MoMA PRESENTS EXHIBITION OF SPANISH CINEMA OF DISSENT MADE DURING THE FRANCO ERA

Inventive Features Made During 1939–75 Fascist Regime Circumvented Censors Through Dark Humor and Symbolic Tales

Spain (Un)Censored October 17–November 5, 2007 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater

NEW YORK, September 21, 2007—The Museum of Modern Art presents an exhibition of Spanish films that explores an era when filmmakers sought creative freedom through cinema, during the culturally oppressive regime of General Francisco Franco (1939–75). (Un)Censored, which is presented October 17–November 5, 2007, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, features dramatically expressive films that awakened peoples’ consciousness about social realities during—and despite—the dictatorship. Among the features in the 20-film exhibition are some well-known classics such as Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana (1961) and Luis García Berlanga’s Welcome Mister Marshall! (1952), as well as many works rarely screened in the United States like Jose Luis Borau’s Furtivos (Poachers, 1975) and Basilio Patino’s Nine Letters to Bertha (1965) and Songs for After the War (1971), both of which will be introduced by the director on October 19. The exhibition is organized by Sally Berger, Assistant Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, and Marta Sánchez, independent curator, in collaboration with the Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA) of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. After coming to power as the victor in the Spanish Civil War, Franco clamped down on trade unions, outlawed regional languages, raised religion to a position of overarching influence, and introduced censorship of the arts. Provoked by the system under which they lived, Spanish directors told stories about the peoples’ hopes and troubles through the use of humor and symbols that reached their audiences while sidestepping the scrutiny of the censors. Until recently, this fertile filmmaking period has received little international attention. Now, more than three decades later, the films in Spain (Un)Censored reveal a daring and formally innovative era of Spanish cinema. Bunuel’s Viridiana, a film that challenged the belief systems of Catholicism, exemplified the contradictions between traditional and modern values that were brought to the fore in the 1960s, winning the Palme d’Or at the in 1961. The director had submitted his script to the censors, who had approved it, only to find the authorities attempting to confiscate his finished film on the grounds of obscenity and blasphemy. The film had to be smuggled out of the country for its victorious screening in Cannes and was finally premiered in Spain in 1977, after Franco’s death. The films in Spain (Un)Censored reveal the inventive ends to which directors went in making cinema that spoke about their countrymen’s plight. They range from playful satires such as El Verduga (The Executioner, 1963), a powerful examination of the death penalty, to skewerings of the class system, as in ’s Muerte de un Ciclista (, 1955). Some captured the effects of hidden traumas, such as the moody and atmospheric El Espíritu de la Colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973), which for many has elements that inspired ’s acclaimed El Laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006) set after the

Spanish Civil War. The exhibition also features unconventional perspectives on relationships in José Luis Borau’s Furtivos (Poachers) and Juan Antonio Bardem’s Calle Mayor (Main Street, 1956); subversions of gender politics in films such as ’s La Tía Tula (Aunt Tula, 1964); and an absurdist cross-dressing drama Mi Querida Señorita (My Dearest Señorita, 1971), directed by Jaime de Armiñán. Perhaps the greatest contradiction of all was that the state funded and promoted many of these films to appear progressive to the Western world, only to be the subject of the veiled ridicule and scorn now quite apparent in many of the works. Two additional events coincide with Spain (Un)Censored including a book launch, Breaking the Code: Daring Films That Mocked the Repression of Franco’s Spain, edited by the Filmoteca de Castilla y León and published by the Regional Government of Castile and León, at the Instituto Cervantes at Amster Yard, on October 18; and a panel discussion with director Basilio Martin Patino; Fernando Lara, Director of ICAA, and Chema de la Peña, director of De Salamanca a ninguna parte (From Salamanca to Nowhere, 2002); and moderated by Richard Peña, Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which takes place at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, New York University, on October 20. Spain (Un)Censored travels to the BFI Southbank, London, in January 2008. For more information on the book launch, panel discussion, and touring venues visit www.pragda.com.

Support for the exhibition comes from: The Instituto Cervantes, New York; the Consulate General of Spain, New York; Embassy of Spain, Washington, D.C.; Dirección General de Relaciones Culturales y Científicas, Filmoteca, AECI, of the Spanish Ministry of Exterior Affairs and Cooperation. Panel and book launch sponsored by The Regional Government of Castile and Leon. Special thanks to Roberto Varela Consul For Cultural Affairs in NY, and Stacey Picullell, intern.

Images are available at www.moma.org/press

**************************** PRESS SCREENINGS ************************

R.S.V.P. to [email protected] or call (212) 708-9847.

Thursday, September 27 (The Roy and Niuta Titus 1 Theater)

10:30 a.m. ¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall! (Welcome Mister Marshall!, 1952). Directed by Luis Garcia Berlanga. 78 min.

