Contactos. Mayo de 1970 (Contacts. May of 1970)

The film’s title, Contactos. Mayo de 1970 (Contacts. May of 1970), is a polysemic structure, which alludes to the photographic process, the figure of the political party member, the small-ads section of a newspaper and a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The film could be considered part of “Dissident Cinema”, which developed in the Spain of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Points in common with this type of cinema include the way the work was financed, away from the main industry and with an almost non-existent budget, the impossibility of getting it commercially distributed due to its non-legal situation and its politico-aesthetic radicalism, influenced by the new European cinemas, particularly the French Nouvelle Vague and what was called Rive Gauche cinema. The artist himself acknowledged the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet and the work and writings of Jorge Oteiza as fundamental reference points. The film shows how the protagonists fail in their attempts to reconcile political activism with their everyday lives, which are so conditioned by socio-economic reality. The film is seen as something of a milestone in its critique of a certain kind of militancy, while presenting a thorough formal renewal through a particular reading of spaces and the positions of the people, as part of a narrative unheard of at the time within the panorama of Spanish cinema.

Lola Hinojosa