PRESOS DEL SILENCIO
Mariano Agudo y Eduardo Montero
España 2004, Beta Digital, 58 min
Sinopsis
We are children of the silence of our parents.
And responsible for the silence of our children
Dulce Chacón
Franco's government didn't have enough with the military victory over those that opposed the uprising. After the war, he imposed a scheme destined to erase from society and even from the memory of those involved, all traces of their freedom and democratic ideals. The repression that was imposed offered few alternatives for those who weren't able to escape to exile: prison, death or silence.
The damage caused to our colective memory is irreparable. The years have buried the possibility of recovering a huge number of testimonies from that time. However, there is a debt towards the families that suffered Franco's repression, it is also a debt towards our own history: we must voice their memory, recuperate and spread their experiences, dignify their lives which were devoted to commitment and solidarity.
Prisoners of Silence seeks to pay off part of this debt.
Between 1940 and 1962, around 10,000 political prisoners took part in the construction of the Lower Guadalquivir Canal what today is known as the Prisoner's Canal . Its more than 150 km continues to irrigate one of the main agricultural arteries in Andalucia.
This documentary reconstructs an episode of our colective memory through the recollections of some of the survivors and relatives. Walking with them along the natural settings where this drama took place, we evoke the years in which thousands of men and women suffered the stigma of living Prisoners of Silence.
MAIN CHARACTERS:
Manuel Saldaña
Even at a hundred, a strong commitment towards freedom still beats within him. He reached the rank of major in the republican army, and when the war ended he was sent to various prisons and concentration camps ending up working on the canal. He was a CNT militant and self-taught; the time he spent in prison and the repression he suffered weren't able to take away his ideals, ideals that are alive today, and even in the 21 st Century he is sure of their value. Francisca Adame
Her father was in the Guardia Civil during the years prior to the Republic, after the uprising he joined the republican army, and together with his son he was imprisoned when the war ended. Francisca's human strength rebelled against the sordid prison world, she reflected this in touching poems that she memorized until she learned to read and write properly in an adult education centre in the 80s. Dolores Vimes
She belongs to a family of deep anarchist ideals, she has always been involved with the CNT. Her bravery and courage fed her militance even during the hardest days of Franco's regime: apart from helping other members of the sindicate kept in secrecy, she hid her husband for five years after he ran away from the Canal. In spite of her age, she has still got a contagious spirited character.
PRODUCTION DATA:
Película documental de 58' de duración. Betacam digital. 16/9. Color-B/N
Una producción de: Intermedia
Co-productores: La Zanfoña Producciones, Canal Sur T.V.
Dirección: Mariano Agudo Y Eduardo Montero
Guión: Eduardo Montero
Director De Fotografía: Mariano Agudo
Sonido: Daniel De Zayas, Juan Manuel López
Microfonista: Javier Sánchez
Ayudante De Cámara: Agustín Toranzo
Productor Ejecutivo: Julio Sánchez Veiga
Coproductor: Gervasio Iglesias
Director De Producción: Miguel Paredes
Jefa De Producción: Natalia De Ancos
Coordinadora De Coproducción: Pilar Ortega (Canal Sur Tv)
Ayudante De Producción: Chiqui Paniagua
Música: Enrique De Justo Y Javi Vega
Montaje: Mercedes Cantero
Post Producción Audio: José Antonio Manobel
Diseño e Infografía: María Rodríguez Y Kiko Romero
CON LA AYUDA DE: Consejería de Cultura. Junta de Andalucía - Consejería de Relaciones Institucionales. Junta de Andalucía - Obra Social. Caja San Fernando - Fundación El Monte - Ayuntamiento de Carmona - Diputación de Cádiz
DIRECTOR'S ASSESMENT:
MARIANO AGUDO
Prisoners of Silence talks about anonymous people, simple people who do not appear in History books, but play a very important part in the fight for freedom. Men and women who suffered repression for believing in social justice. Our purpose is to enter their lives and break the silence imposed for decades.
