Octavia

Images and verses to Christmas

Caudillo is a documentary film by Spanish film director Basilio Martín Patino. It follows the military and political career of Francisco Franco and the most important moments of the Spanish Civil War. It uses footage from both sides of the war, music from the period and voice-over testimonies of various people.

This documentary, filmed clandestinely, is based on several interviews with the executioners who worked in Spain during the early 1970s, as well as families of people executed by them.

Lorenzo is a young man returns to Spain after spending some time in England, where he fell in love with Berta, the daughter of Spanish immigrants. Lorenzo writes several letters to her trying to convey the beauty of the world her parents left behind.

An account of the journey that King Alfonso XIII of Spain made to the impoverished shire of Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in the region of Extremadura, in 1922.

The film starts with the confluence of the 15M protesters in Puerta del Sol, follow the construction of the Camping Sol, a kind of parallel city assemblies, whose structure extends to neighborhoods and nearby cities and all over Spain. After what happened attest, without mediation or intention, the film lets the images speak and describe the end of the experience.

A particular reading of the hard years of famine, repression and censorship after the massacre of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), through popular culture: songs, newspapers and magazines, movies and newsreels.

This literary film is imbued with the disenchantment of Spanish exiles who left their homes to protest Franco's fascist regime and then returned after its demise to find that democracy had not instilled either ethics or deep motivation in government leaders. Director Basilio Martin Patino presents his story, and a large part of the film is based on his own life, through the experiences of an exiled heroine played by Charo Lopez. She has returned to Spain to look for meaning in her life, something that she never found living in Germany, not even after having a child. She is also in the process of translating the German lyric poet Friederich Holderlin (see the 1985 Halfte Des Lebens) into Spanish, focusing on his epic Hyperion. Excerpts from the translation are voiced over throughout the film. As she looks up old friends from many, many years ago, even those who have achieved worldly success are suffering from the same ennui that propelled her back home.

María belongs to the upper bourgeoisie and has always had everything in life, even a brilliant, educated husband; in short, an intellectual to presume. Alejandro, on the other hand, has been going up day by day, he has grown up with his work, believing in himself -he is an economist- he has fought with all his strength to achieve a higher social level and he has succeeded. He is a professor in the University, executive of a great company, owner, in short, of a beautiful villa in the outskirts. But he is, nevertheless, in the critical age, in the age of taking stock of his past, of justifying himself. And the truth is that, despite his material triumph, he is not happy, there is no reason to be in his participation in society, he is not satisfied with anything. It is, in a word, a step away from his inner failure. In this situation he discovers, in turn, that María accuses him of having dedicated more time to succeed than to love her.

A German documentary filmmaker travels to Madrid to do a TV program about the city and the Spanish civil war commemorating its 50th anniversary.

The longing and critical review of the copla is lived through the history of the marqués de Almodóvar, a passionate ambassador who organized Franco's folkloric festivals; generous, womanizer, excessive, wasteful, himself the protagonist of his own copla. In love in his youth with a Concha Piquer chorus girl, he dedicated his life to collecting fetishes and memories of all the cante divas with which to organize a sentimental museum in his decaying castle, filling it with showcases where he could store his longings. When he died, destitute, in the pension of his last mistress, also a cupletist, she disputes her legacy with the housekeeper who took care of him and her picturesque collections all her life. family castle. A dear diplomatic friend recalls his fanciful existence emotionally. An aesthetic that is part of the feeling of the Andalusian people. And as a common thread "Ojos Verdes", the most beautiful song of songs of his rich songbook.

The boredom of a young middle-class woman at home a Sunday afternoon. Not to be confused with Carlos Saura's short of the same name produced in 1957.