"I don't know if you can talk about militant film today."
- In many of the current images we find scenes from earlier protests, as if they were repeated over and over again. It is thanks to cinema that we are told the old political promises that have remained unfulfilled, which are about to be fulfilled. The study of these resonances is the work of Valencian Pablo La Parra at the University of New York, whose residence is located in Tabakalera these months, delving into his project.
Specifically, what are you working on this stay in Tabakalera?
The title of the project I am developing is Europe, the final future. This research work is complemented by a programme aimed at the general public. In essence, the objective of the project is to bring contemporary cinematographic practices into contact with the file created from the militant film of the 1960s and 1970s.
Is militant film a portrait of the revolts of the time?
The evolution of the so-called militant film has been dazzling. It was not a coherent and unified movement, but a heterogeneous set of practices that tried to redefine the relationship between film and politics. The development of this film is inseparable from the new forms of political dissent that emerged in the national liberation movements and in the context of the riots in 1968. I would say that the interest of those filmmakers was not just to portray the mood of the time through the movie, but they wanted to be an active part of all those struggles.
But for that, film had to be free from a lot of rules, right?
Of course. This represented a radical change in the media of film production, rehearsing collective and assembly authorship and ensuring the participation of the then militants. As for the distribution of films, they created self-managed networks to ensure their circulation and brought them to factories or classrooms so that they could be accessible to people. There were in-depth discussions and they became instruments of political action.
What is the interest of this film?
As Kristin Ross says, May 68 has been the most narratively disfigured political episode: the struggles of those years are filtered by the neoliberal narratives of the 80s and 90s and tell us facts that we do not understand with them, distorted and with depoliticized stereotypes. Militant film was born at the center of all those struggles, and that's why we see the militants themselves taking the floor. In my opinion, this approach has provided us with a very curious level of experience: rather than analyzing what they have done well or badly in the past since today’s reading, what is interesting is to enter in a sensitive way in contact with the practices and political subjectivities of yesteryear. What world did they dream of? How did they want to do that? How did they express themselves?
Do the images from 68 have any relation to the ones you've seen in the current mobilizations?
The crisis and the struggles that are taking place today have highlighted the complete failure of the neo-liberal Europe. The Europe we know has been built on the remains of all the struggles of the 1960s. To put it in some way, it seems that the images of that time have not left us and that only in the present historical and social moment can we understand the political promise they secretly hide. It is no coincidence, therefore, to see that these days the militant film archive of the time is being reused and reinterpreted; it could be said that these images of the past condition our ability to represent and show the present.
The relationship between filmmakers and political structures has not always been tender ...
In my opinion, the most interesting films in militant films were films made outside parties and unions. Despite the fact that some parties showed an interest in film, particularly in the Italian Communist Party, I believe that, in general, this relationship was under constant tension. There was a fundamental problem: militant cinema made a rigorous criticism of the usual modes of representation, claiming the production of a discourse from below, which directly collided with the vertical and hierarchical logic of the Leninist parties. This issue is very clear with the use of the voice-off: in the face of the classical conception of the political documentary – where the omniscient narrator adequately tells us the scenes – in the films of militant films the collective narrators spoke. Often, militant film has been caricaturized as simplistic and vague, but a careful analysis of this file shows us the richness of the political subjectivities of the time.
Is militant film being made today?
I don't know if you can talk about militant film today. This term is no longer used and it guides us towards a concrete historical and social period. But our intention with this project is to analyze the resonances that exist between contemporary visual practices and this militant archive. Many of the strategies that today allow the politicization, distribution or display of alternative images cannot be studied without understanding their relationship with militant cinema. These resonances are found in many places: filmmakers, current cooperatives, film forums, self-managed spaces, occupied squares…
“Oso garrantzitsua da ulertzea zinema militantea ekoizpen modu jakin batzuk eskuratzearekin lotuta zegoela: subestandar formatuek (8x16 mm) zentsurarekiko eta sare komertzialekiko independentzia ekarri zuten, tresneria arinek ahalbidetu zuten filmazioak eta proiekzioak eramatea errebolta sozialak gertatzen ari ziren lekuetara. Gaur egungo mugimendu sozial eta politikoek baliabide digitalak eta sare sozialak bere egiten dituztenean antzeko zerbait iradokitzen ari dira: diskurtso disidenteen zirkulazioa eta ikusgarritasuna ematen da eta, era berean, bestelako medioetan tokirik izango ez luketen subjektibitate politikoentzako leku dira”.
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