We have used a naturalistic photography, a realistic light that portrays the everyday life of the main characters, their houses, their neighbourhoods and the settings where the repression took place. The close-ups have allowed us to get close to the characters and concentrate on their looks, on their weather-beaten faces, we have shared their feelings and revived their experiences. We have avoided easy emotionality, raising the interviews with restraint but with honesty and sensibility.
The closeness and complicity with the main characters have been of a hundred per cent mainly because they suffered political reprisal, they are brave people with great values and today, nearly 70 years later, they still retain a high sense of justice. For all the crew involved in the making of the film it has been a privilege to be able to approach the protagonists of this story. Neither Franco's regime nor the silence of the transition have made them lose their values. In spite of everything they have gone through they are still idealists and analytical.
The shooting of the film has been a revitilizing experience, the protagonists have filled us with life. We have been smitten with their passion for life, their fighting potential and their conviction that a better world is possible. Our generation holds a debt towards these men and women, a group of people condemned to silence in the transition, a prolonged silence that has gone on up to our days. The time has come for us to act, we must restore the image and the values of these people, we must give them the place in history they diserve.
EDUARDO MONTERO
There are silences that are disproportionate, buried, democratic.
Silences that drown the voice of memory at cost price, letting bygones be bygones, falling into oblivion.
This is the story of told silences, silences that walk at our pace, a kind and slow pace, full of ideals, of pain, of humiliation, of anger towards the present that forgot them, of concentration camps, of fears of the memories, of mute photographs, of forgotten memory, of revolution.
Their path rests where our work begins, taking photos of their humble self-built neighbourhoods, joining them in their day-to-day.
For a year and a half, we visited those that would be the main characters in “ Prisoners of Silence”, their neighbourhoods, houses and relatives.
We listened to their testimonies during long days in which we walked, we had coffee in their living-rooms or nursing homes. We shared with them the pain within their stories, the lives of men made to work in concentration camps, of women in the streets made to yield and humiliated, of naked childhoods.
Stories that they allowed us to build by opening the doors of their lives, of their memories. We shared their struggle, pain and disillusion.
This is how the script for “ Prisoners of Silence” was written, we were made to feel privileged witnesses of these anonymous stories of resistance.
BIO/FILMOGRAFIAS:
MARIANO AGUDO
Born in Seville in 1970. He is a founding member of Intermedia Producciones S.L. and has developed most of his career in this company from Seville . He has combined local jobs with international projects: short films, documentaries, making-ofs and cinema trailers apart from other television work. Among his achievements we can highlight:
Kurdistán País Prohibido . Documentary. 1998 . Director
Vacaciones en Paz . Documentary. 1998 . Director
Veldpost Europa . Programme shown on the Dutch public TV channel Vpro. 1999. Director
La Espalda del Mundo . Film directed by Javier Corcuera and produced by Elías Querejeta. 2000. Cameraman
El Factor Pilgrim, El Traje, Carlos Contra el Mundo, Astronautas, Siete Vírgenes. 2000-2004. Director of Trailers and Making-ofs.
Bagdad . Film directed by Javier Cocuera and produced by Elías Querejeta. Opening in 2005 . Cameraman
Presos del Silencio . Documentary. 2004. Co-director and director of photography.
EDUARDO MONTERO
Born in Seville in 1974. He has got a vocation for self-education and has developed most of his career in his home town as a cameraman and director, always closely connected to Intermedia Producciones. Since he started out he has done many jobs in the television world, but since 1999 he has been dedicated to documentary films.
Sobre la marcha: El EZLN llega a México D.F. Documentary. 2001. Scriptwriter and director.
El Vacie: Vivir en chabolas. Documentary. 2002-2003. Scriptwriter and director.
Sahara. Documentary directed by Javier Corcuera. 2003. Cameraman
Presos del Silencio . Documentary. 2004. Scriptwriter and co-director.
Organising member of the film festival Cádiz.
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