This was the first documentary in Spain to address crimes committed during the Franco dictatorship. It became the centrepiece of a trial and of a huge scandal, showing the limits of Spain's supposed transition to democracy and freedom.
Its director was imprisoned, then tried and fined for libel and reputational damage. The libel charge was dropped but he never worked as a director again, and he died in poverty.
It was banned in parts of Spain for years and censored in others, mainly because it features a local man. Pedro Gómez Clavijo, naming a (deceased) former mayor as the architect of the killings of exactly 100 locals, some of whom the mayor insisted on personally clubbing to death.
It also addresses the social structure of southern Spain and the behaviour of the Catholic clergy at length, in detail and in a very uncompromising manner.
I strongly recommend this film to just about everyone, not so much because of the above, but because of the brilliant portrayal of the passion -- ostensibly religious -- centred on the statue of the virgin during the annual festival, starting out the adoring woman whispering to the statue as she dresses it, then slowly mounting to a sweaty, delirious intensity as hundreds of men enter the hermitage and climb over each other to carry the idol out of the church into the Andalusian light, where hundreds more people swirl around it and parents lift their bawling infants over the heads of the crowd to touch the virgin's robe.
As the film's director of photograpy pointed out in "El caso Rocío", the documentary about this documentary, the director could have made a successful film and had a nice career on the basis of the film's images of the annual festival if he'd censored himself, but he chose not to.
The film is probably messier and less charming as a result of all that was left in, but it says even more about the country it was made in.
This documentary film, Rocío, is available on YouTube with English subtitles. I'd recommend the documentary made about it, El Caso Rocío, but I haven't seen it with English subtitles.
Its director was imprisoned, then tried and fined for libel and reputational damage. The libel charge was dropped but he never worked as a director again, and he died in poverty.
It was banned in parts of Spain for years and censored in others, mainly because it features a local man. Pedro Gómez Clavijo, naming a (deceased) former mayor as the architect of the killings of exactly 100 locals, some of whom the mayor insisted on personally clubbing to death.
It also addresses the social structure of southern Spain and the behaviour of the Catholic clergy at length, in detail and in a very uncompromising manner.
I strongly recommend this film to just about everyone, not so much because of the above, but because of the brilliant portrayal of the passion -- ostensibly religious -- centred on the statue of the virgin during the annual festival, starting out the adoring woman whispering to the statue as she dresses it, then slowly mounting to a sweaty, delirious intensity as hundreds of men enter the hermitage and climb over each other to carry the idol out of the church into the Andalusian light, where hundreds more people swirl around it and parents lift their bawling infants over the heads of the crowd to touch the virgin's robe.
As the film's director of photograpy pointed out in "El caso Rocío", the documentary about this documentary, the director could have made a successful film and had a nice career on the basis of the film's images of the annual festival if he'd censored himself, but he chose not to.
The film is probably messier and less charming as a result of all that was left in, but it says even more about the country it was made in.
This documentary film, Rocío, is available on YouTube with English subtitles. I'd recommend the documentary made about it, El Caso Rocío, but I haven't seen it with English subtitles.
