Discover Movies

Made as part of the Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano in celebration of the first Latin American University Games.It is a short film of ten short minutes, dominated by jazz music, which presents, through the typical structure of a report, the arrival of the delegates, their reception, the atmosphere of camaraderie, the training, the parade of participants, the words of Raul Castro at the inauguration, the sports competitions and the final party.

This is a montage of different images from the JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy triumphs and assassinations, all three events being observed by Lyndon Johnson as the dark figure who is plotting the anti-black rights movement.

CICLÓN is a coverage of hurricane Flora's sweeping the Cuban provinces of Camagüey and Oriente in October 1963: the damage, the evacuation of the villages, and the aid to victims.

In 1963, the businessman Juan Huarte Beaumont, art patron, collector and founder of X Films, a film production company based in Madrid, invited the Basque artists Nestor Basterretxea and Jorge Oteiza to make a promotional short about his companies. Certain conditions were attached to the commission: the artists were each to present finished scripts without any contact with each other about them. Huarte chose Basterretxea's script, and Basterretxea directed the film, which was given the title 'Operación H' in postproduction.

A humorous visit to the turbulent world of the controversial Spanish boxer José Manuel Urtain.

The film starts in Bermeo and ends in Gernika. A magical trip taking us from the scent of salt air and the fishing atmosphere of Bermeo port to the roots of the Tree of Gernika.

This short film "Torerillos 61" is one of the first works of the master Patino, which tries to portray the Spanish society of the time outside the state convention and dodging the hand of censorship. Social commitment is the brand director throughout his long career, starting with short films such as this one, made in the early sixties, in the wake of the statements in Talks Salamanca. The sadness off the characters portrayed is bleak, "Maletillas" (aspiring bullfighters) in search of luck to pull them out of poverty.

With musical accompaniment from the zarzuela 'The drum Grenadiers' by Ruperto Chapí, a pair of custodians are in the basement of the National Library of Madrid showing some canvas awarded with the National Prize for Painting between 1941 and 1969.

An award winning short documentary directed by Jesus Franco.

A short film by Mario Camus.

Accompanied by the songs of singer-songwriter José Antonio Labordeta, a poetic journey through the inhospitable shire of the Monegros, located in the region of Aragón, in Spain, in search of peace and isolation.

In this short Guillén Landrían weaves together the national revolutionary project with the lunar landing by Apollo 11, Tomás Gutierrez Aléa's iconic Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), advertisements, and the Beatles.

This documentary shows the inhuman conditions on which the patients of Iquique's Psychiatric Hospital live.

A brief portrait of famous and brave bullfighter Manuel Benítez el Corbobés; an account on still photos of his triumphs and failures.

This film memorializes the leader of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, on the occasion of his death. It narrates the story of a life which is also the story of a nation-recounting his important accomplishments in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism.

A peculiar in-depth reflection on the concept of homeland reflecting the atmosphere of Basque farmhouses with the participation of emblematic figures in the Basque culture of the period, like the bertsolaris (improvisers of Basque verse) Valentin Enbeita and Jon Lopategi and the Basque dancer Victor Olaeta. To avoid the censorship in place at the time, Elortza entitled the film 'Erria' (Country) rather than 'Aberria' (Homeland).

'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.

Filmed to praise the work of the Spanish Ministry of Housing in solving the problem of shanty towns in Bilbao, it was made to be viewed by General Franco and not for public screening or distribution through the NO-DO newsreel. Although the short film was commissioned by the Ministry of Housing, director Jorge Grau produced a subtly critical work.

"A film by Juan-Luis Buñuel shot in 1964 documenting Calanda, the Spanish town where his father Luis Buñuel was born. The people of Calanda, during the Easter week, play the drums without cease for twenty-four hours." - Luis Buñuel Film Institute

In the sixties, just before starting his career as a feature film director and his parallel career of the Anticine, Javier Aguirre had a brief career as a documentary filmmaker, which served him to test and rehearse many procedures that he would put into practice in the avant-garde aspect of his work. The trail belongs to that period, a few years full of mystery, but whose works are emerging demonstrating the portentous gaze of Aguirre. The trace has hardly been seen in the last sixty years, and it is an opportunity to recover this vision between anthropology and the vanguard of one of the hallmarks of this city. The film has been restored by the ECAM Archive in collaboration with Filmoteca Española.

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.

A documentary about traveling fairs in Spain.

Documentary by Juan Francisco de Lasa about a pioneer of Spanish cinema. Gelabert attended one of the first sessions of the Lumière's cinématographe in Barcelona. Briefly after, he built a contraption based on this invention. He produced his first picture, "Dorotea", in 1897. His film "Riña en un café" is considered the first Spanish film to feature a plot.

