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Contemporary Basque Cinema: Online, Elsewhere and Otherwise Engaged

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Contemporary Basque Cinema: Online, Elsewhere and Otherwise Engaged Contemporary Basque Cinema: Online, Elsewhere and Otherwise Engaged ROB STONE University of Birmingham and MARÍA PILAR RODRÍGUEZ Universidad de Deusto l Abstract Basque cinema is and always has been a vital medium for the examination and perpetuation of Basque identity. It is as buffeted by civil war and social change as it is by new media technologies and linguistic, cultural, propagandist and indus- trial imperatives. It may represent a small nation, but the interwoven history, politics and art of Basque cinema is founded upon immense ambition. This article establishes the criteria for the definition and classification of an open, plural and mixed Basque cinema that functions as a focal point for many issues of topical and enduring debate. These include questions of language in relation to identity, the cultural expression of diasporic communities, the notion of nationalism in rela- tion to cultural expression, the propagation of tradition and the value of aesthetic and technological innovation, as well as the importance of funding for the arts in relation to nation-building (and the possibility of that funding being used to create subversive works). It concludes with a consideration of the function of the cinema within a specific community and region that points to comparative associations with the cinemas of other nations. Resumen El cine vasco es y ha sido siempre un medio excepcional para el examen y la continuidad de la identidad vasca. Ha estado sacudido e impulsado tanto por la Guerra Civil y los cambios sociales como por las nuevas tecnologías y los imperativos lingüísticos, culturales, propagandísticos e industriales. Puede parecer que repre- senta a una nación pequeña, pero la intrincada conexión de la historia, la política y el arte en el cine vasco está fundamentada en una gran ambición. Este artículo establece el criterio para la definición y clasificación de un cine vasco abierto, plural y mixto, que funciona como un punto de encuentro de diversas nociones relevantes para futuros debates. Tales nociones incluyen cuestiones propias de la lengua en relación con la identidad, la expresión cultural de las comunidades en la diáspora, la noción del nacionalismo en relación con la expresión cultural, la propagación de la tradición y el valor de la innovación tecnológica y estética, y la importancia de la financiación para el arte en relación con la construcción de la nación (incluida la BHS 93.10 (2016) doi:10.3828/bhs.2016.69 1104 Rob Stone and María Pilar Rodríguez bhs, 93 (2016) posibilidad de utilizar tal financiación para crear obras subversivas). Concluye con una consideración en torno a la función del cine dentro de una comunidad específica que apunta a asociaciones comparativas con las cinematografías de otras naciones. Each year, as part of the San Sebastian Film Festival, the Zinemira sidebar, which is co-organized by the festival and the Ministry of Culture of the Basque Govern- ment and supported by the Basque television network EITB, offers a snapshot of the condition of Basque cinema and awards the Premio Irizar and €20,000 to the best Basque film. The 2013 programme featured just eight films, seven of which were documentaries on Basque subjects. These included Alardearen Seme-alabak [Sons and Daughters of the Alarde1] (Eneko Olasagasti and Jone Karres, 2013), which examines the participation of women in the fiesta of Los Alardes in Irun and Hondarribia; Asier eta biok [Asier and I] (Amaia Merino and Aitor Merino, 2013), which explores an enduring friendship between the filmmakers and a childhood friend who became an ETA militant; Encierro (Olivier Van Der Zee, 2013), which is self-explanatory and shot partly in 3D; Esvastica bat Bidasoa [The Basque Swastika] (Alfonso Andrés Ayarza and Javier Barajas, 2013) about the Nazi fascination with Basque culture; and Izenik Gabe, 200x133 [Without Title, 200x133] (Enara Goiko- tetxea and Monika Zumeta, 2013), which studies the working methodology of the Guipuzcoan painter José Luis Zurneta Etxeberria. Documentaries based on personal, local, regional and archival themes dominate because they are inexpensive and comparatively easy to make at a time when the Spanish government has reduced funding for film production from €71 to €50.8 million (compared with €120 million in the UK, €340 million in Germany and €770 million in France), despite a rise in the export of Spanish films in 2012 of 19.2 per cent on 2011, and added a steep hike in the tax on ticket prices, from 8 per cent to 21 per cent as opposed to 7 per cent in France). Documentaries are shot, edited, screened, marketed and most often seen via low- to no-budget digital technologies that create new channels and forms of production and distribution, whether online or as part of resurgent and emergent film societies and festivals enabled by popular demand for relevant, socially conscious audiovisual stimuli and, increasingly, the assumption and acceptance of creative commons licences by audiences and filmmakers