Ikuska 2: Gernika

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…

Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions.

'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.

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?

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 six-decade transformation of a block of houses, shown by means of artfully featured archival shots, highlights the beauty and sadness of human-made decay. In the blink of an eye 66 years pass by and a savings bank replaces a church.

Spanish Civil War, May, 1938. Four villages in Castellón, Benassal, Albocàsser, Ares del Maestrat and Vilar de Canes, were bombed from the sky and ravaged. 38 people died. Inhabitants never knew for sure who piloted the planes responsible for such atrocity, although the rebel propaganda attributed the act to the republican side. Now, 80 years later, the truth is finally exposed.

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.

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.

This documentary looks at the surge in political violence through the story of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, showing the roots of anti-government sentiment and its reverberations today, along with the emotionally charged warnings of those who suffered tragic losses in the deadliest homegrown attack in U.S. history.

In this short documentary film about Basque pelota, in addition to showing the different modalities (basket ball, handball, paddle, ratchet...), well-known pelota players of the time take part.

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995 is the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history. This documentary explores how a series of deadly encounters between American citizens and federal law enforcement—including the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco—led to it.

Is it possible to travel twice to the same memory? The filmmaker built a cabin on an isolated riverbank, just opposite his childhood island, which had disappeared under the water after the construction of a dam. The goal was to go back to that place, which had become invisible. Only the trees of the island where he’d played stood firm in the middle of the water, like the masts of a broken toy boat, so the air was the only space left, the only vestige of the past to be conquered. This film is a diary of a castaway in memories: four months of a Walden experience in a lost paradise with two hens, a small vegetable garden and a clock that stopped forever at 11.36 and 23 seconds.

Documentary film about the then longest range bombing mission in history, which changed the outcome of the Falklands War.

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.

Jason Van Vleet's documentary explores how a plan to overthrow the government conceived in 1983 by home-grown extremists lead to the tragic 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Van Vleet's film includes interviews with officials who investigated the terrorist attack and a taped confession by one of the perpetrators of the bombing, and looks at domestic terror groups that are still operative years after the attack.

Documentary dedicated to the new Basque music.

Debate on the launch of Basque television (ETB, Euskal Telebista).

A documentary about Basque inmigrants who went to USA looking for work and a better future. Basically, Amerikanuak talks about feeling homesick, about struggling in a different country to make a decent living and about being part of a comunity.

Documentary on the life of the Basque shepherd and oral improviser (or 'bertsolari') Fernando Aire (1920-1976), known as 'Xalbador'.