L'Espagne vivra (1939)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 44M
Director : Henri Cartier-Bresson
Synopsis
In July 1936, the Spanish people resist the offensive by Franco’s army, backed by Italian and German fascists, aimed at conquering the country's major cities. Although many of the recruits to the new Republican Army are well trained, weapons and ammunition remain in short supply due to the non-intervention agreement initiated by France and signed by Italy and Germany. Yet the latter two countries continue to provide Franco’s army with military support and commit their troops on Spanish soil, while the fighters of the International Brigades return home.
Spain, 1939. In the last days of the Spanish Civil War, the young Carlos arrives at the Santa Lucía orphanage, where he will make friends and enemies as he follows the quiet footsteps of a mysterious presence eager for revenge.
Spanish photographer Francesc Boix, imprisoned in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, works in the SS Photographic Service. Between 1943 and 1945, he hides, with the help of other prisoners, thousands of negatives, with the purpose of showing the freed world the atrocities committed by the Nazis, exhaustively documented. He will be a key witness during the Nuremberg Trials.
Writer Ernest Hemingway begins a romance with fellow scribe Martha Gellhorn.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
The story of the tortuous struggle against the silence of the victims of the dictatorship imposed by General Franco after the victory of the rebel side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1975). In a democratic country, but still ideologically divided, the survivors seek justice as they organize the so-called “Argentinian lawsuit” and denounce the legally sanctioned pact of oblivion that intends to hide the crimes they were subjects of.
Spain in the 1930s is the place to be for a man of action like Robert Jordan. There is a civil war going on and Jordan—who has joined up on the side that appeals most to idealists of that era—has been given a high-risk assignment up in the mountains. He awaits the right time to blow up a crucial bridge in order to halt the enemy's progress
A small village in Huelva, Andalusia, Spain, 1936. Higinio and Rosa have been married only for a few months when the Civil War breaks out. Higinio, being afraid of possible reprisals from the rebel faction, decides to use a hole dug in his own house as a temporary hideout.
Arising out of the horror of the Spanish Civil War, a candidate for canonization is investigated by a journalist who discovers his own estranged father had a deep, dark and devastating connection to the saint's life.While researching the life of Josemaria Escriva, the controversial founder of Opus Dei, the young journalist Robert uncovers hidden stories of his estranged father Manolo, and is taken on a journey through the dark, terrible secrets of his family’s past.
Salamanca, Spain, 1936. In the early days of the military rebellion that began the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), writer Miguel de Unamuno supports the uprising in the hope that the prevailing political chaos will end. But when the confrontation becomes bloody, Unamuno must question his initial position.
David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.
The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.
In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Ana, a sensitive seven-year-old girl in a rural Spanish hamlet is traumatized after a traveling projectionist screens a print of James Whale's 1931 "Frankenstein" for the village. The youngster is profoundly disturbed by the scenes in which the monster murders the little girl and is later killed himself by the villagers. She questions her sister about the profundities of life and death and believes her older sibling when she tells her that the monster is not dead, but exists as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn. When a Loyalist soldier, a fugitive from Franco's victorious army, hides out in the barn, Ana crosses from reality into a fantasy world of her own.
True story of thirteen totally normal young women that suffered harsh questioning and were put in prison under made up charges of helping the rebellion against Franco back in the 1940s. Despite of their innocence, the thirteen were soon executed without even a trace of evidence of any wrong doing.
Finished the Spanish Civil War in April 1939, in November 1940, while Spain is being crushed by the ruthless boot of dictator Franco, Pepita travels from rural Huelva to Madrid to be near her sister Hortensia, who is seven months pregnant and imprisoned, haunted by the shadow of a death sentence.
A soldier protects a mule during the Spanish Civil War.
In the harsh post-war years' Catalan countryside, Andreu, a child that belongs to the losing side, finds the corpses of a man and his son in the forest. The authorities want his father to be made responsible of the deaths, but Andreu tries to help his father by finding out who truly killed them. In this search, Andreu develops a moral consciousness against a world of adults fed by lies. In order to survive, he betrays his own roots and ends up finding out the monster that lives within him.
The life story of Colin McKenzie, a forgotten pioneer of international cinema who was born in rural New Zealand in 1888.
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the nun Maria is forced to flee her convent. She takes refuge in a brothel, until it is liberated by a woman's anarchist group. Maria joins the group and eventually goes to the front. The women's group faces the problems of fighting not only the nationalists, but also factions on the left seeking to impose a more traditional military structure.
During the Spanish Civil War a platoon of mismatched Republican soldiers cross the front-line to steal the bull that the enemy is going to fight on the local holiday of the nearby village. In addition to ruining the Nationalist faction's celebration they want the animal in order to butcher it and feed their famished troops. They get caught in the process and have to go through a series of funny and pathetic incidents before they can get back to their side.
In the post Spanish civil war years, Catalan kids would sit in circles among the ruins and tell stories, known as "aventis" (the film's original title in Catalan, its original language). These tales mix war stories, local gossip, comic book characters, fantasy and real events. The "aventis" told in this film are told in flashback. In the mid 80s, 45 or so years after the age of the "aventis," a doctor and a nurse-nun (who grew up together, and now are co-workers in a hospital) identify the corpse of one of the main characters of the "aventis" of their childhood and adolescence. Besides the interesting flashbacks - a chronical of the Civil War in a "typical" Barcelona microcosm itself, the discovery of this body (belonging to someone long presumed dead) leads to other surprises and unresolved doubts, several decades later