¡Arriba España!

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.

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.

Eight foreign characters recall their exploits and fears in Malaga, a paradise city that starts a revolution on July 18th 1936, as the military coup is stopped by popular rebellion, until February 9th 1937, when Mussolini troops take Malaga and put it under the rule of Franco. Seven months that shape the stark tale of a besieged city, the first capital to be conquered in Spanish Civil War and a prelude of WW2.

Guernica: El último exiliado

Spain, April 14, 1931. The Second Republic is born. From the beginning, the writer Miguel de Unamuno is considered one of the ethical pillars of the new regime. Five years later, on December 31, 1936, a few months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Unamuno dies at his home in Salamanca, capital of the rebel side, led by General Francisco Franco, and main center of dissemination of its propaganda apparatus.

The Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya commissioned Pere Portabella to make this film for the Joan Miró retrospective exhibit in 1969. There were heated discussions on whether it would be prudent to screen the film during the exhibit. Portabella took the following stance: "either both films are screened or they don't screen any" and, finally, both Miro l'Altre and Aidez l'Espagne were shown. The film was made by combining newsreels and film material from the Spanish Civil War with prints by Miró from the series "Barcelona" (1939-1944). The film ends with the painter's "pochoir" known as Aidez l'Espagne.

Benjamina Miyar Díaz (1888-1961) led an unusual life in her house on calle del Agua in Corao, Asturias, at the foot of the Picos de Europa mountain range in northern Spain: she was a photographer and watchmaker for more than forty years, but she also fought in her own humble and heroic way against General Franco's dictatorship.

The adventurous life of Natacha Rambova (1897-1966), an American artist, born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy, who reincarnated herself countless times: false Russian dancer, silent film actress, scenographer and costume designer, writer, spiritist, Egyptologist, indefatigable traveler, mysterious and curious; an amazing 20th century woman who created the myth of Rudolph Valentino.

El acero libertario

In this propaganda film intended to raise money for republicans fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Henri Cartier-Bresson first presents the achievements of the Spanish Republic in the field of public health. He then shows how members of the public and organizations across the world were supporting the fighters.

Más allá de la alambrada: la memoria del horror

La doble vida del faquir (The magicians) returns to the scene of a school in the Catalan town of Sant Julià de Vilatorta where, in 1937, in the midst of civil war, a film-maker in hiding and a group of orphaned children dressed up as sultans and explorers shot an exotic adventure film. The films protagonists relive those childhood days when they were able to switch their school smocks for oriental turbans, while reality imposed its own fancy dress ball with military uniforms and priests dressed in civilian garb.

Nazi propaganda film about the Condor Legion, a unit of German "volunteers" who fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of eventual dictator Francisco Franco against the elected government of Spain.

Presos del silencio

Franco on Trial is the new film by Dietmar Post and Lucía Palacios. After the success of Franco's Settlers, their first encounter with Franco's dictatorship, they are now setting their sights on one of the darkest chapters of European history: the presumed organized extermination that took place during the coup, the war, and the subsequent dictatorship led by Franco, as well as Argentina's current effort, by invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction, to prosecute Francoists accused of committing crimes against humanity. The film is also a sore reminder of an issue that still stands today: the clear-cut accountability held by Germany, Italy, and Portugal. The film accomplishes to give both sides a voice - those against whom the killing has been directed; and the side of the perpetrators.

Almas sin fronteras: La historia de la Brigada Abraham Lincoln

Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, the anarchist union CNT socialized the film industry in Spain, so in Madrid and Barcelona film workers took over the production assets and, between 1936 and 1938, numerous films on a wide variety of topics were released, composing a varied mosaic that gives rise to one of the most unusual and original moments of Spanish cinematography.

The Spanish journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales (1897-1944) was always there where the news broke out: in the fratricidal Spain of 1936, in Bolshevik Russia, in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, in occupied Paris or in the bombed London of World War II; because his job was to walk, see and tell stories, and thus fight against tyrants, at a time when it was necessary to take sides in order not to be left alone; but he, a man of integrity to the bitter end, never did so.

In the mountains of Madrid, Spain, a railway track on an abandoned bridge and a poem erased from the wall of a ruined building reveal a deliberately silenced story: the system established by Franco's dictatorship after the civil war (1936-39) that allowed hundreds of companies to use thousands of convicted Republicans as slave labor.

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.