres, Jone, 189

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Ke arteko egunak, 56 Kimuak, 5, 10, 21, 53, 58, 115, 134, 144–57, 186, 192, 194, 195, 199–202, 204 kopla zaharrak, 65 Kutsxidazu bidea, Ixabel!, 191 Laboa, Mikel, 51, 98 Laburpena (Summary, Ikuska series), 51–2 Lagun mina, 154 Landa, Txaro, 193 Larra˜naga, Koldo, 50 Larreategi, Txaber, 28, 61, 105, 161 Larruquert, Fernando, 4, 19, 28, 46–7, 49, 63–4, 72, 111, 135, 137, 140–2, 166, 182 Lasa eta Zabala, 99 Last Circus, The see Balada triste de trompeta Lauaxeta, 97 Lazcano, Arantxa, 57, 112–13, 199 Lefebvre, Henri, 33 lesbianism, 130, 192 Letamendia, Francisco, 56, 90 Ley de Amnist´ıa, 102 Ley Mir´o, 4 Libro blanco del sector audiovisual en Euskadi, 180, 183 Life Marks see vida mancha, La Llegada de la familia real espa˜nola de veraneo a San Sebasti´an, 24 Lobo, El, 102, 104 Lolita la hu´erfana, 25–30, 35, 39 Lolita the Orphan see Lolita la hu´erfana L´opez, Ra´ul, 147 Loreak, 188 Loyarte, Mirentxu, 49, 50, 53 Luc´ıa y el sexo, 123, 128 Lumi`ere brothers, 24 Ma Ma, 129 machismo, 71, 150, 153 madre muerta, La, 121 Mait´e, 17–8, 159

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Malo, Pablo, 99, 144, 195 M´aquina, 148–50 mar es azul, El, 56 Mar´ıas, Luis, 97 Mart´ınez, Josu 28, 61, 105, 161 Mart´ınez L´azaro, Emilio 97, 201–2 Martintxo, A, 49 martyrdom, 86, 97–8, 100, 102, 106, 201, 203 in Akelarre, 81 in D´ıas contados, 101–2 in Estado de excepci´on, 98–99 in La muerte de Mikel, 100–2 Marxism, 103 mayorazgo de Basterretxe,El, 13, 30–6, 39 Mazo, Aitor, 192, 203 Meaurio, Jaime, 47 Medem, Julio, 13, 57–8, 61, 73, 80, 108, 111–14, 118, 121–5, 128–32, 160, 193, 195, 198–200, 202–5 melodrama, 25–39, 118, 156 Mendia, Ander, 147 Mendiburu, Remigio, 65–6 Men´endez, Roberto, 174 Mercero, Antonio, 137, 139 Merchan, Gorka, 94, 96, 146, 195 Merikaetxebarria, Antton, 19, 49, 50, 193 Merino, Amaia and Aitor, 189 m´etodo Arrieta, El, 187 M´etodo Julio, El, 187 Mihiluze, 188 Mikel’s Death see Muerte de Mikel, La Ministerio de Informaci´on y Turismo, 46 Mirentxu (book), 30 Mir´o, Pilar, 97 Misa vasca, 137 mise-en-abyme, 128 mockumentary, 147 monstruos no existen, Los, 154 Monz´on, Telesforo, 51 Moriarti Produkzioak, 18–9, 180, 186–90, 192, 195 morte rouge, La, 74–6

