"Cinema and the Spanish Civil War" film season opens in London

The BFI Southbank's Cinema and the Spanish Civil War film season begins today with screenings of The Spanish Earth, a film written and narrated by Ernest Hemingway showing people's daily lives in their struggle to survive, and Espana 1936, a propaganda film depicting the resistance of the Republic and the involvment of the International Brigades, which the Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs entrusted to Luis Bunuel. Seventy years after the events, the film season explores the Spanish Civil War in film cultures as diverse as Hollywood, the USSR, Spain, France, the UK and East Germany, offering different views of the period and its consequences. The season runs until the end of June featuring both documentaries and films that address the war directly, as well as others that use it as a backdrop to their storylines. Films span over 70 years, from 1936 to 2008, and also include a selection of Noticiarios Documentales or News and Documentaries, cinema propaganda newsreels that were broadcast by Franco’s regime to update the population about the latest official truths.

On Thursday, the 11th edition of the annual Mosaïques Festival will also open at the Institut français. The festival is designed to celebrate cultural diversity and will feature screenings of films from across the world, music and live events. Although events primarily address contemporary issues across the world as diverse as poverty in the Parisian suburbs, the effects of the 2004 Tsunami in Thailand or street life in Casablanca, the film festival features two films which address French colonial history in Algeria and Indochina...