[IMC-bristol] New censorship attempt around film analysing the Basque Conflict

[Euskalinfo (Basque info)]

New censorship attempt around 
film analysing the Basque 
Conflict
 By Martin Mantxo (Euskalinfo) 
 
The film by Julio Medem ‘The Basque ballgame: 
the skin against the stone’ (as a reference to 
the different elements within the game and their 
conflictive connotations) has suffered the 
attack of PP (Partido Popular) representatives. 
The film is due to be presented in the current 
Donostia Film Festival (51 edition)( 
www.sansebastianfestival.ya.com/2002/ing/index.ht
m) to start today 18th September. This is a 
documentary film presenting 70 interviews from 
103 different people affected by the conflict. 
However, PP has asked the festival organisers to 
reconsider its screening as they believe it 
doesn’t portray a real image of what the Basque 
conflict is about.
Basque Julio Medem (Cows, The Red Squirrel, 
Earth, Lovers Of The Arctic Circle and Lucia and 
the Sex 
www.harvardfilmarchive.org/calendars/01marapr/med
em.htm) is one of the best known current Spanish-
speaking directors. He’s been compared to Buñuel 
and David Lynch. Though in most of his films the 
Basque element has a big influence (specially in 
Cows) it hasn’t been until now that he has 
decided to speak about the conflict affecting 
nowadays Basques.
However, this is a delicate issue in nowadays 
Spain, where PP has inherited the policy from 
PSOE (was this a continuation of the 
dictatorship style?) where the Basque conflict 
is ignored as such. Medem explains how he was so 
frustrated trying to get PP representatives to 
take part in this film, and to include in this 
way all parts of the conflict. PP refusal was 
based in the fact that Medem was interviewing 
people from the other side too, so according to 
them he aimed at portraying terrorist at the 
same level than terrorism victims.
I’m afraid that this is the connotation that 
‘terrorism’ has in Spain, and now after the 
banning of Batasuna and many separatist 
initiatives and activities as terrorist 
activists too, that a political stand has too. 
This shows again this government’s willingness 
to find a solution to the conflict and to create 
dialogue with all the parts. 

This was the same reason which was given by 
Donostia’s (san Sebastian) PP councillor Maria 
San Gil to the festival organisers. It was Maria 
San Gil herself who denied the existence of a 
political conflict in the Basque Country in a 
BBC Radio 4 program during ETA’s ceasefire. In 
the meantime, she acknowledged the Northern 
Irish one! Even the presenter was shocked and 
repeated the question to her. And she 
corroborated her previous statement: there is no 
political conflict but a gang of bigots trying 
to impose their politics.

If this is the attitude of the party in the 
government, what can we expect? Obviously, any 
attempts by intellectuals, journalists, etc, to 
present another side or to deepen in the sources 
of the conflict will be dismissed or attacked. 
In the current atmosphere, even to suggest 
‘dialogue’ is a subversive act.

The film suffered its first set-back when last 
week, the representatives of two Basque peace 
and pro-government groups demanded Medem to 
withdraw their interviews for considering that 
the film wasn’t balance. 

Medem released a brief note stating that he just 
wants people to see the film by themselves, and 
value his commitment for 'non-violence 
and political dialogue'. He finished it by 
saying: 'I demand with all my strength the clean 
eyes for a non-hating effort'. 

Even Donostia PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party) 
Odon Elorza –someone very far to be considered 
sympathetic of the Basque separatist demands- 
came out to defend the film saying that this 
attack against Medem’s film is ‘a lack of 
respect of the freedom of Speech’. He also said 
that the film shocked him and made him think.

Julio Medem (Donostia, 1958) started working in 
the film last year as a reaction to the new wave 
of Spanish nationalism which was wiping the 
basque Country. Medem left Euskal Herria (Basque 
Country) for Madrid in 1996 (when Aznar’s PP 
took over the Spanish government) as he had had 
enough of the political tension. But he 
confesses that the catalyst for making this new 
film was the escalation of Spanish nationalism 
with PP's government. He says: 'in the 13th May 
2001 electoral campaigns I witnessed horrified a 
spectacle of lies, demagogy and lynching of 
Basque nationalism. This was the populist 
strategy of the Spanish government, joined by 
PSOE (and therefore all the Madrid media), 
splitting and reducing all the political options 
in the Basque Country to two sides, to two 
irreconcilable national fronts".


Notes from Julio Medem’s 
presentation of his film ‘The 
basque ballgame- the skin against 
the stone’

Medem made a written presentation of his latest 
film where he places it in the development of 
his cinematographic history and in his move to 
Madrid from the basque Country.

In this presentation he speaks about the 
difficulties he found to make the film and how 
it’s not the film he wanted to do  because of 
PP’s denial to take part in it.

He confesses that the raise of PP’s anti-
basquism while he lived in Madrid and the 
Spanish media abuse and manipulation of the 
information related to the Basque Country, was 
the catalyst to start the film. medem alleges 
that because of the raise of PP’s anti-basquism, 
Spaniards are confussing Basque nationalism with 
terrorism. 

The director acknowledges that the problem of 
ETA’s terrorism is the priority in the Basque Country 
but that this is not the only problem. He argues that 
all the documentaries on the conflict that he has 
watched only show this issue and in many they 
even deny the conflict. He adds that PP has abuse 
this issue to gain votes and to perpetuate a 
situation. 
His desire is to provoke the viewers to question 
their understanding of the conflict.
Medem finishes his film’s presentation saying he 
just aims to find a solution to the conflict: ‘if we 
don’t bring the edges closer, how will we heal the 
injury?’