respectively. At a time of austerity and growing social unrest, the prevalence of documentaries that provide knowledge, invite reflection and incite debate also broadens the definition of popular film and Basque cinema in particular. In addition, it should be noted that the Zinemira documentaries are almost all co-directed, which reflects the collective endeavour and collaborative ethos in the arena of filmmaking in the Basque Country and represents a fresh emphasis on the identity of a community that is not just Basque but crucially one that both invites and extends empathy towards similarly sedimented filmmaking cultures around the world. This surge of digital creativity may even resolve decades of argument over whether or not Basque cinema actually exists, in which López Echevarrieta 1 All translations from Basque and Spanish are by the authors. bhs, 93 (2016) Contemporary Basque Cinema: Online, Elsewhere and Otherwise Engaged 1105 (1984), Zunzunegui (1985), Gutiérrez (1994), Lasagabaster (1995), De Pablo (1996; 2012), Roldán Larreta (1999), Stone (2001), Gabilondo (2002), Martí-Olivella (2003), Rodríguez (2002), Davies (2009) and Fernández (2012), among others, have contended with paradox, contradiction and shifts in geographical, political and aesthetic ideas of Basqueness. Compared to Catalan cinema, where the linguistic imperative is more often clear-cut in the films themselves and the recent move towards gallery spaces and art house cinemas by the likes of José Luis Guerín, Albert Serra and Isaki Lacuesta has provided fresh evidence of Catalan enterprise, the definition of Basque cinema remains elusive in its provenance and, in part, deliberately unresolved by a preference for constant redefinition via argument. The origins of filmmaking in the Basque Country are wrapped in the allusions to politicized myth fostered by modern Basque nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century. Basque cinema during the dictatorship was only rendered in fragments, such as the home movies elevated to platforms of a Euskara- speaking national consciousness by the exiled Gotzon Elorza, and the abstract animated films of Ramón de Vargas, Rafael Ruiz Balerdi, Javier Aguirre and José Antonio Sistiaga. It was not until Jorge Oteiza’s essay of 1963, Quousque tandem…! Ensayo de interpretación estética del alma vasca (Oteiza 2007), a rallying cry to artists that resembles a collage by association of art history, existentialism and nationalist rhetoric, that Basque artists of the Gaur group (1965–1967), which included Oteiza, Néstor Basterretxea, José Antonio Sistiaga, Rafael Ruiz Balerdi and sculptor Eduardo Chillida, would seek Basqueness in that which Oteiza posited as ‘Guretzat estetikoki bakarrik sar daitekeen auzi bat da’ (2007: 418) [a question, for us, in which it is only possible to delve aesthetically]. Basterretxea, Ruiz Balerdi and Sisteaga turned to the plasticity of film in order to direct ‘hezkuntza sentimental (sen) honen betetzeko uste oso eta kemen moduko batekin batera’ (Oteiza 2007: 429) [a bounty of conviction and energy to achieve this sentimental (instinctive) education that is so lost from us]. Their resulting short films resembling modernist works include Homenaje a Tarzán (La cazadora inconsciente) (Ruiz Balerdi, 1969), Operación H (Néstor Bastererretxea and Fernando Larruquert, 1964) and Pelotari [Basque Ball Player] (Néstor Bastererretxea and Fernando Larruquert, 1964). The culmination of this endeavour is Ama Lur [Motherland] (Néstor Basterretxea and Fernando Larruquert, 1968), the first full- length Basque film since the Civil War and a visual and aural encyclopaedia of ethnographic detail delivered from a nationalist perspective that was supported by the sentimental rallying of the collective response to the innovative crowd- funding exercise instigated by its makers. Following the dictatorship there were endeavours such as the long-running Ikuska series of documentaries overseen by Antton Ezeiza that explored the repression experienced by the Basque Country and promoted Euskara for use in a new Basque cinema that was beginning to be theorized and put into practice in an uncertain and still fractious socio-political context.2 Films that examined 2 For the Ikuska series (1978–1985) of documentaries overseen by Antton Ezeiza see http:// copac.jisc.ac.uk/id/398030?style=html [accessed 1 September 2016]. 1106 Rob Stone and María Pilar Rodríguez bhs, 93 (2016) the recent past included three directed by Imanol Uribe: the documentary on the trial of members of ETA in El proceso de Burgos (1979); the docudrama re-enactment of an escape from prison of members of ETA in La fuga de Segovia (1981) and the fictional La muerte de Mikel (1984), which problematized nation-building by inserting the experience of victims of ETA within a mostly one-sided narrative of nationhood. Yet the criteria by which eligibility for funding from the Autonomous Basque Community, which had been granted the status of nationality within Spain by the Spanish Constitution of 1978, was adjudged in the early 1980s included 75 per cent of verifiable Basque nationality among cast and crew and the commit- ment to shoot on Basque locations.
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