Film Undone: Rocio
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Rocio (Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 1980, Spain, 69′, digital file, Spanish spoken with English subtitles)
After Franco’s death, Fernando Ruiz Vergara returned from Portugal to Spain to direct Rocio, a critical film essay on the most multitudinous Catholic pilgrimage on the Iberian Peninsula, held in Almonte (Huelva). Immediately after Spain’s transition to democracy, Rocio was the first film to be censored for exposing one of the perpetrators of fascist crimes in the Civil War. The film has been banned from being shown in its entirety in Spain until today. In London, Rocio will be shown as a reconstruction of its uncensored version.
When the film was released with three censorship cuts after a long court case in 1985, the synopsis preserved the rebelliousness and richness of the film. These words do not speak about the past, their lucidity underlines the power of a cursed film: “Rocio is the first authentically Andalusian film to have been made and is therefore the revelation of a cinema that owes nothing to that which has hitherto been produced in ‘great and free’, peaceful and narrow Spain. But it is not a simple documentary. Nor a survey film. Nor a cold ethnological enquiry. It is the true soul, the feeling of a people that becomes aware. And when it comes together, freedom springs up, in its raging aspiration for truth.”
Introduced by Concha Barquero and Alejandro Alvarado.
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington