Andalucía entre el incienso y el sudor

This Traveltalk series short looks at four of Spain's most famous cities, Granada, Seville, Toledo, and Madrid, with an emphasis on the Moors and their influence on the country.

On the border, the line as principle of property and belonging reaches an extreme dimension where it physically defines the sphere of its relations. Those who transgress it reconstruct these imaginary lines on a daily basis, redefining the traditional geography and occupying the non-spaces where others live in a temporary form of existence. These others, the non-citizens, are phantasmtic, exchangeable parts of a flexible market. Made invisible, they are permanently controlled persons. Under the pretext of a greater civilian security, they are kept clear from the public spaces reserved for the citizens with rights and pushed into non-public spaces, which are run by state and military surveillance, multinational operations servicing a European market and non-governmental organisations.

Filmed in Cordoba, Granada, Seville, and Toledo, this documentary retraces the 800-year period in medieval Spain when Muslims, Christians, and Jews forged a common cultural identity that frequently transcended their religious differences, revealing what made this rare and fruitful collaboration possible, and what ultimately tore it apart.

The film shows the genesis of the El Rocío pilgrimage and unveils the economic, socio-political and religious reasons and interests that nurture the phenomenon.

An experimental and iconoclastic journey through the Spanish Holy Week in the late sixties.

Storm

The documentary Felipe González approaches some of the most important facets and stages of the Andalusian politician's life, before becoming President of the Government of Spain: his early years, his high school studies at the school of the Claretian Fathers in Seville, his years in the Catholic Action University Youth and the Catholic Workers' Youth, his entry into the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

Following a commission from the College of Architects of Seville, for the production of a documentary about the La Alameda de Hércules area of the Sevillian capital in a debate about its possible destiny and urban planning challenges, the filmmaker Juan Sebastián Bollaín, offers this visionary realistic and critical, at the same time experimental and iconoclastic, portrait of the problem of the transformation of historic centers in our cities.

Religious-based images and traditions permeate the lives of all the people who inhabit Seville. Historically, the city's mariquitas ("sissies") have also assimilated them in their childhood and, through them, have been creating their own encounter spaces and their own codes. Nowadays, new dissident identities continue to respond to them: they participate or distance themselves, they continue what exists or transform it. This film looks at these traditions from a perspective always relegated to the margins.

Processions during a holy week in Valladolid.

Desplazamientos

Las llaves de la memoria

"Nueve Sevillas" is a heterodox psycho-geographical profile of the new flamenco in Seville. Nine characters coexist with the great flamenco artists of today.

Seville, Spain, 14th century. A group of black slaves brought from Africa form the Hermandad de los Negros, a Holy Week brotherhood that has survived over the centuries, despite the opposition of the powerful; still active, it is one of the oldest institutions in Europe.

The landscape of the olive grove is the protagonist of the Mediterranean territory and is shown in this documentary at ground level and from a bird's eye view, in different unique locations of the Iberian Peninsula. From the Somontano de Barbastro in Aragón, to the south of Andalusia, with a sea of ​​olive trees, in the mountain ranges or in the fertile plains and riverbanks. A humanized territory that, for centuries, has been sculpting history and this, not only giving a characteristic identity to our landscape, but also outlining the gastronomic tradition and culture of the Mediterranean.

Rafael was the outlandish mayor of a small Andalusian village until his absent-minded eccentricities caused him to draw in the village elections. Now he has a clear objective: to win in the second elections. His best idea is to organise and star in a documentary to brag about 'his people'. Through these cameras we will get to know one of the crazy traditions of the village. But also, the criticism and laughter that his dubious management arouses, and the irrefutable prudence of Victoria, his competitor. All these problems will explode back at him... literally.

Emilio Pascual, a historical figure of Andalusian cinema from the early 1900s, appears in today's Malaga with the mission of bringing the first documentary filmed in Andalusia to its first screening.

A young drag queen from Andalusia exposes the difficulties of adding aspects of her homeland culture to her artistic expression.

Libertad negra

A compiling documentary about Seville "Spain". It reflects with sarcasm some of the deepest problems and stereotypes associated to Andalusians, and depicts them as the consequences of capitalism.