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nacionalcatolicismo, 86 Nafarrroako ikazkinak, 77 nationalism Basque nationalism, 11, 15, 23, 25, 27, 32–8, 48, 51, 64, 70, 78, 86, 97, 98–101, 103, 108–11,116–18, 120 in nation-building, 4, 7–9, 39, 64, 70, 79, 82–3, 88, 90, 110 and propagandist potential, 38 and radical nationalism, 10, 18 Navarre, Community of, 7, 53, 63, 70, 71, 76–8, 80–2, 87, 193, 197, 202 Negociador, 21–2, 200, 202, 203 Never-Ending Fight see Betiko borroka New Daughter, The, 160 ni˜nos de Gernika tienen memoria, Los, 174 NO-DO, 136 No habr´apaz para los malvados, 126 No: Nuclear Power Stations see Ez: centrales nucleares nostalgia, 23–4, 32–4, 39, 82–3, 127, 162, 175, 177

novio de mierda, Un, 150–1 ´ 154 nunca lo har´ıa, El, N´un˜ ez, I˜naki, 49, 98, 99

INDEX

Motherland see Ama Lur movida madrile˜na, la, 21, 112–13, 198 Muerte de Mikel, La, 18, 73, 76, 94, 100–2, 105 Muertos de risa, 127 Muguruza, Ferm´ın, 192 Mum’s Idea see Amaren ideia Mu˜noz, Joxean, 147, 181, 185, 195 Munt, Silvia, 80, 81, 94, 119 Muro, Gregorio, 153 Music of the Basque People see Euskal Herri Musika musical instruments: tamboril, 65, 139 txalaparta, 54, 65, 141 txistu, 65, 138, 139, 141 myth, 4, 10, 13, 16, 32, 35, 49, 66, 75, 79–82, 85–6, 91, 94, 99, 101–5, 108, 115, 117, 122, 152–3, 159, 165, 168, 169, 203

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Obaba, 58 Ocho apellidos vascos, 201–2, 204 Ogro see Operaci´on Ogro ojo de la tormenta, El, 92 Olabarr´ıa, Alejandro, 25, 153 Olaciregui, Mikel, 60 Olasagasti, Eneko, 28, 159, 188 Oleaga, Maider, 165, 174–5, 177, 178 Olea, Pedro, 48, 50, 56, 79, 81, 97, 127, 139, 195 On the Line, 147, 186 Ondar ahoak, 152 ´ One Too Many see Eramos pocos O˜nederra, Izibene, 147 Operaci´on H, 64, 140–1, 181 Operaci´on Ogro, 90 Ortuoste, Juan, 56 Oscars, 15, 21, 145–6, 152 Oteiza, Jorge, 64, 66, 67, 72, 111, 135, 140–2 Oxford Murders, The see cr´ımenes de Oxford, Los Pablo, Luis de, 143 Pagafantas, 21, 179, 191, 192, 200, 202, 203 Partido Nacionalista Vasco see PNV Partido Popular see PP Partido Socialista Obrero Espa˜nol see PSOE Pasajes, 121 Path´e, 24 Pays des Basques, Au, 36–7 pelota vasca, La: la piel contra la piedra, 61, 107, 123, 128–9 Pelotari, 19, 46, 64, 137, 141 Perdita Durango, 124, 160 P´erez Villar, Dionisio, 42 pico, El, 76

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pico 2, El, 76 Plan Ibarretxe, 7, 17, 128; see also referendum Plut´on B.R.B. Nero (tv series), 127 PNV, 7, 17, 24, 32, 33, 35, 36, 51, 86–7, 161–2 Pontecorvo, Gillo, 90 PP, 61, 127, 184, 190 Pregunta por m´ı, 147 presa, La, 147 Primeras Jornadas de Cine Vasco, 48 proceso de Burgos, El, 4, 13, 28, 49, 55–7, 88–91, 105 Producciones Hisp´anicas, 37 Promio, Alexandre, 24 Proyecto de Ley de la Cinematograf´ıa, 5 PSOE, 4, 37, 51, 86, 88, 90 Pueblo Vasco, El, 30 Querejeta, El´ıas, 47–8, 60, 139–40 Querejeta, Gracia, 181 Quesada, 139 Quousque tandem... ! Ensayo de interpretaci´on est´etica del alma vasca, 64, 66–7, 140–2 Radio Televisi´on Espa˜nola see RTVE ´ Rebolledo, Jos´e Angel, 80 Rebollo, Javier, 94 Rebordinos, Jos´e Luis 60, 135, 144 Red Death, The see morterouge, La Red Squirrel see ardilla roja, La referendum, 6–8, 49, 51, 70–1, 77–9, 87, 129 on self-determination, 7, 17–19, 28, 38–9, 48–9, 63, 68, 78, 86–8, 112, 113, 127, 128, 132–3 reino de V´ıctor, El, 118 Reportajes Mezquiriz, de u´ ltima hora, 3 Retuerto, Txus, 193 Rey gitano, 126 r´ıa de bilbao, La, 139 Richards, Matt, 164, 174

