*
An eloquent statement by Trisha Ziff on the screening of her documentary film 'The Mexican Suitcase' in Spain earlier this month.
read the full statement HERE
[excerpt]
"It is exciting and also nerve-wrenching to have my film open in Spain at this moment, a time when Spain once more sits on the edge of change. [...] Economic crisis for many, becomes a convenient argument to relegate the past to the shadows, a blind-fold obscuring truths uncovered in the last decade.
[...]
Two weeks ago in Madrid a few of the remaining International Brigaders returned to Spain to honor the 75th Anniversary of the Brigades' founding. A monument was unveiled as a tribute to them, a modest monument, nothing lavish [...] Yet within in days of the unveiling, this monument has already been vandalized, daubed in red paint with the word assassins painted across it.
I ask myself, what memory does this speak to? On a university campus, in our modernity, that such a modest reminder invites such a visceral reaction of intolerance.
[...]
Garzón will be the first person in history brought to trial for a case related to Francoist atrocities: for having dared investigate them! His presence in this film, silent but visible is a reminder, that these images, this narrative exists in our present, and cannot be relegated simply to history!
The Mexican Suitcase is a film about memory; a film about exile; as much as it is a film about photography. [...] if these images manage to transcend the cultural space and remind us of the ideas behind the images, remind us of the hope, as well as remind us that the far right, bring fear, bring intolerance, bring darkness, then The Mexican Suitcase will have had a unique purpose in our time, and recovering it will have had a purpose beyond the fascination with the photographic.
I hope I made a film about memory not nostalgia; I hope I made a film about tolerance and openness, which my country, Mexico, extended to the Spanish people - a narrative for the most part forgotten. I hope I made a film about what the power of photography can be."
Trisha Ziff
read the full statement HERE
[excerpt]
"It is exciting and also nerve-wrenching to have my film open in Spain at this moment, a time when Spain once more sits on the edge of change. [...] Economic crisis for many, becomes a convenient argument to relegate the past to the shadows, a blind-fold obscuring truths uncovered in the last decade.
[...]
Two weeks ago in Madrid a few of the remaining International Brigaders returned to Spain to honor the 75th Anniversary of the Brigades' founding. A monument was unveiled as a tribute to them, a modest monument, nothing lavish [...] Yet within in days of the unveiling, this monument has already been vandalized, daubed in red paint with the word assassins painted across it.
I ask myself, what memory does this speak to? On a university campus, in our modernity, that such a modest reminder invites such a visceral reaction of intolerance.
[...]
Garzón will be the first person in history brought to trial for a case related to Francoist atrocities: for having dared investigate them! His presence in this film, silent but visible is a reminder, that these images, this narrative exists in our present, and cannot be relegated simply to history!
The Mexican Suitcase is a film about memory; a film about exile; as much as it is a film about photography. [...] if these images manage to transcend the cultural space and remind us of the ideas behind the images, remind us of the hope, as well as remind us that the far right, bring fear, bring intolerance, bring darkness, then The Mexican Suitcase will have had a unique purpose in our time, and recovering it will have had a purpose beyond the fascination with the photographic.
I hope I made a film about memory not nostalgia; I hope I made a film about tolerance and openness, which my country, Mexico, extended to the Spanish people - a narrative for the most part forgotten. I hope I made a film about what the power of photography can be."
Trisha Ziff