Spain

Film Review by Dean Duncan Jun 1, 2015

Actualities! Here are eight celebrated Spanish locations, mostly covered by a simple, very well executed left to right pan, which allows us to see what there is to see. By chance a few interesting perspectives, or unexpected shifts/details come into view. A range of classes here, some Moorish architecture there. This is absolutely tourist cinema, but these old images are more important than any banality or superficiality at the point of origin. (That Guy zoom-in/close-up is a modern ministration, isn’t it?) Only the gypsy dance that concludes the film betrays any kind of colonial pressure. Still, that’s their costume, and that’s their dance, isn’t it? That’s how they had to or chose to make their way. Plus that first dancer’s hat fell off, and that toddler got up to get something from his mother. The truth will out, for all of our contrivances, or concerns in the face thereof. Dziga Vertov’s later assertion is hard to deny. Documentary, all and only…