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R´ıo, Ernesto del, 76, 92, 95 Rivero, Jorge, 147 Rodr´ıguez, Amaia, 144 Romanticism, 117 Room in Rome see Habitaci´on en Roma Rosales, Jaime, 108 Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 45, 55 RTVE, 127, 136, 139, 187 Ruiz Balerdi, Rafael, 140, 142 Running out of Time see D´ıas contados Salazar, Rub´en, 147 Salto al vac´ıo, 76–7, 113–14, 119–21, 198 S´anchez Ar´evalo, Daniel, 146 S´anchez Eceiza, Jos´e, 42 ´ Sandimas, Angel, 97 San Jos´e, Diego, 201 San Sebastian locations Astoria cinema, 47 Caf´e Madrid, 42 Kursaal, 61, 74 Palacio de Miramar, 55 Tabakalera, 195 Victoria Eugenia Theatre, 46, 56 San Sebasti´an en tranv´ıa, 24 San Sebastian International Film Festival see SSFF Santos, Enrique, 25 Santos, Oskar, 148 ´ Sau, Alvaro, 147 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 67–8, 71 Schr¨odinger, Erwin, 63, 69, 83–4 Secci´on de Propaganda del Gobierno de Euskadi135 Second Republic, 4 Secretos del coraz´on, 20, 58, 199 Secrets of the Heart see Secretos del coraz´on SEGI, 106 Segovia Breakout, The see Segovia-ko ihesa Segovia-ko ihesa, 88, 90–1, 105 s´eptimo d´ıa, El, 161 Serra, Koldo, 145–6, 148, 193

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Spirit of the Beehive, The see esp´ıritu de la colmena, El sports aizkora proba, 72 estropadak, 72 harrijasotzaile, 72 jai alai, 24, 36, 46, 78, 124 SSFF, 41–62, 73, 74, 105, 126, 127, 130, 135, 137, 144–5, 180, 188–91 awards Concha de Oro, 47, 57, 60, 73 Concha de Plata, 56 Perla del Cant´abrico, 48, 56, 57 Zabaltegi section, 21, 56, 60, 160 Zinemira section, 105, 164 Star Line company, 122 State of Emergency see Estado de excepci´on Statute of Autonomy, 7, 48, 70–1, 78, 87 Sukalde kontuak, 179 Surrealism, 93, 117, 202 symbols/symbolism, 10, 16, 33–8, 46, 48, 49, 56, 68, 72–3, 75, 97, 98, 100–2, 115, 116, 118–19, 136, 139–41, 153, 159, 165, 172, 175, 181–2, 199

