La Maleta Mexicana
Sunday 7 October – 5 pm
Cinema Español
(Mexico 2011) 90 min. Dir: Trisha Ziff. International award winning film, La Maleta Mexicana tells the story of the recovery of 4,500 negatives by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David ‘Chim’ Seymour taken during the Spanish Civil War found 70 years later in a closet in Mexico City. The film looks at the journey of these negatives from France to Mexico; their survival and looks at how Spain reflects today on its own history as well as those who escaped. Mexico was the only country to come to the rescue and support of the Spanish Republic and then honour and support the Republic in exile when the rest of the world turned its back. La Maleta Mexicana looks at this unique story and these photos lost for seventy years. According to director Ziff – “I returned the negatives at a moment when, thirty years after the democratic transition, a progressive Spanish government finally felt secure enough to make ‘looking back’ both possible and legal. But this security proved false: when Judge Baltasar Garzón started a legal investigation of the Franco dictatorship, he was forced from office into political exile.”
This film is a mixture of Spanish and English interviews – if you speak either language you can follow the story it tells.
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