45 min. Spanish.
(screening together with ANGELA – PORTRAIT OF A REVOLUTIONARY)
In 1970, Spain was a dictatorship. The essay film El cuarto poder asks how the media behaved in response. The conclusion is depressingly clear: by toeing the line and being loyal to the regime. What can be done? A sceptical stance can be maintained and a counter-public created, for example, by reading between the lines, accessing foreign newspapers and forming one’s own channels of information. (cn)
Helena Lumbreras was born in Cuenca, Spain in 1935. After studying at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, she worked as a director and producer for Italian public television (RAI). Lumbreras then returned to Spain to document the anti-Franco movement. Starting in 1968, she made politically motivated documentaries and founded the militant film collective Class Cinema Collective together with Mariano Lisa. She died in Barcelona in 1995.
Mariano Lisa was born in Albalate de Cinca, Spain in 1945. He studied and taught philosophy. Together with his wife Helena Lumbreras, Lisa founded the militant film collective Class Cinema Collective, which advocated a radically democratic cinema: in the 1970s, Lumbreras and Lisa went to Spanish factories and made films together with the workers in order to draw attention to the living and working conditions of the workforce.
