April 2019, arsenal cinema

Behind the Graves

LOS COLONOS DEL CAUDILLO, 2013

The Spanish Civil War ended on April 1, 1939. During the war and the Franco dictatorship, 140,000 opponents of the regime were likely killed. Dealing with the past remains difficult to this day in Spain, with keeping silent on the war and dictatorship becoming an unwritten law for the democratization of the country following Franco’s death in 1975. The “Behind the Graves” series curated by Clara López Rubio and Wolfgang Martin Hamdorf grapples with how Spain’s past has been dealt with in film. Two documentaries by Lucía Palacios und Dietmar Post open the series: LOS COLONOS DEL CAUDILLO (Francos Siedler, 2013) is a guided tour of one of the model villages of the Franco dictatorship. FRANCO ON TRIAL: THE SPANISH NUREMBERG? (2018) reconstructs the crimes of the regime from the first massacres during the Civil War in 1936 to the last executions shortly before Franco’s death and the police massages in the “transición” era. A discussion with the filmmakers will follow the screening. (cl) (26.4.)