A true story: some years ago, I paid one euro for a handbag in an informal auction in Valencia. When I came home, I found inside the handbag lots of papers. Amongst them, two letters dated 1946, unsent. Their author announced his imminent suicide, due to the negative effects of war, prison and the lost of his family. El ultimo abrazo (The last embrace) is a short documentary film about our research, from the moment we found the letters until we find out who had written these letters, what had driven him to take his own life and why were both letters together and unsent.
Obsessively referring to the traumas and wounds that the Spanish civil war (1936-39) and Franco's dictatorship (1939-75) caused in their day no longer serves to explain the impassable abyss of incomprehension and hatred that the abject policies and radical positions adopted by both the right and the left in recent decades have opened up before the citizens of a country that is barely known beyond hackneyed cultural clichés.
The Spanish journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales (1897-1944) was always there where the news broke out: in the fratricidal Spain of 1936, in Bolshevik Russia, in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, in occupied Paris or in the bombed London of World War II; because his job was to walk, see and tell stories, and thus fight against tyrants, at a time when it was necessary to take sides in order not to be left alone; but he, a man of integrity to the bitter end, never did so.
The amazing story of Cifesa, a mythical film production company founded in Valencia by the Casanova family that managed to dominate the box office during the turbulent times of the Second Spanish Republic, the carnage of the Civil War and the hardships of the long post-war period and Franco's dictatorship — and survive until the sixties, when Spain was timidly beginning to change.
Documentary produced by Falange and edited in Berlin, in response to the international success of the Republican production "Spain 1936" (Le Chanois, 1937).
The adventurous life of Natacha Rambova (1897-1966), an American artist, born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy, who reincarnated herself countless times: false Russian dancer, silent film actress, scenographer and costume designer, writer, spiritist, Egyptologist, indefatigable traveler, mysterious and curious; an amazing 20th century woman who created the myth of Rudolph Valentino.
An account of the brief life of the writer Albert Camus (1913-1960), a Frenchman born in Algeria: his Spanish origin on the isle of Menorca, his childhood in Algiers, his literary career and his constant struggle against the pomposity of French bourgeois intellectuals, his communist commitment, his love for Spain and his opposition to the independence of Algeria, since it would cause the loss of his true home, his definitive estrangement.
In 1939, just finished the Spanish Civil War, Spanish republican photographer Francesc Boix escapes from Spain; but is captured by the Nazis in 1940 and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, in Austria, a year later.
After fighting on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, a man goes into exile in France while his family waits for his return in a Catalan village.
The young farmer Aalami leaves his family to find work elsewhere. He gets to know the country and its people, customs and traditions at Küste in North Africa: Market life in Tetuan, the art of craftsmanship, the life of the Moors, dances and festivities in honour of the caliph, white mosques, the call of the muezzin of the minaret and the music of the shepherd flutes.
A particular reading of the hard years of famine, repression and censorship after the massacre of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), through popular culture: songs, newspapers and magazines, movies and newsreels.
Popular movie trailers from 2014
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 2014:
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
Istanbul cirminal underworld; a place of merciless families and swaggering hitmen afraid of no one. Kadir Korkut, nicknamed the "Demon" is the most fearsome of their kind.
April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy commands a Sherman tank and her five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines.
For Peter Parker, life is busy. Between taking out the bad guys as Spider-Man and spending time with the person he loves, Gwen Stacy, high school graduation cannot come quickly enough.
William stands at the window telling Abigail his story of walking down 'the witches' path. The unseen spectral Abigail taunts William suggesting that he walked down the path hoping to see her.
Manas, Mani and Mauni are at a critical stage in their lives wherein Manas is caught in a love triangle, Mani is on his way to become a crime boss and Mauni resorts to corruption for political gains.
This story began with a blind, bull elephant called Pla-Ra. Paul Barton took his piano to ElephantsWorld, a Sanctuary on the banks of the River Kwai in Thailand and began playing to the elephants while they were eating.
Comments
Have you watched El último abrazo yet? What did you think about it?
