Cantata de la guerra civil

¿Por qué morir en Madrid?

Heroic Spain

Documentary produced by Falange and edited in Berlin, in response to the international success of the Republican production "Spain 1936" (Le Chanois, 1937).

Estos muros

In the mountains of Madrid, Spain, a railway track on an abandoned bridge and a poem erased from the wall of a ruined building reveal a deliberately silenced story: the system established by Franco's dictatorship after the civil war (1936-39) that allowed hundreds of companies to use thousands of convicted Republicans as slave labor.

Fallas 37: el arte en guerra

In November 1936, a few months since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the government of the Second Republic moves to Valencia. In this situation, several Valencian artists and intellectuals decide to build four fallas — satirical plasterboard sculptures created to be burnt — to mock fascism.

Benito Mussolini: Anatomy of a Dictator

Francisco Boix: A Photographer in Hell

In 1939, just finished the Spanish Civil War, Spanish republican photographer Francesc Boix escapes from Spain; but is captured by the Nazis in 1940 and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, in Austria, a year later. There, he works as a prisoner in the SS Photographic Service, hiding, between 1943 and 1945, around 20,000 negatives that later will be presented as evidence during several trials conducted against Nazi war criminals after World War II.

Exile Diaries

A documentary made with homemade videos of the spanish exiled due to the dictatorship in Spain from 1939 to 1977.

La Antorcha de los Éxitos: Cifesa (1932-1961)

The amazing story of Cifesa, a mythical film production company founded in Valencia by the Casanova family that managed to dominate the box office during the turbulent times of the Second Spanish Republic, the carnage of the Civil War and the hardships of the long post-war period and Franco's dictatorship — and survive until the sixties, when Spain was timidly beginning to change.

Celuloide colectivo: el cine en guerra

July, 1936. The terrible Spanish Civil War begins. When the streets are taken by the working class, the social revolution begins as well. The public shows are socialized, a model of production and exhibition of films, never seen before in the history of cinema, is created, where the workers are the owners and managers of the industry, through the unions.

La batalla de Guadalajara

Documentary about the battle of Guadalajara which took place in March 1937 during the Spanish Civil War and was the last major victory of the Republican Army.

A War in Hollywood

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) caused a great impression on the lives of most of the American artists of that era, so many movies were made in Hollywood about it. The final defeat of the Spanish Republic left an open wound in the hearts of those who sympathized with its cause. The eventful life of screenwriter Alvah Bessie (1904-1985), one of the Hollywood Ten, serves to analyze this sadness, the tragedy of Spain and its consequences.

El cine libertario: cuando las películas hacen historia

Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, the anarchist union CNT socialized the film industry in Spain, so in Madrid and Barcelona film workers took over the production assets and, between 1936 and 1938, numerous films on a wide variety of topics were released, composing a varied mosaic that gives rise to one of the most unusual and original moments of Spanish cinematography.

The Silence of Others

The story of the tortuous struggle against the silence of the victims of the dictatorship imposed by General Franco after the victory of the rebel side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1975). In a democratic country, but still ideologically divided, the survivors seek justice as they organize the so-called “Argentinian lawsuit” and denounce the legally sanctioned pact of oblivion that intends to hide the crimes they were subjects of.

The Ponzán Network

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Second World War (1939-1945), around three thousand people managed to elude their pursuers, and probably also avoided being killed, thanks to the heroic and very efficient efforts of the Ponzán Team, a brave group of people — mountain guides, forgers, safe house keepers and many others —, led by Francisco Ponzán Vidal, who managed to save their lives, both on one side and the other of the border between Spain and France.

The Mexican Suitcase

The story of the recovery of the negatives of thousands of photos taken by three photographers during the Spanish Civil War that were found seventy years later in a suitcase, inside a closet in Mexico City.

The Spanish Earth

Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.

Carceller, the Man Who Died Twice

The life story of Vicente Miguel Carceller (1890-1940), a Spanish editor committed to freedom who, through his weekly magazine La Traca, connected with the common people while maintaining a dangerous pulse with the powerful.

Living Memory

The Living Memory Project began back in 2009 on the 70th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War with the recording of the event, organized in Paris to the Spanish Exiles and the victims of the Nazi extermination camp of Mauthausen. Our goal thereafter focused on collecting the greatest possible number of testimonies related to the history of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism. As part of the celebrations of 100 years of CNT we set up the project, the union decided to fund it and we set off . We travelled 12,000 km visiting three countries relying on the logistical support of CNT and selfless work of their members as well as partners Malicious Films GuerrillART. This is the result: 80 hours worth of records, 300 hours worth of testimony in timing and transcription meant for reference purposes at the Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation and 0 actors. Written by Antonio J. García de Quirós Rodríguez