12:00 p.m. Furtivos (Poachers, 1975). Directed by Jose Luis Borau. 82 min. New print.

Thursday, October 4 (The Roy and Niuta Titus 1 Theater)

10:30 a.m. Muerte de un Ciclista (Death of a Cyclist, 1955). Directed by Juan Antonio Bardem. 84 min. New print.

12:00 p.m. Nueve Cartas a Berta (Nine Letters to Bertha, 1965). Directed by Basilio Martín Patino. 95 min.

No. 84 Press Contact: Paul Power, (212) 708-9847, or [email protected]

For downloadable images, please visit www.moma.org/press Please contact me for user name and password.

Public Information: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019

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The public may call (212) 708-9400 for detailed Museum information. Visit us at www.moma.org

SPAIN (UN)CENSORED

SCREENING SCHEDULE

[All films are from Spain and in Spanish, with English subtitles, except where noted]

Wednesday, October 17

6:00 Muerte de un Ciclista (Death of a Cyclist). 1955. Directed by Juan Antonio Bardem. With Alberto Closas, Lucía Bosé. Bardem’s most celebrated solo effort concerns a university professor and his well- connected mistress, who strike a bicyclist while out driving. To hide their affair, they leave the man to die. This choice destroys their lives and epitomizes the shallowness of their upper-class lifestyle. The contrast between ’s rich and poor districts is well captured, but censorship forced Bardem to punish the adulterous woman in a melodramatic ending. 84 min. New print.

8:00 ¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall! (Welcome Mister Marshall!). 1952. Directed by Luis García Berlanga. With José Isbert, Lolita Sevilla. The run-down Castilian village of Villar del Río rouses itself from slumber at the news that Americans representing the Marshall Plan are due to visit. The mayor, eager to snare a hefty slice of economic aid, prepares to welcome “Mr. Marshall” with toasts of lemonade and sangria. Persuaded by a passing entertainment agent that the village’s dried-up fountain, blackshrouded women, and listless men will never attract the Americans’ benefaction, the town sets about preparing another kind of welcome. 78 min.

Thursday, October 18

6:00 (The Little Flat). 1958. Directed by , Isidoro M. Ferri. Screenplay by , Ferreri.With José Luis López Vázquez, Mary Carrillo. Ferreri’s anti-bourgeois black comedy centers on the life of Rodolfo, a middle-class man who leases a room in the overcrowded apartment of Doña Martina, a crotchety, dying octogenarian. Until he can afford his own place, Rodolfo cannot marry his embittered fiancée, who persuades her meek boyfriend to propose to Martina in order to inherit the apartment. 80 minutes.

8:30 Plácido. 1961. Directed by Luis García Berlanga. Screenplay by Berlanga, Rafael Azcona, Ennio Flaiano. With Casto Sendra-Cassen, José Luis López Vázquez. Academy Award–nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, Plácido is a comedy about an impoverished man who spends the day before Christmas trying to avoid foreclosure on his motorbike. His frantic dealings with bankers and lawyers are set against the film’s satirical canvas of a provincial town putting on a showy Christmas campaign called “Seat a Poor Man at Your Table.” 88 min.

Friday, October 19

6:00 Nueve Cartas a Berta (Nine Letters to Bertha). 1965. Directed by Basilio Martín Patino. With Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Mari Carrillo. Upon returning from an English holiday, Lorenzo, a student in 1950s fascist Spain, writes to Berta, the daughter of an exile. Having experienced another way of life, he shares his desire to leave his provincial family and discover life on his own. Patino’s first feature shows a Spain shifting toward modernity and reveals Franco’s regime as backward and stifling. 95 min. Presented by Patino.

8:30 Canciones para Después de una Guerra (Songs for after a War). 1971. Directed by Basilio Martín Patino. A documentary about popular songs in the first fifteen years of the Franco dictatorship, this film begins with footage of joyous people making the fascist salute at a public demonstration. The editing of over four thousand film clips mirrors the rhythms of the musical background. One song’s lyric declaims, “Do you know why you come here? To die,” leaving the impression of Franco’s regime as a cult of death. Although it contains no direct political criticism, this documentary was deemed unacceptable for public viewing, but was privately screened by the censors and their families. After completing the film (which was finally released after Franco’s fall), Patino decided to go underground to make documentaries. 96 min. Discussion with Patino.

