Goya (Spain’s Academy Award)—people began to stop Chato on the street, recognizing his white hair immediately, to share stories of suffering or resistance, or simply to give him a hug. In these moments he would savor that the impunity of torturers and other perpetrators was now widely known, and that people were starting to see it not just as “the victims’ problem” but as something affecting society as a whole. But his hard work of activism never ceased. Chato travelled internationally with the film, with boundless energy, to seize the opportunity of bringing the discussion to other societies – and he never, ever forgot the International Brigades. At Sheffield Doc/Fest he visited the Plaque remembering the International Brigades and deposited flowers. At Toronto’s Hot Docs (North America’s biggest documentary festival) he said, deeply moved, “the Brigades represented the best of humankind”. After the screening an older lady approached him. Crying, she told him her name was Mora. “My father named me Mora because that was where he was stationed in Spain as a brigadista”. They embraced with tenderness.
Judith Montell (1930-2020)
Once we asked him how long we would fight. He responded: “Until we win. With the spoon in hand.”
Her other work includes A Home on the Range, about the Jewish Petaluma community of chicken farmers in northern California, and a favorite at the SF Jewish Film Festival. Her last film, In the Image: Palestinian Women Capture the Occupation (2014) was made when Judy was 83. It was inspired by the work of B’Tselem, the human rights organization in Israel/Palestine, of which her daughter Jessica was the director at the time.
Hasta siempre, white-haired warrior. We will carry on your spoon. Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar are the directors/producers of The Silence of Others, which won the 2019 Goya for Best Documentary Feature (Spain’s Academy Award) and was shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature for the 91st Academy Awards. Their previous film, Made in L.A., won an Emmy. This article originally appeared in March 2020 in the online platform for Documentary magazine, published by the International Documentary Association, a nonprofit media arts organization based in Los Angeles.”
Judith Montell, prize-winning documentary filmmaker and long-time member of the ALBA Board of Governors, passed away on May 23 after a long illness. Her best-known film was surely Forever Activists: Stories of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991. She also directed shorter films dealing with the Lincoln veterans, including The Return of the Brigade, which focused on the 1996 reunions in Spain, as well as documentary footage of the dedication of the national monument to the Lincoln Brigade in San Francisco in 2008.
Besides her important films, Judy was active in the Bay Area post of the Veterans of the Lincoln Brigade for many years. It was her friendship with the vets that made her work accessible to a large public. She was a member of ALBA’s Honorary Board at the time of her death.
Film Review: What Can’t Be Seen
Mientras dure la guerra / While at War, dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 2019; La trinchera infinita / The Endless Trench, dir. Jon Garaño, Aitor Arregi, and Jose Mari Goenaga, 2019. Reviewed by Jo Labanyi Spain’s memory boom of the last few decades has produced a flood of new films on the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath that invite the public to identify with the defeated Republicans. Unfortunately, many adopt a glossy, heritagemovie-like aesthetic while they simplify history into a fairy-tale plot of good guys vs. bad. The two films under review here both manage to avoid these traps. While at War, by blockbusting director Alejandro Amenábar, charts philosopher Miguel de Unamuno’s political and emotional roller-coaster ride during the final months of his life, as his initial support of Franco’s July 1936 military coup turned to a sharp condemnation. The Endless Trench, by Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño, and Jose Mari Goenaga, tells the story of a modest town councilor in an Andalusian village who escapes 20 THE VOLUNTEER September 2020
persecution from the Francoists by holing up behind a false wall in his home for 33 years, from the beginning of the war in 1936 until a 1969 amnesty. Both movies have won many awards in Spain and both boast wonderful cinematography and impeccable period sets and costumes. Yet they are anything but glossy. Both films make a smart use of darkness to show what cannot be seen. In The Endless Trench, it cloaks the restricted vision of the holed-up protagonist. In While at War, which attempts the difficult task of representing ideas through a visual medium, darkness has engulfed Unamuno’s anxiety-ridden home and the institutions that cramp freedom of expression.