Experimental film production that presents a newscast with a critical perspective of the popular culture transmitted by TV, using collage techniques and juxtaposition of images from newspapers, magazines, advertising, film and television.

Produced by ICAIC in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, "Muerte al invasor" chronicles the three days of fighting at Playa Girón, portraying the rapid mobilization of Cuban forces and civilians against a CIA-backed exile army.

A poetic film that records the excavations carried out by Swiss ethnologist Jean Christian Spahni at the mouth of the Loa River. Through the bone remains and objects found, the testimony of the Chango indigenous people is revealed.

A documentary that takes a broad overview of the life of the dictator, which is a review of the history of the twentieth century so far. Thus, the main events of the century are analyzed through the experience of Franco, who starred in many of them in this historic document which brings together, among others, Alfonso XIII, Mussolini, Lenin, Primo de Rivera, Azaña or Roosevelt.

"Tiempo dos is a melancholic and sad movie. Soft gray and poetically evocative. It is made with the heart. It has purity, it denotes clarity and is sharp and concise. The image that most remains me is that of the old-fashioned photographic apparatus protected from the rain by the umbrella" Rafael Alberti

The geometry of circles and ellipses is explored using the Roman Colosseum as an example. Using the Pantheon as another practical example, this program explores the concepts of central and intercepted angles, arc segments and chords. The Etude du Cinéma de l’Ecole de Barcelona (a short-lived group that appeared in Spain in the 1960s) offers the opportunity to consider the distrust of the avant-gardes with regard to narrative. The lacunar narration whose principle the School of Barcelona adopts goes against the traditional narrative and its quest for coherence and continuity. She invites the viewer to make the disconcerting experience of unbinding and emptiness. Such an approach involves an ethical posture. The Barcelona School follows in the footsteps of a modernity that intends to move away from an alienating authoritarian discourse and claims to make the spectator a partner in creation.

An experimental and iconoclastic journey through the Spanish Holy Week in the late sixties.

Detailed record of the operative technique used by Professor Dr. Alfonso Asenjo to perform surgery on a patient with Parkinson's disease at the Hospital de Neurocirugía de Santiago.

Explores concerns about uterine cancer and the value of the Pap Test in detecting this serious type of cancer.

A series of visual paradoxes between the names of the streets of Madrid and those of the shops located in them.

The misadventures of a group of young people who seek a better life by becoming bullfighters, the only way to leave their poor existence in the slums of Barcelona.

Affectionate, experimental short documentary that paints a mosaic of Cuba by focusing on a microcosmic "old neighborhood", where the country's personality slowly emerges through its various dualities: young and old, day and night, sound and silence, Christianity and Santería, civilian life and military presence, poverty and abundance.

Argentinian short film which shows local fauna and hunting.

Paraphrase between the face of man and the face of the earth. It has a fundamental question: Who owns whom? The earth, man or man, earth?

Retornar a Baracoa focuses on a town, the oldest in Cuba, that remained accessible only by sea for more than three hundred years. While the documentary showcases government projects to build a radio station, a high school, an airport and a park, the images and voices of the residents leave the viewer with the feeling that all of this may be too little.

A ship of athletes training on the rough seas becomes a symbol of Castro’s Cuba, the games projected on the backdrop of political struggle. This is the story of a ship and of a sports delegation whom the enemy tried to stop from participating in the Tenth Central American and Caribbean Games.

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.

In the foothills of the Pyrenees in the province of Huesca lies the medieval village of Alquézar. The film takes a journey through this religious site using images of the Colegiata de Santa María church, the paintings it houses and the capitals in its cloisters. It also draws on images of narrow and steep empty streets, the Semana Santa procession and sculptures of Christ on the cross.

It presents the problem of physically disability through a young crippled and the attitudes of the community towards them.

A little boy walks around the seaside town of Miramar in Argentina

Gleyzer’s first color film was his final collaboration with his old classmate Jorge Prelorán, who preferred a less polemical approach to documenting poverty. QUILINO details the Cordoba villagers’ reliance on the railroad that brings them customers from the cities, and the looming likelihood that the route will be shut down.

On May 22, 1960, an earthquake with an intensity of 9.6 on the Richter Scale was recorded in the city of Valdivia, considered to date the largest and most violent earthquake ever recorded in the world. The cataclysm devastated the entire Chilean territory between Talca and Chiloé, which corresponds to more than 400,000 km. It resulted in the deaths of around three thousand people, while two million were left homeless. The film documents the efforts of a hundred workers in the face of the threat of the overflowing of Lake Riñihue.

A peculiar walk through the Basque city of San Sebastián along twisting roads never traveled by guidebook users.