INDEX

Sex and Lucia see Luc´ıa y el sexo sexuality, 52, 130, 131, 132, 149, 201 eroticism, 80, 101, 203 homosexuality in La muerte de Mikel, 100–1 lack of eroticism, 203 Shitty Boyfriend, A see novio de mierda, Un short films, 3, 25, 64, 127, 134–57, 186, 189–92, 194–5, 199, 201, 202 Si no puedes con el enemigo... acaba con e´l, 194 Sindicato Nacional del Espect´aculo, 42 Sinfon´ıa vasca, 36–8 Sinton´ıa, 154, 186 Sistiaga, Jos´e Antonio, 140, 142 Sobrevila, Nemesio, 135, 162 Society of Basque Studies see Eusko Ikaskuntza Sogetel, 110, 122 so˜nador, El, 147 songs Agur Jaunak, 70, 166 Esku biak, 178 Eusko Gudariak, 50, 55 Gora ta Gora, 32 Gernikako arbola, 32 Txoria Txori, 51 Sons and Daughters of the Alarde see Alardearen seme-alabak Sorenson, Georg, 2–16, 19, 38, 95, 103, 118–20, 122, 124–5, 130, 169, 197 Sota, Pedro, 50 Spanish Civil War, 4, 73, 86, 116, 135, 156, 158, 161, 164, 165, 173 in early Basque Cinema, 37, 39, 40 Spanish Film Archive see Filmoteca Espa˜nola Spanish General Office of Cinematography see Direcci´on General de Cinematograf´ıa Espa˜nola Spanishification see espa˜nolizaci´on Spanish National Radio and Television see RTVE

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Taberna, Helena, 58, 102, 112–13, 195, 201 Tasio, 56, 63, 76–9, 84, 119 Teller´ıa, Patxo, 192, 203 Tercero B, 186–7 terrorism, 2, 6, 8, 17, 81, 85–109, 112, 156, 200, 203 in Atocha train station, 88 in World Trade Centre, 88, 91 Tierra, 58, 121, 123, 139 Tiro en la cabeza, 108–9 To Say Goodbye, 164, 174 Todo por la pasta, 76, 114, 120, 124, 126 Topeka, 10, 72, 152 Toque de queda, 49

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tormenta, La, 126 Tormento, 48 Torre, 148 Torrent, Ana, 73, 102, 118 Tortolika eta tronbon, 147 torture, 54, 97–100, 106, 108, 128, 147, 148, 155, 202 in Akelarre, 80, 81, 97 in Barrura begiratzeko leihoak, 106 in El Proceso de Burgos, 49, 89 in Estado de excepci´on, 49 transition to democracy, 4, 42, 48, 49, 87, 88, 100, 110–11, 181 transnational cinema, 158–60 Tras un largo silencio, 161 trav´es del f´utbol, A, 140 trav´es de San Sebasti´an, A, 139 Trece entre mil (documentary), 107 Treku Eugui, Rafael Mar´ıa, 137 tren de la bruja, El, 145 Trotz, Adolf, 37 Tu novia est´a loca, 121 Tuduri, Jos´e Mar´ıa, 56 Txotx, 10 UCD, 56 Udazkena Oraindik: Memoria de la Guerra Civil en Hernani, 161 Ugarte, Felipe de, 46 un paso, A, 161 Ungr´ıa, Alfonso, 16, 58, 79, 80, 112 UNINCI, 140 Uni´on de Centro Democr´atico see UCD Uni´on Industrial Cinematogr´afica see UNINCI Urbizu, Enrique, 76, 111–14, 121, 123, 126, 193, 195 Uribe, Imanol, 4, 18, 19, 28, 49–50, 55–8, 60, 73, 79, 88, 89, 94, 195, 200 Urkijo, Paul, 154 Urte ilunak, 112, 199

