Documenting the indignation: Responses to the 2008 financial crisis in contemporary Spanish cinema

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyze two Spanish documentary films that reflect on the 2008 financial crisis in Spain, Mercado de futuros (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011) and No estamos solos (Pere Joan Ventura, 2015). These movies could be marked as political for their choice of a collective protagonist and for dealing with the issues of inequality with the purpose of appealing to mobilization and resistance to the neoliberal Western agenda that have provoked social cutbacks after the 2008 crisis. Mercedes Álvarez and Pere Joan Ventura follow the tradition of political documentaries traced by filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, Pere Portabella, and Basilio Martín Patino and open the debate on how people can contribute to searching for renewal policies in times of crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Mercedes Álvarez
• capitalism
• Mercado de futuros
• No estamos solos
• political documentary
• Spanish crisis
• Pere Joan Ventura

Notes

1. All translations from Spanish into English are mine unless otherwise indicated. Both quotes by Almodóvar belong to an interview published in Spanish: “Se trata de resistir, yo y, me temo, el país en general. Resistencia es la palabra clave,” and “Quería una película directa en lo que se dice, sobre todo ahora que vivimos una especie de ley de silencio, donde el gobierno no dice nada.”

2. The Minister of Economy Cristóbal Montoro accused some “famous actors” (without providing specific details) of evading taxes, in a speech addressed to the Spanish Senate in 2013. A few days later, Montoro explained that he was referring to those who lived abroad. Some media (such as El Mundo or ABC) observed that the minister was pointing at international figures such as actors Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz, and Javier Bardem. The very next day, Banderas commented that some politicians were going too far in their criticism of artists.

3. Originally in Spanish: “La deuda pública española (…) era baja; pero la privada era, en proporción al tamaño de su economía, una de las mayores del mundo. Una deuda que empezó a partir del dinero que los Landesbanken alemanes prestaron a bancos y cajas de ahorro españoles, que a su vez lo emplearon en conceder créditos para las especulaciones insensatas de los constructores y para las demandas de particulares sin recursos, a los que las propias entidades financieras les estimulaban a endeudarse irresponsablemente.”

4. Not to mention the economic interference in the film narrative since, as remarked by Nichols (3), the movie supported the interests of Revillon Frères, the food company that sponsored Flaherty, by presenting the benefits of hunting for both Eskimos and consumers.

5. Hodgin (38) recalls the problems that Ivens had to face throughout his later career, to the extent that he was refused entrance to the United States.

6. In particular, Ventura recalls András Boglar, a disciple of Vsevolod Pudovkin, as one of the members of the teaching staff in Aixelà. This would not have been unusual due to the intense anti-Franco activities carried out by cultural dissidents in small groups like Aixelà during the dictatorship.

7. Apart from the fact that governments have the role of negotiating in situations of labor conflict, Sintel was born as a public company and years later sold to a private fund, which accelerated the process of restructuring and layoffs.

8. Originally in Spanish: “[S]u aspecto de teatro virtual, de escenario incómodo, que nunca acabamos de reconocer como nuestro, con un diseño que parece hecho por una inteligencia que siempre se esconde y que no parece tratarnos con mucho cariño, aunque nos seduce, o que quiere algo de nosotros y no sabemos qué. En fin, más o menos nuestra experiencia diaria de la ciudad.”

9. Originally in Spanish: “No encuentro ya muy útil la calificación cerrada de géneros, sobre todo si se reduce a una discusión meramente nominalista y sobre todo a estas alturas de la historia del cine. El espectador ya es adulto desde hace varias décadas, parte de una experiencia y una capacidad muy altas para leer imágenes, y a veces demasiado, demasiado resabiado como para atreverse a mirar por sí mismo.”

10. Originally in Spanish: “en Mercado de futuros […] [quería] comprender, junto con el espectador, cómo habíamos llegado a tal desastre. Era necesario apuntar a la responsabilidad del sistema crediticio y financiero, a los vendedores de humo del boom inmobiliario, a la voracidad del sector, pero no eludir la complicidad general de todos como consumidores de ese juego […].”

11. The VTA rise was decreed and approved on 14 July 2012 and entered into force on 1 September that year. See <https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2012/07/14/pdfs/BOE-A-2012-9364.pdf>.

12. In this regard, one of the very first screenings took place at the University of Valencia on 16 November 2015, an activity of the CRIC research project. The presence of Pere Joan Ventura and the producer El Gran Wyoming attracted more than 400 students and scholars to the assembly hall of the School of Philology, Translation, and Communication. Both Ventura and Wyoming introduced the film and hosted a Q&A session after the screening.

13. Ventura (2016: 95) declares that the origin of No estamos solos is an exhibition of the work Cartografia de la revolta [Cartography of the revolt] by the artist Itziar González Virós. We can read more about this idea of mapping the crisis in Méndez 2015 and Albertos Puebla and Sánchez Hernández.