Saturday, October 20

2:00 La Tía Tula (Aunt Tula). 1964. Directed by Miguel Picazo. With Aurora Bautista, Carlos Estrada. This debut feature of Spanish actor, screenwriter, and director Picazo helped establish him as a leading figure in 1960s New Spanish Cinema. Picazo adapts ’s abstract novel to the particular circumstances of 1960s Spain and scrutinizes both Francoist gender ideology and his own equivocal experience of artistic freedom and ideological restraint. When a bank employee’s wife dies, he calls upon his sister-in-law to care for the children, and finds himself falling for her. 107 min. New print.

4:30 ¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall! (Welcome Mister Marshall!). See Wednesday, October 17, 8:00

7:00 El Verdugo (The Executioner). 1963. Directed by Luis García Berlanga. Screenplay by Berlanga, Rafael Azcona, Ennio Flaiano. With José Isbert, Nino Manfredi. A soon-to-retire executioner in early 1960s Spain worries about finding a successor and a groom for his daughter. The local undertaker, a handsome young man, seems a candidate for both roles. Berlanga’s most elegant film, shot by the great cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, remains a powerful condemnation of capital punishment and the Francoist myths of duty and patriotism. 91 min.

Sunday, October 21

2:30 Mi Querida Señorita (My Dearest Señorita). 1971. Directed by Jaime de Armiñán. With José Luis López Vázquez, Julieta Serrano. A country matron living a conservative village life is courted by a local businessman, but after accepting his engagement ring, his further advances disgust her. Disturbed by her reaction, she follows her priest’s advice, seeks medical help, and finds that she is, in fact, a man. Horrified, she takes up life in Madrid as “Juan.” 84 min. Presented by de Armiñán.

5:30 El Espíritu de la Colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive). 1973. Directed by Víctor Erice. With Fernando Fernán Gómez, Teresa Gimpera. Near the end of Franco’s dictatorship, Spanish cinema began to probe the buried traumas of the recent past. Erice’s theme is repression—not the stifling of thought by political authority, but the willed avoidance of painful experience—in this bewitching portrait of a child’s haunted inner life. In a small Castilian village in 1940, in the wake of the country’s devastating civil war, six-year-old Ana attends a screening of Frankenstein and becomes possessed by its memory. 98 min.

Monday, October 22

6:00 Furtivos (Poachers). 1975. Directed by José Luis Borau. With Lola Gaos, Ovidi Montllor. One of Luis Buñuel’s favorite films, this independently financed feature is about an emotionally underdeveloped poacher, his first experience with romantic love, and his mother’s obstruction. Inspired by Franco’s description of his Spain as a “peaceful forest,” this cruel—and at times raunchy and slightly incestuous—story was initially banned by the censors and nearly doomed to oblivion before being resuscitated by the San Sebastiàn Film Festival. 99 min. New print.

8:15 El Desencanto (The Disenchanted). 1975. Directed by Jaime Chávarri. With Felicidad Blanc, Leopoldo María Panero. A veritable cult classic, this documentary profiles the widow and children of Leopoldo Panero, an official poet of Franco’s regime. The surviving family members dissect their own personal realities and that of Panero. This acerbic psychodrama, once considered “anti-family,” continues to challenge notions of the sanctity of familial relationships. It is a beautiful representation of a family trying to come to terms with its own past in a Spain that was converting to democracy. 95 min. New print.

Wednesday, October 24

6:00 Calle Mayor (Main Street). 1956. Spain/France. Directed by Juan Antonio Bardem. With Betsy Blair, José Suárez. Gamblers persuade a young stud from Madrid to propose to a plain spinster. One of Bardem’s masterpieces, this splendidly somber film lays bare the suffocating hypocrisy of a 1950s provincial town and the sad lives of its residents. Imprisoned while shooting the film, Bardem satisfied the censors by adding to the film a claim that the events depicted could happen anywhere. The film won the International Critics’ Prize at the 1956 Venice Mostra after nearly successful attempts by censors to block its exhibition. 97 min.

8:00 Los Golfos (The Delinquents). 1959. Directed by . With Manuel Zarzo, Luis Marín. Inspired by Luis Buñuel’s films, Saura’s acclaimed first film—the “most difficult film in my career” (Saura)—is an uncompromising portrait of a teenage gang (played by street children) and the first Spanish film shot entirely on location. When one of the boys expresses a desire to become a bullfighter, the others pull a big heist to finance their pal’s dream. Delayed by the censors during production, the film revealed the contradictions in Franco’s “defascistization,” and the censorship and repression that continued under his regime. 88 min.

Thursday, October 25

6:00 Viridiana. 1961. Directed by Luis Buñuel. With Silvia Pinal, . Viridiana’s title character is a young nun whose extreme devotion extends to the crown of thorns she wears and the large wooden crucifix hanging over her bed. Upon visiting the wealthy uncle who has provided for her financially, Viridiana’s faith is challenged as he attempts to corrupt her. Having returned to his native Spain to create what many consider a crowning achievement, Buñuel submitted the script to Spanish censors and received support from Franco’s government, who later attempted to suppress the film on charges of blasphemy and obscenity. The film was smuggled to France, where it won the Palme D’Or in Cannes. It finally premiered in Spain in 1977, after Franco’s death. 90 min.

