[D66] In Exile: A Family Film

[A.O.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/07/02/urru-j02.html
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6021308/

An interview with Mexican documentarian Juan Francisco Urrusti, director
of In Exile: A Family Film
“The world should not be closing itself in—my father’s struggle was
against all walls.”
By Kevin Mitchell
2 July 2018

On June 23, the WSWS posted a comment on In Exile: A Family Film, a
documentary directed by Mexican filmmaker Juan Francisco Urrusti, which
follows the story of Urrusti’s grandparents and parents as they live and
fight during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and later become political
exiles in Mexico.

Juan Francisco Urrusti

The review suggested that the film was “an engrossing work” and that the
viewer was “left with an indelible portrait of not only the times but of
the human beings who fought fascism and strove to create a better world
in the first several decades of the last century.”

At the same time, the WSWS criticized In Exile for its attitude toward
the historical events in question. The film fails to explain why
Franco’s fascist army triumphed over the forces of the bourgeois
Republic in Spain, falling back on the empty argument that “the left was
divided.” In fact, only the revolutionary mobilization of the working
class and the poor peasants on a socialist program could have defeated
Franco.

As Leon Trotsky explained in 1936: “From a purely military point of
view, the Spanish revolution is much weaker than its enemy. Its strength
lies in its ability to rouse the great masses to action. It can even
take the army away from its reactionary officers. To accomplish this it
is only necessary seriously and courageously to advance the program of
the socialist revolution …

“But the bourgeois [Republican] ministers cannot accept such a program.
Curbing the social revolution, they compel the workers and peasants to
spill ten times as much of their own blood in the civil war. And to
crown everything, these gentlemen expect to disarm the workers again
after the victory and to force them to respect the sacred laws of
private property.”

Stalinism played a counterrevolutionary role in Spain. The bureaucracy
in the Kremlin, allied with important sections of the Spanish
bourgeoisie, was terrified at the prospect of a working class revolt and
did everything in its power to suffocate revolution and eliminate the
revolutionaries.

The following interview was conducted via Skype with Mr. Urrusti at his
home in Mexico City.

* * * * *

Kevin Mitchell: What was your purpose in making In Exile: A Family Films?

Juan Francisco Urrusti: There are many films about the Spanish Civil
War, and some of them I’ve known since I was a child. For instance, The
Spanish Earth [1937] made by Joris Ivens and Ernest Hemingway. One of
the most recent I liked was called The Good Fight [1984, Noel Buckner].
It’s an American film and has interviews with International Brigades
veterans.
Fighting during Spanish Civil War

My purpose was not to tell another story about how the Spanish Civil War
started and why it ended the way it ended. It’s more about the life
stories of my family members and their own accounts, some of which were
very difficult to get. Let’s say, it’s the human account—what it feels
like to be a child in a village and see your friend wiped out by bombs
or to have to cross the Pyrenees Mountains in winter with almost no clothes.

In my film, you see people from different backgrounds, political and
cultural and geographical backgrounds.

In 1936-37, there was already the fight between anarchists and
socialists, and Stalinists and Trotskyists, and people were very
divided, but I do think they had to get together because they all had a
common enemy that overpowered them, which was the Spanish army and the
fascists.

Much later in life, I found out about these backgrounds and views. As a
child, I didn’t know that this one was a Communist and this other one
was an anarchist, this one was a syndicalist, this other one a Catalan
nationalist. So, yes, in a way, the film is shallow. It doesn’t go into
some of the reasons why the Spanish Republic lost the war, but, on the
other hand, it gives some of the background. As you said in your review,
it doesn’t go deeply into the history or give an analysis of the
political situation.

KM: How did you come to make this particular “family” film?

JFU: I’m a documentary filmmaker and I had made films about indigenous
cultures of Mexico. Ethnographic films, as you would call them, about
the Maya, and I had not made a film about my own “tribe.” I always felt
like a minority in Mexico because my family came from another place, so
I felt this need to know where they came from. I recorded them to help
me obtain this knowledge. So this film was a way to say thank you to my
family and to people who fought and suffered under fascism.

