An ethnographic documentary which looks at the relationship between music and work in predominantly rural cultures. It depicts the lives of fisherman, shepherds and farmers and their relationship with music. The film also describes Basque ancestral instruments, with special emphasis on the origin and history of ‘bertsolarism’ (Basque verse singing) as a form of oral communication.
Short film on the art in the Basque Country.
The documentary proposes a unique meeting with the speakers of several indigenous and inuit languages of Quebec – all threatened with extinction. The film starts with the discovery of these unsung tongues through listening to the daily life of those who still speak them today. Buttressed by an exploration and creation of archives, the film allows us to better understand the musicality of these languages and reveals the cultural and human importance of these venerable oral traditions by nourishing a collective reflection on the consequences of their disappearance.
Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.
The 'bertsolari' is a kind of minstrel sings and improvises verses in Basque. This oral tradition has evolved with the times and connecting with younger generations, getting to meet at the end of the last championship to 14 thousand people. An austere aesthetic art of surprising in this age of spectacle and special effects.
'Ama Lur' is a documentary, directed by Nestor Basterretxea and Fernando Larruquert, that premiered in San Sebastián in 1968, and it is considered the foundation of Basque cinema.
A documentary view of the Basque ball-game in which a small hard leather ball is hit against a wall. The film gives an impression of the game itself and of those who play it, not only the star performers (and the myths that surround them), but also those who just play in the streets and alleyways. The film sees the game it its cultural context and conveys the emotions and stories that are peculiar to the Basque country.
Documentary on the rural world and the city in the Basque Country.
Documentary dedicated to the new Basque music.
The troubles of learning Basque in adults.
A memory to the victims and a tribute to the survivors of one of the most tragic episodes of the Spanish Civil War: the bombings suffered by the population of Gernika.
Debate on the launch of Basque television (ETB, Euskal Telebista).
Study on the situation of Basque language compared to Spanish.
Analysis of the problems facing the rural world of Araba, a region of the Basque Country.
84-year-old Maura is the guardian of a very particular tradition in danger of extinction. She is a singer of amorfinos, verses full of humor that will disappear forever with her departure.
Day after day, an elderly woman recalls the Spanish Basque country of her youth — while forgetting she is consigned to a retirement home in Chile.
In the Bella Coola Valley, a haunting legend endures through generations as a filmmaker reckons with whether the stories of her ancestors can survive being held or if they were never meant to be captured.
The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?
A singer frozen in old black and white photos. Forever young. Encapsulated. Trapped in the frame, just like her voice on her vinyl records. Forgetting that the point of view is chosen. Forgetting that, in addition to being a singer, Lurdes Iriondo is also an essential reference in the transmission of Basque culture. She understood that children were the key, and she worked for them.
Donostia-San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain, 2011. Maider, a filmmaker, moves to the very same flat where pedadogist Elbira Zipitria Irastorza (1906-1982) clandestinely established the first ikastola, a Basque school, under the harsh regime of dictator Francisco Franco. Despite of her pioneering work, developed throughout thirty years, her story is not well known, so Maider, intrigued, begins to research…