Spain in Flames
Template:Infobox film Spain in Flames is a 1937 compilation film made by Helen van Dongen during the Spanish Civil War.<ref name=obituary>Template:Cite news</ref> Hal Erickson has written that the film "... is remarkable in its willingness to offer both sides of the conflict -- though its sympathies are firmly with the Loyalists."<ref name=allmovie>Template:Cite web</ref> The film consists of two parts. The first, "The Fight for Freedom", was based on film footage from a Spanish government documentary Spain and the Fight for Freedom.<ref name=Schoots>Template:Cite book</ref> A foreword by the then Spanish Ambassador to the United States, Fernando de los Ríos, began one of the film's screenings in New York in 1937.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
The second part, "They Shalt Not Pass", was based on a short film No Pasaran! done by the Artkino Film Company of the Soviet Union, where van Dongen was working at the time the film was made.<ref name=obituary /><ref name=allmovie /><ref name=Schoots /> John Dos Passos narrated parts of the film,<ref name=obituary /> and the commentary was written by Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Archibald MacLeish, and Prudencio de Pareda.<ref name=Schoots /><ref>Template:Cite web Webpages based on the catalog for the Speiser and Easterling-Hallman Collection of Ernest Hemingway at the University of South Carolina.</ref> Erickson writes that, "The horrendous images of battlefield carnage, not to mention the close-ups of suffering and dying Spanish children, still pack a wallop when seen today."<ref name=allmovie />
Later, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Lillian Hellman and others founded the company Contemporary Historians, which produced another film called The Spanish Earth (1937), directed by Joris Ivens and edited by van Dongen.
Spain in Flames was banned in New Brunswick, New Jersey and Waterbury, Connecticut.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> A screening of the film, accompanied by a speech from Granville Hicks, was also banned in Provincetown, Massachusetts.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
See also
[edit]- The Spanish Earth (1937)
- España 1936 (1937)