Under the title History, Memory, Cinema, the Harvard Film Archive is screening a series of documentaries by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán this month (Feb. 11-21):
Few filmmakers have understood the tremendous potential of cinema to shape historical consciousness as perspicaciously and courageously as Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán (b. 1941). In...
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The ArtDaily reports:
Work begins this week to add over 5 million digital objects, ranging from Spanish civil war photographs and handwritten letters from philosopher Immanuel Kant, to Europeana from 19 of Europe’s leading research and university libraries.
More here.This year's Portland International Film Festival (February 10-26) features several Spanish Civil War-inspired movies, including Alex de la Iglesia's The Last Circus (Balada triste de trompeta), Agustí Villaronga's Black Bread (Pa negre), and Oriol Porta's A War in Hollywood (Hollywood vs. Franco). More details here.
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The Iranian Press TV today features an item on the ongoing exhumations of mass graves in Spain. Includes 2:30 minute video.
After nearly four decades ... the Spanish government ratified a law authorizing exhumation of the war's mass graves. Since that time, however, a mere ten percent of the burials...
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Anne Chisholm, in this Sunday's Telegraph, and Michael Eaude, in the Independent, review Javier Cercas' Anatomy of a Moment, a prize-winning fictionalized history of the failed February 1981 coup:
The Anatomy of a Moment is extensively researched, rigorous with the facts. It is not only history, though, for where...
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A team of researchers directed by Luis Avial has been scanning the surroundings of the Jarama river--where the Lincoln Battalion faced its first bloody battle in February 1937--in search of the graves of fallen soldiers, La Razón reports. The researchers are confident they may well discover mass graves with the remains of British,...
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Ronald Fraser, author of the pathbreaking oral history Blood of Spain, reviews Julián Casanova's newly translated The Spanish Republic and Civil War (Cambridge, 2010) in the most recent issue of the New Left Review:
The belief that the Spanish Civil War can essentially be reduced to a struggle...
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Jim Jump sends us the new IBMT Newsletter with, as usual, a wealth of information: obits for Sam Lesser and Penny Feiwel, news on the Jubilee Gardens IB Memorial and a full overview of all UK memorials, information on the possible location of George Nathan's grave, an announcement of a new play on...
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Last year, when Sebastiaan Faber and I tried to identify the black IBer portrayed in a picture by the great photographer Centelles, we came across a great many documents that would help a patient historian tell the relatively unknown story of the US-based volunteers from Spain and from Spanish-speaking America who joined...
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ALBA and Veterans for Peace are proud to announce the Annual ALBA Bill Susman Lecture by Marjorie Cohn, editor of The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse (NYU Press, 2011), past president of the National Lawyers Guild, professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and author of three other books (see www.marjoriecohn.com): "Human...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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New information about the New Zealand-born Spanish Civil War surgeon Doug Jolly (1904-1983) has emerged following the recent publication of his biography, Frontline Surgeon.
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On September 24, 1945, Dr. Barsky delivered this speech during the Spanish Refugee Appeal rally at Madison Square Garden.
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In 1944, Barsky wrote A Surgeon Goes to War, an 18-chapter memoir of his time in Spain, which was never published but can be consulted at NYU’s Tamiment Library. This is the first chapter.
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Self-effacing and shy though he was, Dr. Edward Barsky’s experience in Spain made him an outspoken activist, tireless organizer, innovative frontline surgeon, and political prisoner. “Eddie is a saint,” Hemingway wrote. “That’s where we put our saints in this country—in jail.”
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The Volunteer is thrilled to honor Dr. Barsky on the fiftieth anniversary of his death.
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For Edward Barsky, political and humanitarian activism were two sides of the same coin. Those who persecuted him begged to differ.
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The time she spent in civil-war Spain loomed large in the life of Martha Gellhorn, the St. Louis-born war journalist. “The truth is that Martha could not stop thinking, feeling, and writing about her Spanish experiences.” “Objectivity bullshit.” That’s what Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) called the journalism of her day. Her letters to personalities like...
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Among the thousands of Jewish volunteers who joined the International Brigades were many descendants of the Sephardim. What was it like for them to “return” to Spain? Three case studies: Lini de Vries, César Covo, and Samuel Nahman, aka Manny Harriman.
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How the 22-year-old Jewish American dancer Janet Riesenfeld performed flamenco to help raise money for the Second Republic under fascist attack.
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Why did Jawaharlal Nehru, future prime minister of India, visit civil-war Spain in 1938? As it turned out, the triangular relationship between Britain, Spain, and India had deep cultural and geopolitical implications.
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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