Happy Birthday to the National Front! For a long time, driven by the need to establish a dialogue around the Algerian War, René Vautier recorded the testimonies of Algerian independence activists, French conscripts and reservists, generals of the French army, historians... Thus, Mohamed Moulay, Ali Rouchaï, Mohamed Loulli, Germaine Tillion, Paul Teitgen, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Colonel Antoine Argoud, General de Bollardière, and General Jacques Massu, among others, gave their testimony before Vautier’s camera. A documentary long unseen that reminds us where the National Front comes from, which changed its name and gained some respectability after Jean-Marie Le Pen’s leadership. Warning: The film is a rescued copy. The technical quality is degraded, but that is only a detail... The Man with Bloody Hands (by René Vautier) I had embarked on a historical project: recording on video tapes the “memories” of witnesses of the Algerian War, so that one day young students from France and Algeria could write together, in images, a common history of the relations between the two peoples. I was told about a man, in Saint-Eugène, who, despite having been tortured, had trouble asserting his pension rights because he had never been a member of the FLN. I interviewed him somewhat by chance: he told me about his tortures, and how, between sessions of “gégène” (electric torture) and “bathtub” (immersion torture), his torturers had pushed his thumbs into his eye sockets: “as if they wanted to make my eyes pop out.” Then I did what I always did: showed him a series of photos of paratrooper officers, to ask if he recognized his torturers. Very dignifiedly, he told me he could no longer see... but he added: “I have a paper from Mr. Mayor (the mayor of Algiers at the time was Jacques Chevalier, former Minister of Defense under Mendès-France) where the name of the paratrooper lieutenant is written.” That’s how I saw that the name he couldn’t read — he had gone blind due to the tortures — was that of Lieutenant Le Pen. I had Jacques Chevalier’s signature authenticated by his family members and people who had worked with him; I checked documents from the time — there was no doubt. Apparently, there is a law in France forbidding the use of testimonies about atrocities committed during the Algerian War. Let’s not be ridiculous: Austrians are suspected of putting at the head of their republic a man accused of having “covered up” tortures, and yet we should hide from the French documents that the whole world will feast on during the presidential elections? Because no law can prevent the whole world — except France! — from knowing that we will have a candidate not only with delirious statements but with bloody hands. This article was published in L’Humanité on September 29, 1987.
Cicatrices
8 Archival description results for Cicatrices
ES ES-OVNI RSC-4356
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1988
Part of Non-Identified Video Observatory (OVNI)
ES ES-OVNI RSC-4355
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2014
Part of Non-Identified Video Observatory (OVNI)
Interview with historian Jacques Choukroun (bonus material from the DVD René Vautier in Algeria), focusing on the role of independent Algeria in Africa during the 1960s, as well as René Vautier's presence in post-independence Algeria — “the loudspeaker of peoples in struggle,” as the Breton filmmaker with the red camera was called. The discussion touches on: the Bandung Conference, the historic newspaper Révolution Africaine, pan-Africanism, Bouteflika’s role, and the 1965 coup d’état.
ES ES-OVNI CTX-S012-SS006-0007
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2005
Part of Non-Identified Video Observatory (OVNI)
A military helicopter circles in the sky like an evil wasp. Chaos on the ground after the attack. A fast-paced sequence - bleeding people, burning cars and confused soldiers. Subheading: From Beirut - with Love. A cinematic postcard-greeting, so bitter and cynical, it can only come from a city at war with itself. The only dialogue in the film reveals a surprising connotation: Beirut is Paris, or Madrid, or any other metropolis. The scene is set: youth without a future, bomb attacks, drugs, arms, soldiers. The postcard has arrived.
Untitled
ES ES-OVNI DIF-S007
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2019
Part of Non-Identified Video Observatory (OVNI)
His Name Was Not Frankenstein
The fragmented face and the wrath of the clan
Faculty of Geography and History, room 409, Universitat de Barcelona, Montalegre 6
Why do we find the fragmented face of Frankenstein’s Monster so fascinating? The monster in the 1931film was certainly one of the most successfully characterisations in the history of cinema, but there issomething more: it raises a question that goes beyond the creen and has something to do with the idea of that spectre haunting Europe that opens The Communist Manifesto.
The workshop will dissect the film Dr. Frankenstein (1931) to try and understand how terror and dreams are connected in the logic of the fight against the master.
ES ES-OVNI RSC-4348
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1971
Part of Non-Identified Video Observatory (OVNI)
A cooperative technician recalls his "technical work" when, during the Algerian conflict, he was installing mines that still kill many civilians. A preliminary essay to the filming of Avoir vingt ans dans les Aurès: a fiction built from testimonies of conscripted soldiers in Algeria.
ES ES-OVNI EXP-S009
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2023
Part of Non-Identified Video Observatory (OVNI)
The Purple Meridians III
The Purple Meridians III
Over the past two years, a total of 19 filmmakers based in the three countries have met, online and in person, to discuss obstacles they face as women and non-binary people in the audiovisual industry, to exchange ideas and resources, and to create together.