KM: What were some of the challenges in making it?

JFU: To start with, I didn’t know much about the Spanish Civil War and I
couldn’t tell who was who. Of course I knew a couple of figures, like
President Manuel Azaña and Francisco Franco, but only two or three. The
rest of them were people whose pictures I’d never seen before and one of
the challenges was to find footage that was authentic.
Children during bombing of Madrid in Spanish Civil War

Paying for the footage was maybe the biggest challenge, because in 2014
much of the footage that had been in the public domain was no longer
available.

Another challenge in the film was seeing people—my friends and
family—disappear. Having to attend someone’s funeral and edit film of
them two or three days later was very rough. It changes your
perspective: What should I leave out of the film? You don’t want to
leave anything out, but you have to, otherwise no one will want to see
the film if you make it too long.

KM: What was it like growing up in such a political family?

JFU: Everyone was anti-fascist in one way or another. My family never
lost its principles. My father, when he was a doctor, would treat people
without money. He participated in political movements in Mexico. In 1968
he was put in jail for a couple of days. At the time many, teachers and
students suffered when President [Gustavo Díaz] Ordaz violently clamped
down on protests during the Olympics.

I first knew my family was political when I was eight years old, and we
wanted to go to Disneyland. We were stopped by American immigration and
sent back to Mexico because they told my father, “You come from a Red
family.”

KM: How did you get involved in documentary film?

JFU: Some of the first films I saw were about the Second World War and
the Spanish Civil War. They left a big imprint on my mind, especially
the ones about concentration camps. Then I went on to study
anthropology. I became interested in social anthropology and wanted to
know Mexico better, especially indigenous Mexico. I’ve directed and
produced numerous documentary films, and I’ve taught documentary films
for 29 years in Mexico City.

KM: You premiered this film at the Leon Trotsky House Museum [Museo Casa
de Leon Trotsky] in Coyoacán, in Mexico City. Can you say something
about that?

JFU: I am very close to Verónica Volkov, Leon Trotsky’s
great-granddaughter, who is a writer and philosopher. I have known the
Volkovs for a long time.
In Exile: A Family Film

I was honored to have the screening of In Exile at the house where
Trotsky lived and died. Verónica and her father, Esteban, were both
there, as well as 70 to 80 people.

It was very moving and important that the film was screened there,
because Trotsky was also a refugee. President [Lázaro] Cárdenas not only
opened the door to Spanish refugees, but also to Trotsky and many
others, including all those were being persecuted in Europe—Jews,
Communists and Socialists during the Second World War.

KM: What do you think of Trotsky’s struggle against Stalin and of his
political legacy?

JFU: I think that Trotsky was right. Russia should not have closed
itself in. He was one of the most important leaders; he was the
revolution within the revolution. That’s what Trotsky meant to me.

KM: What do you think of the current political situation facing
immigrants and refugees?

JFU: I think it’s disgusting. I have very little respect for Mr. Trump;
I also have very little respect for Mr. Obama, because he also kicked
out many Mexicans. I also have very little or no respect at all for
Mexico’s president [Enrique Peña Nieto]. Besides being very corrupt,
he’s also doing the very dirty job of stopping people in Mexico and
harassing people coming from Central America. It’s a disgrace; I think
we live in very dark times.

The world should not be closing itself in—my father’s struggle was
against all walls. Now we have walls in Gaza and the United States, and
the whole world is becoming a concentration camp. It was wrong to have
the Berlin Wall, but it’s right to have the border wall?

KM: What advice would you give future filmmakers?

JFU: I tell my students: try to see the world and present the world, but
first you have to look into yourself and see what you have to give other
people and what you can share with others. Try to be honest in your
stories and in the way you treat others in your film. It’s important to
have respect for an audience and also respect for the people inside your
frame.