No Pasaran Spanish historical films at Film Archive screenings
In conjunction with the Trade Union History Project's Seminar New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War, the Film Archive is pleased to present a documentary series of both New Zealand and international productions centred on the horrific Spanish Conflict. The series will include a rare chance to view two harrowing TVNZ productions kindly provided by the New Zealand Television Archive.A Question of Principle (NZ, 1976) carefully documents New Zealand's involvement through first-hand interviews and archival footage. A Question of Principle provides the widest available source of New Zealand memory of the conflict, and features Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC) nurses, New Zealand combatants, and legendary journalist Geoffrey Cox. Also from the New Zealand Television Archive is
Tom Spiller and the Spanish Civil War (NZ, 1986), a striking film by Alan Thurston and David Filer is an epic interview with a Napier man who left New Zealand in 1936 for Moscow and, instead, found himself fighting Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts in the Jewish East End of London and then Franco's fascists in Jarama and Brunette. The most visible of New Zealand's International Brigade combatants, Spiller's description of events leaves the viewer in no doubt of the realities of the conflict.
The Spanish Holocaust (Spain, 2003) is the most recent film to explore scale of the terror meted out on the Spanish population during and after the Civil War, and the contemporary wall of silence that hangs over Spanish society.
The Spanish Holocaust is not for the faint of heart.
The fascinating series is rounded out by the Joris Ivens' Classic The Spanish Earth (1937). Long considered one of the great war films, Spanish Earth was produced with funds raised by a group of American intellectuals, including poet Archibald McLeash, writer Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, and composer Virgil Thomson. Its main theme is the defense of the road to Madrid, and the parallel efforts of the village farmers to irrigate fields and produce food for their soldiers. Stunningly shot, often in dangerous battle areas, Ivens was accompanied by John Dos Passos, Robert Capa, and Ernest Hemingway, who all contribute the powerful commentary.
History buffs and the general public alike will find No Pasaran a genuinely fascinating if disturbing snapshot of one histories most gruesome chapters.
The Film Archive presents
NO PASARAN
New Zealand & the Spanish Civil War
A DOCUMENTARY SERIES: November 1-3
"We have to sow terror, we have to get rid of any scruples or hesitation in liquidating everyone who doesn't think like us."
- General Emilio Mola, July 1936