Preparations are underway in Italy , Turkey , Catalonia and the Basque Country for the third edition of The Purple Meridians 2023 , with the Gender Equality sponsorship by Eurimages .
This year, the project will have its public and main event at the Durango Book-Music-Cinema Fair on 7 December . Durango is a city in the Basque Country and has been chosen by the organizers of The Purple Meridians to expand even further – as is the purpose of this project – the connections among women filmmakers in Europe and beyond.
The choice of the Basque Country was therefore a ‘natural’ development as Basque filmmakers followed the first two Purple Meridians albeit ‘from a distance’. The program in the Basque Country will be possible thanks to the collaboration with the Durango Book Fair and Suargi Elkartea.
Two main themes would be the focus of this third event:
the difficulties, responses, proposals for women in the audiovisual industry to conjugate work and care work (maternity, care of children, care of elderly, care of ill partner/family member etc) and for women with disabilities.
These two themes will be discussed in a 2-session conference in Durango to be held on 7 December 2023.
Two filmmakers directly and most affected by this situation will be leading the discussion, Lisa Çalan and Ahu Ozturk . The two filmmakers, both Kurdish, will work with Basque filmmakers (who are exploring these issues in their films and who this year will be presenting a manifesto about ‘care’), as well as with the other filmmakers of The Purple Meridians (from Italy and Catalonia), not only in exposing the problems, but also in proposing answers, keeping in mind that one of the pillars of The Purple Meridians project is creating networks among women filmmakers in different countries.
The speakers will be:
Lisa Çalan, Ahu Öztürk (from Turkey, TPM), internationally acclaimed Basque actress Itziar Ituño (La Casa de Papel), Basque directors Ainhoa Olaso (winner of the Aukera program) and Estibaliz Urresola (awarded in Berlin 2023), Catalan director Lara Vilanova (TPM), Italian director Claudia Tosi (TPM), Argentine scriptwriter based in Belfast Luciana de Mello , Lebanese director Mary Jirmanus Saba , Kurdish director Sevinaz Evdike (Women Filmmakers Collective Kezi), and director Elli (Post Collective - Buriatia, Greece, Syria, Belgium).
The day will be accompanied by the screening at Irudienea (12:30h-13:30h) of Estibaliz Urresola's short film, Cuerdas , and a Work in Progress by Mary Jirmanus Saba.
At 19:00 h, the filmmakers will present to the press a summary of the conference's work.
The press conference will feature also an intervention by a Palestinian filmmaker.
ES ES-OVNI CTX-S014-SS001-0066
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2010
Part of Non-Identified Video Observatory (OVNI)
The title Time Like Zeros is taken from a comment by one of eight female prisoners who narrate the film, as she contemplates the life sentence stretching ahead of her. It is echoed visually in the camera movement that encircles the prison, and in the circles of razor wire that whiz by as the scene moves from the exterior fence to the darkest cells of the prison. A sense of community and compassion can be sensed in the women's voices, yet contrasts with the footage shot by guards as they chain down a woman in the segregation unit.
Untitled
ES ES-OVNI EXP-S013
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Series
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2025
Part of Non-Identified Video Observatory (OVNI)
Project in Residency Falconetti Peña
/ Exhibition War, insubmission, art /
/ FILMOTECA DE CATALUNYA /
/ CRIPPLES OF WAR AND NORMALITY /
/ PATRIOTISM AND COLONIZATION /
/ YOU WILL DIE AS HEROES /
/ PAMPHLET AND REVOLUTION /
WAR, INSUBMISSION, ART
Project in Residency Falconetti Peña
In 1924, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the end of World War I, Otto Dix published his work The War, composed of fifty engravings in which he denounced warmongering with a harshness that had not been seen until then. A century earlier, Goya, a painter who inspired Otto Dix, produced The Disasters of War. And now, one hundred years later, a cruel and senseless war is once again being fought in Europe.
Otto Dix is located between two times, Goya's and ours. The project for this exhibition/intervention is to take his engravings as a starting point for a journey through the art that has rebelled against war slogans.
Goya, Dix, Grosz, Arntz, Watkins and many other artists defied the prevailing aesthetic order by creating works of enormous relevance. To do so, they used modest formats, the engraving, the poster, the mimeographed magazine, the pamphlet, the false documentary, the only ones they could access in times of censorship and blockade. These are works that managed to last against all odds, as there were many who were interested in making them disappear.
Thanks to them, today we can follow the trail of those who in their day disobeyed the patriotic slogans, maintaining the flame of resistance to the war madness.
The project will cover various spaces and historical periods, combining different formats, pictorial, graphic and audiovisual.
The idea is to contrast them, face to face, with the messages of those who at the time bet on galvanizing the warrior ardor of the masses.