The Spanish Civil War was a turning point in the role of cinema in the representation of both the military campaigns and the political and social conflicts of the 1930s. The development of light 16mm camera, lenses and advanced photographic material that made it possible to shoot under complex conditions, improvements in sound technology, and the possibility to be shown around the world in the newsreels and documentaries that were shown before feature films brought viewers exciting close to the events: the battles and skirmishes, but also political events and scenes of daily life, at the front and in the rearguard.
It is important to highlight that this visual proximity contributed to partially dissolving the epic vision of war and made possible the spread of images of the victims, the suffering under the bombardment of cities, and the painful images of ruined buildings and shattered bodies which had a profound effect on viewers at the time. Finally, it also made clear the undeniable importance of cinema as a propaganda tool, not only in praising the cause of each side and denigrating the enemy, but also in using cinematic techniques, especially montage, to communicate ideological concepts.
Over time, the cinematic material that came out of the Civil War has been used in three compatible dimensions: as historical document, as testimony, and as a mnemonic trace of events that must be known and remembered. This gallery on Film and the Spanish Civil War brings together a large group of specialists to combine these three dimensions along a chronological axis that, in turn, corresponds to different contexts and spaces of reception. The result is three sub-galleries dedicated to movies dealing directly with the conflict during the war, the postwar, and since the Transition to democracy. The titles of these sub-galleries describe the criteria by which the films were chosen.
- Film at war: epic, suffering and propaganda in cinema during the Civil War
- Rhetorics of victory and trauma in the postwar: cinematic conflicts in the management of the past
- Flows of memory in the cinema of the Transition and democracy
VJB