Medem Is Back

Is good to know that Medem is back after being crucified by the Spanish extreme right for his effort to facilitate dialogue among the main political players in the Basque conflict. Here you have a note by Reuters about his return:

Spanish director Medem back after film therapy

Tue Aug 21, 2007 1:36pm EDT

By Elisabeth O'Leary

MADRID (Reuters Life!) - The last time Spanish director Julio Medem made a film -- a documentary about the thorny subject of the Basque region -- the political lashing he got sent him into depression.

The prize-winning director sought refuge in a new feature, "Caotica Ana" (Chaotic Ana), and the result, about a young artist who has flashbacks linking her to women who lived in more difficult times, opens in Madrid this week.

"The depression I went through was four years ago ... partly I made (Caotica Ana) because of it, and the film pulled me out of it," he told reporters on Tuesday.

Medem's previous film, "The Basque Ball" (2003), aimed to encourage dialogue in the Basque region where ETA guerrillas seeking a separate nation have long dominated the agenda.

The conservative government of the time was fiercely opposed to dialogue and slated Medem for giving voice to the guerrillas, alongside those of ETA victims. The Basque Ball went on to win a European film award for best documentary.

Caotica Ana was a respite from that storm, and the subject matter was inspired by his sister Ana, a budding artist who died in her early twenties and whose paintings feature on screen.

Also scripted by Medem, it looks at the layers of experience of young artist Ana (Manuela Velles), who leaves her protected upbringing on the island of Ibiza and sets out to discover her potential under the patronage of Justine (Charlotte Rampling) in Madrid.

She discovers she has the key to past lives, one of them lived during the Western Sahara conflict, in which Morocco annexed the mineral-rich region in 1975.

The Basque director, nominated for top prizes at the Venice and Berlin festivals in the 1990s for films such as "The Lovers of the Arctic Circle" (1998), said that the situation of the Saharawi people, thousands of whom still seek independence, is one of "absolute injustice."

"I didn't include it as a political thing, but rather as a human thing. (How it is understood politically) depends on what it is used for, and I'm prepared for that, because I have experience," he joked.

Caotica Ana is due to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival later this year.

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