DavidLomon

Our friends at the IBMT alert us to a new 27-minute film by Javier Pascal and Cristina Ciobanu about the International Brigades, featuring extensive interviews with British volunteers David Lomon and Thomas Watters and songs from the “Goodbye Barcelona” musical. See the film here.

Ziff weaves in personal, often painful accounts of biographies of those who had survived the war by fleeing Spain, many unable to forget even to this day. An exiled woman tenderly holds up an old, worn out fork while describing hunger she experienced as a child. Another man recalls his teenage years spent eating and sleeping beside his gun. Along with those interviews are ones with a new generation of Spaniards who were only babies when Franco finally stepped down in the early ’70s. Only now are they seeking to connect with a past that has been unknown to them. Ziff says, “I was impacted by how even today 70 years after the war how the haunting memories of repression, dictatorship impact life in contemporary Spain. How this exile still defines the identity of young people—three generations later, and what 30 years of fascism has meant for the Spanish people.”

“The discovery of 4,500 photographic negatives shot by famed war photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David “Chim” Seymour during the Spanish Civil War is given respectful treatment in writer-director Trisha Ziff’s Mexican Suitcase,” Robert Koehler writes in Variety:

The thrilling frontline photography — unique in its era — serves here to illustrate the many stories of exiles — and analysis by authors and historians … The emotional content is best expressed through several achingly beautiful music selections by Michael Nyman, who also co-produced.

More here.

Jonathan Turley in conversation with Baltasar Garzón, recipient of the 2011 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. New York City, 14 May 2011. Photo Richard Bermack

Among the distinguished guests at ALBA’s 2011 reunion to honor Judge Garzón were Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School, who interviewed the Judge; as well as Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, and Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who both gave speeches at the event. See videos of all three here:

]]> http://www.albavolunteer.org/2011/06/turley-cox-and-ratner-on-garzon/feed/ 0 http://www.albavolunteer.org/2011/05/cox-speech-online/ http://www.albavolunteer.org/2011/05/cox-speech-online/#comments Wed, 18 May 2011 12:01:43 +0000 Sebastiaan Faber http://www.albavolunteer.org/?p=3831 online viewing: the speech that Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International, USA, gave on Saturday May 14 in New York City on the occasion of the first ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Award for Judge Baltasar Garzón:]]>

Larry Cox of Amnesty International, USA, at the first ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Activism Award ceremony on May 14, 2011 in New York City. Photo Len Tsou

Now available for online viewing: the speech that Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International, USA, gave on Saturday May 14 in New York City on the occasion of the first ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Award for Judge Baltasar Garzón:

Larry Cox at the 2011 ALBA Annual Celebration from David Schwittek on Vimeo.

Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, at the first ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Activism Award ceremony on May 14, 2011 in New York City. Photo Len Tsou

Now available for online viewing: the speech that Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, gave on Saturday May 14 in New York City on the occasion of the first ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Award for Judge Baltasar Garzón:

Michael Ratner at the 2011 ALBA Annual Celebration from David Schwittek on Vimeo.

Jonathan Turley in conversation with Baltasar Garzón, recipient of the 2011 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. New York City, 14 May 2011. Photo Richard Bermack

Before Judge Baltasar Garzón received the first ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism this past Saturday May 14 in New York, he was interviewed by Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School. The whole interview (appr. 1h15m) was filmed by David Schwittek and can now be viewed here. Nora Weiss is the interpreter.

Jonathan Turley Interviews Judge Baltasar Garzón from David Schwittek on Vimeo.

Many of the details contained in the video are by now obsolete: the number of surviving veterans has dramatically declined since 2004; the size of the archives, in sad and indirect proportion, has substantially increased. But the core activities described in the film are still being carried out with gusto:  graduate and undergraduate courses, the Bill Susman lectures, the George Watt student prizes, the website (and now blog) development, etc. Moreover, several new major outreach programs have been undertaken since 2004, such as the museum show and catalog “Facing Fascism:  New York and the Spanish Civil War,”  our public school outreach programs in four states, and the about-to-be-inaugurated “ALBA-Puffin Prize in Human Rights.”

I’d like to think that the currency/ obsolescence of the video is a testimony to the vibrancy of the organization and the archive.

View here:

Archives of Activism: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives

Archives of Activism from James Fernandez on Vimeo.

Lincoln vet Abe Smorodin recalls what it felt like to receive news of the fall of Madrid on April 1, 1939.

On this day, 1939, Franco declared victory over the Spanish Republic.  In this five-minute video, produced for the exhibition “Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War,”  several New Yorkers, including Lincoln vets Abe Osheroff and Abe Smorodin, remember that sad day.

Video here:   When the War Was Over