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utopikoak/utopia, 24, 29, 36, 41, 51, 62, 83, 152 Uts Cero, 143 vaca, La, 148 Vacas, 13, 73, 113–14, 116–18, 128, 198, 199, 202–3 Vargas, Ram´on de, 142 Vaya semanita! (television show), 203 Viaje de Ari´an, 58, 103 Viaje de San Sebasti´an a Bilbao, 24 Vicario, Bego˜na, 142, 147 vida mancha, La, 126 Vigalondo, Nacho, 145, 146, 150, 151 violence, 7, 22, 29, 31, 33, 34, 48–50, 72, 85, 87, 89, 93–8, 101, 104, 107, 109, 112, 114, 116–18, 120, 124, 126, 142, 154, 174, 198–9, 201 Vitoria, 7, 24, 181, 202 Voces sin libertad (documentary), 107 Voyage from San Sebastian to Bilbao see Viaje de San Sebasti´an a Bilbao Welles, Orson, 28, 45 Welsch, Wolfgang, 130, 158, Windows Looking Inwards see Barrura begiratzeko leihoak Witches’Sabbath see Akelarre Witching and Bitching see brujas de Zugarramurdi, Las World War II, 155–6 ´ Would Never Do It, He see nunca lo har´ıa, El X Films, 140, 143 Ynchausti, Manuel, 37 Yoyes, 58, 94, 102–5, 107, 109, 112 Zabala, Carlos, 159 Zabala, Jos´e Luis, 49, 50 Zelaiaundi, Xabier, 19, 49 Zienek gehiago iraun, 153 Zinealdea, 185–6

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Zulueta, Antonio, 43, 44 Zulueta, Iv´an, 43, 112, 140 Zumeta, Monika, 189 Zunzunegui, Santos, 36, 135, 205 Zuretzako, 159, 164, 165–73

INDEX

Zorrilla, Jos´e A., 97 Zuazua, Anartz, 154 Zubizarreta, Javi, 159, 164–5, 167–9, 171, 172 Zuloak, 191

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´ Series Editor: Lucia Nagib, Professor of Films, University of Reading Advisory Board: Laura Mulvey (UK), Robert Stam (USA), Ismail Xavier (Brazil) The Tauris World Cinema Series aims to reveal and celebrate the richness and complexity of film art across the globe, exploring a wide variety of cinemas set within their own cultures and as they interconnect in a global context. The books in the series will represent innovative scholarship, in tune with the multicultural character of contemporary audiences. They will also draw upon an international authorship, comprising academics, film writers and journalists. Published and forthcoming in the World Cinema series: Basque Cinema: A Cultural and Political History By Rob Stone and Maria Pilar Rodriguez Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia By L´ucia Nagib The Cinema of Sri Lanka: South Asian Film in Texts and Contexts By Ian Conrich and Vilasnee Tampoe-Hautin Contemporary New Zealand Cinema Edited by Ian Conrich and Stuart Murray Cosmopolitan Cinema: Imagining the Cross-cultural in East Asian Film By Felicia Chan Documentary Cinema: Contemporary Non-fiction Film and Video Worldwide By Keith Beattie East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film Edited by Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai East Asian Film Noir: Transnational Encounters and Intercultural Dialogue Edited by Chi-Yun Shin and Mark Gallagher Film Genres and African Cinema: Postcolonial Encounters By Rachael Langford Greek Cinema from Cacoyannis to the Present: A History By Vrasidas Karalis Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film Edited by L´ucia Nagib and Anne Jerslev Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond By Lina Khatib New Argentine Cinema By Jens Andermann New Directions in German Cinema Edited by Paul Cooke and Chris Homewood New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory By Asuman Suner

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On Cinema By Glauber Rocha Edited by Ismail Xavier Palestinian Filmmaking in Israel: Narratives of Memory and Identity in the Middle East By Yael Freidman Performing Authorship: Self-inscription and Corporeality in the Cinema By Cecilia Sayad Queer Masculinities in Latin American Cinema: Male Bodies and Narrative Representations By Gustavo Subero Realism of the Senses in Contemporary World Cinema: The Experience of Physical Reality By Tiago de Luca Stars in World Cinema: Screen Icons and Star Systems Across Cultures Edited by Andrea Bandhauer and Michelle Royer Theorizing World Cinema Edited by L´ucia Nagib, Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah Viewing Film By Donald Richie Queries, ideas and submissions to: Series Editor, Professor L´ucia Nagib – [email protected] Cinema Editor at I.B.Tauris, Anna Coatman – [email protected]

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