not reconciled

Part of the linked thesis, Memory, Place and Subjectivity: Experiments in Independent Documentary Filmmaking.

"During the Spanish civil war and its aftermath, thousands of people were executed and thrown into mass unmarked graves. Today people in Spain are beginning to face up to a past that has remained for 70 years an uneasy alliance of a determination to forget. In Not Reconciled, historic accounts of the civil war, novels, diaries of republican and fascist fighters, are combined with observation of the everyday lives of the villagers.

The voices of the ghosts of Rosa and Carlos, young Spanish civil war republicans echo over the ruins of Belchite in Aragon, Northern Spain as they wait for the discovery of their unmarked graves. They tell the story of the town, talk about their part in the fighting, quarrel and make up, discuss philosophy and history and women’s rights and the terrible aftermath of the civil war. The sounds of wind, the echoes of voices, the crumbling ruins, the slow silent walks of tourists and the seeming oblivion of the present day town next door to those who lost their lives, are overlaid with conversations by the film maker with present day Belchite inhabitants as she tries to penetrate their indifference."

This film is part of the PhD thesis available at http;//dx.doi.org/10.15123/PUB.3929