AUTEUR CINEMA AND PERIPHERAL IDENTITIES
Julio Medem
(1998)
(1993)
(2009)
Basque, Spanish, or international arthouse filmmaker?
Technical innovator: Lucía y el sexo (2001), first feature film
in Spain shot entirely in HD
Archetypes: women as a force associated with essential
elements: earth, water, sky.
Split selves:
- Caótica Ana: poetic narrative about a
woman with multiple past lives
- Tierra (1996): a man and his double in
the plains of central Spain
Cyclical narratives connected by
repetition and chance:
-Los amantes del círculo polar/Vacas
Sexuality and oedipal trauma: films that
lend themselves to psychoanalytical
readings
Medem: a filmmaker with a
background in psychiatric medicine
How is Medem’s cinema ‘peripheral’
and ‘international’ at the same time?
(2007)
An elusive relationship with Basque
identity
An elusive relationship with
Basque identity: Medem as an
insider/outsider.
“The conflict within a divided
self, the duality that it engenders
and its correlative symmetry, is an
earnestly personal predicament
for Medem” (Rob Stone, p. 14)
A direct
intervention in
Basque politics:
La pelota vasca:
la piel contra la
piedra (2003)
Vacas, Medem’s debut film (1992): allegorical vision of Basque history
•In its most extreme form, resistance & conflict have
taken the form of political violence, represented by the
terrorist actions of the separatist group ETA (1959-2011)
Euskal Herria
El País Vasco:
a geo-political reality: a region with
powers for self-administration and a
distinctive language and culture
and Rob Stone, p. 186.
“a utopian, autonomous Basque
nation that remains both a
nationalist dream and a political
aim: Euskal Herria, or the land of
the Basque (euskera) speakers”
Vacas, Medem’s debut film (1992): allegorical vision of Basque history connected to the land, to
violent internal conflict (the axe), and to a masculinist culture based on the ‘ownership’ of women
Vacas: tackling a Basque history connected to land through the masculine figure of the aizkolari, or
woodcutter, and bound up with language: euskera.
•“weakened nationalism”:
distortion of identities – conflict
resurfaces in gender and family
relations
• Setting: the campsite – a fake ‘natural’ environment
• For Smith, the violence in the third
act of the film reveals that in spite
of the playful and dream-like tone
of much of the film “terror is still
lived as a trace in Basque bodies,
albeit a trace that is subject to an
ironic and sceptical reinterpretation”
• High and excessively low angle shots convey the
point of view of the invisible - but ubiquitous squirrels
• Ironic reversals in gender
• Parody of family dynamics and power relations
(Paul Julian Smith, “Julio Medem’s La
Ardilla Roja: a a transparent society” in
his book Vision Machines)
Actors and types
Emma Suárez, the mysterious woman
suffering from amnesia in La Ardilla Roja
Carmelo Gómez as a disenchanted
Basque terrorist in Días contados (Imanol
Uribe, 1994)
Exploring themes of violence and nation
through the crime thriller/love story genre
conventions
Tierra
Emma Suárez and Carmelo Gómez: acting
in Vacas, La Ardilla Roja and Tierra