8:00 El Extraño Viaje (The Strange Trip). 1964. Directed by Fernando Fernán Gómez. With Carlos Larrañaga, Tota Alba. Two siblings living in a small town near Madrid learn of their older sister’s intentions to sell their family’s belongings and dispose of the younger pair. Part murder mystery, part passionate indictment of the Franco regime, The Strange Trip is a fabulous oddity. 92 min.

Friday, October 26

6:00 Surcos (Furrows). 1951. Directed by José Antonio Nieves Conde. With Luis Peña, María Asquerino. Nieves Conde’s best-known work, this portrait of postwar Madrid set the precedent for Spanish Neorealist filmmaking. Tackling issues virtually unseen during Franco’s rule, including rural immigration into the cities, poverty, prostitution, unemployment, and class conflicts, the film follows a family’s migration from the countryside in hope of a new life in the city. Furrows is an expression of the contradictions within Franco’s regime. While the Catholic Church considered the film “deeply dangerous,” the political wing labeled it of “national interest.” The film wasn’t released until its controversial ending was removed. 100 min. New print.

8:00 La Caza (The Hunt). 1965. Directed by Carlos Saura. With Ismael Merlo, . Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Three men and a boy embark on a hunting expedition that traverses territory where the men fought during the Spanish Civil War. As tempers rise among the ex-soldiers, their animal prey are brutally slaughtered, much to the horror of their youthful companion. Spanish Civil War memories and guilt emerge, climaxing violently and shockingly as the men’s seething anger and hatred surface. 93 min.

Saturday, October 27

2:00 Del Rosa...al Amarillo (From Pink...to Yellow). 1963. Written and directed by Manuel Summers. With Antonio Alfonso Vidal, Antonio D. Olano. Two stories concerning love, young and old: a young boy in love becomes obsessed with winning the heart of an older girl of fourteen who enjoys playing with his affections; two residents of an old-folks home for the poor, separated by the gender rules of the institution, express their love through letters. 90 min.

4:00 El Crímen de Cuenca (The Cuenca Crime). 1979. Directed by Pilar Miró. With Amparo Soler Leal, Héctor Alterio. In this film based on actual events, two innocent men are convicted of a shepherd’s murder after an orchestrated trial. Subjected to brutal torture, they serve six years of a 15-year prison term. Marking the limits of the fragile freedom of expression during Spain’s transitional period from dictatorship to democracy, the film was originally suppressed, and Miró was tried unsuccessfully for defamation. When released in 1981, it became the highest grossing film in Spanish history. 91 min. New print.

6:00 Surcos (Furrows). See Friday, October 26, 6:00

Sunday, October 28

2:30 Muerte de un Ciclista (Death of a Cyclist). See Wednesday, October 17, 6:00.

6:00 Calle Mayor (Main Street). See Wednesday, October 24, 6:00.

Monday, October 29

6:00 Los Golfos (The Delinquents). See Wednesday, October 24, 8:00.

8:00 El Pisito (The Little Flat). See Thursday, October 18, 6:00.

Wednesday, October 31

6:00 Plácido. See Thursday, October 18, 8:30.

8:00 Viridiana. See Thursday, October 25, 6:00.

Thursday, November 1

6:00 Del Rosa...al Amarillo (From Pink...to Yellow). See Saturday, October 27, 2:00.

8:00 El Verdugo (The Executioner). See Saturday, October 20, 7:00.

Friday, November 2

6:00 El Extraño Viaje (The Strange Trip). See Thursday, October 25, 8:00.

8:00 La Tía Tula (Aunt Tula). See Saturday, October 20, 2:00.

Saturday, November 3

2:00 Mi Querida Señorita (My Dearest Señorita). See Sunday, October 21, 2:30.

4:00 La Caza (The Hunt). See Friday, October 26, 8:00.

6:00 Nueve Cartas a Berta (Nine Letters to Bertha). See Friday, October 19, 6:00.

8:30 Canciones para Después de una Guerra (Songs for after a War). See Friday, October 19, 8:30.

Sunday, November 4

2:00 El Crímen de Cuenca (The Cuenca Crime). See Saturday, October 27, 4:00.

4:00 Furtivos (Poachers). See Monday, October 22, 6:00.

Monday, November 5

6:00 El Desencanto (The Disenchanted). See Monday, October 22, 8:15.

8:00 El Espíritu de la Colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive). See Sunday, October 21, 5:30.