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FACING FASCISM 3 projects: the film La Memoria es Vaga, interviews from New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, Camp teaser

By Katie - Posted on 02 December 2007

Where?
The Tank
,
When?
12/09/2007 - 12:20pm
What?

FACING FASCISM: 3 DOCUMENTARY PROJECTS is a screening of three related documentary film projects: The full length documentary LA MEMORIA ES VAGA, video interviews from the exhibit FACING FASCISM: NEW YORK AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, and a short sample from a documentary in progress, ANOTHER CAMP IS POSSIBLE

LA MEMORIA ES VAGA

is an award-winning documentary by Katie Halper about the history and legacy of

The Valley of the Fallen, Spain's largest monument, built by Franco with political

prisoner labor to celebrate
his victory and their defeat in the Spanish Civil War

The screening will be followed by a Q & A session with the filmmaker and

NYU Professor Jim Fernandez

about the film and Spain's new law of historical memory

and clips of from the oral history video project New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War

The screening is fundraiser is for a new film ANOTHER CAMP IS POSSIBLE

a documentary about Camp Kinderland, the unique summer camp

that for more than 80 years

has lived up to its motto: "Summer Camp with a Conscience"

More about the films

LA MEMORIA ES VAGA has screened throughout United States, Europe, in festivals including the Amnesty International Firefly Festival and the Havana Film Festival. It is now part of a traveling film series "Images Against Amnesia," consisting of 13 documentary films dealing with historical memory in Spain. The film won an award for photography from the Granada Film Festival and is based on Katie's Wesleyan University oral history thesis, which won the Abraham Lincoln Brigades Archives George Watt Memorial Prize. The film has been commercially distributed in Spain and will be part of an exhibit the Galician Center for Contemporary Art in Santiago de Compostela.

The film tells the untold story of El valle de los Caídos, the Valley of the Fallen. Constructed after the Spanish Civil War under the pretext of reconciliation, Spain's largest monument was built by political prisoners in concentration camp conditions and came to house the tombs of Spain's two most prominent fascist leaders, Jose Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco. Through interviews with former political prisoners who built the monument, current members of Spain's fascist party, the sculptor who designed the monument's 500-foot cross, and Spaniards who visit the tourist attraction, LA MEMORIA ES VAGA reveals the controversial history and legacy of this pharaonic monument, whose existence continues to provoke division in today's Spain. Ultimately, the film sheds light on the Franco dictatorship, Spain's transition from dictatorship to democracy, and its current struggle to recover hidden history.

FACING FASCISM: NEW YORKERS REMEMBER THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR is an ongoing oral history video project about how New Yorkers experienced the Spanish Civil War right here in the New York City. twenty-two New Yorkers from all walks of life, between the ages of 75 and 85 recall life in the city in the late 1930's, and reminisce about how their lives-- band the life of their city-- were transformed by the rise of fascism and by the outbreak and outcome of the Spanish Civil War. The project was carried out in association with the major exhibition "Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War" which was on view at the Museum of the City of New York and opens in Spain this December.

ANOTHER CAMP IS POSSIBLE will be a feature-length documentary about both the past history and the existence today of a camp committed to building a better world. Focusing on the World Peace Olympics, Kinderland's alternative to other camps' "color wars," the film will demonstrate how emphasizing cooperation over competition, and engaging in culture, history, and activism along with sports, the Kinderland Peace Olympics expresses and inspires progressive thinking and action. The film will feature the never-before-published photographs taken by camp photographer Ben Itzkowitz, whose great granddaughter, a fourth generation Kinderlander, is the editor of the film. We have finished shooting and are now in the process of editing.

Our advisory board, to date, includes two-time Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, U.S.A; Shut up and Sing), the extraordinary historian Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States, Rebel Voices) Emmy award winning director Matt O'Neill (Baghdad ER); Rachel Meeropol, camp alum, Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney, and author of Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the "War on Terror" and The Jailhouse Lawyer's Handbook; Wendy Cohen, community manager of Participant Productions (An Inconvenient Truth, Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck) and Chesa Boudin, Camp Kinderland alum, social activist, journalist who edited Letters From Young Activists: Today's Young Rebels Speak Out, and is currently working on a book about Latin America's shift to the left.

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