An exhibition and the Mikeldi de Honor to Imanol Uribe claim in Zinebi a film whose surreal shooting was, according to its producer Ángel Amigo, “the trial of the peace process”
The scene would have been delighted by Berlanga. A caravan of Land-Rovers of the Civil Guard moving along the roads of Gipuzkoa with huge posters to safeguard their safety: “We are from the movie.” At the wheel, political-military ETA express workers who work as technicians or who give themselves cakes to get out of extras dressed as members of the Benemérita who persecute the escaped ETA members. Among the team, royal civil guards from the Intxaurrondo barracks, who guard the weapons and advise on their use. In front of the shed, a 26-year-old director who faces his first fiction film without knowing that he is inaugurating Basque cinema.
Forty years ago, Imanol Uribe (El Salvador, 1950) challenged turbulent times in his quest to demonstrate that action and adventure films could also be made in the Basque Country, as in Hollywood. ‘La fuga de Segovia’ was filmed five years after one of the most spectacular escapes in Spanish prison history. Twenty-five members of ETA pm and four of the FRAP and other organizations fled through a tunnel dug for six months and camouflaged with a simulated cover of six tiles in the toilets. The Mugalaris who were to meet the escapees in Navarra failed and only four managed to escape. Oriol Solé was shot dead by the Civil Guard. The rest would benefit from the amnesty the following year.
Mario Pardo, Imanol Uribe, Ramón Barea and Ángel Amigo at the exhibition commemorating 40 years of ‘La fuga de Segovia’. /
«We were young and daring, but I also tell you that the political situation and fear were the least of my problems. I was facing a blockbuster, with very complicated scenes, in a 14-week shoot, something unusual in Spanish cinema ”, recalls Uribe, who will pick up the Mikeldi de Honor this Friday at the closing of Zinebi. The director cannot help feeling seized by nostalgia when touring the exhibition that commemorates the film’s 40th anniversary, promoted by the Association of Basque Producers and which brings together photographs of Jesús Uriarte taken on the set and objects in the site of the Old Convent of San Francisco, in the Plaza Corazón de María.
The actors Ramón Barea and Mario Pardo embrace the director, whom they have not seen for decades. For Barea and the lamented Álex Angulo that was their first shoot. The Bilbao-born interpreter remembers the races through the mountains and the confinement at the Piarist school in Tolosa, since the authorities did not give permission to shoot in any prison. He also remembers Marisa Paredes at the premiere, congratulating them on believing that they were authentic ETA members: “You, the prisoners, are doing very well.” Mario Pardo still feels the cold from when he was walking by the river. And the threat that filming could be stopped at any moment with news such as the murder of engineer José María Ryan.
A scene from the filming of ‘La fuga de Segovia’.
“‘La fuga de Segovia’ was a trial of the peace process,” says producer Ángel Amigo, who had first-hand knowledge of the subject of the film: he was one of those 29 escapees from the Castilian prison. His debut as a producer was doomed to disaster. No day was the shooting plan fulfilled and the budget ended up multiplying by four. Permits to use Civil Guard vehicles and weapons were requested on the morning of 23-F. The production office was located in the María Cristina hotel, at that time in full decline before its renovation. Uribe remembers that they called him to tell him that Tejero had entered Congress. He turned to count it and they all ran off.
‘La fuga de Segovia’ was the first film subsidized by the Basque Government and the beginning of a policy to support productions from which a new generation of directors would emerge who ended up renewing Spanish cinema … and moving to Madrid. “It showed that Euskadi could be made through movies,” praises Ángel Amigo, who as soon as he put out fires with General Galindo as he managed to get the silverware from the María Cristina back to the hotel. In that “strange climate” of the filming, it was possible that civil guards who had pursued the ETA members in their escape would end up demanding credibility when they searched or got out of a vehicle. Friend keeps an image: the composer of the soundtrack Amaia Zubiria playing verses on a guitar brought from Intxaurrondo and the agents clapping their hands …
“It was a magical experience,” sums up Imanol Uribe, who recently saw the film again. “Now I would shoot it differently, but I think it defends itself.” Ángel Amigo took as his slogan a phrase collected by Jorge Oteiza from an English manual for conspirators: “Adventure can be crazy, but the adventurer must be sane.” The producer remembers that he was meeting with Uribe to see the queues that formed at the Astoria cinema in San Sebastián. ‘La fuga de Segovia’ surpassed the collections of ‘Superman’ and ‘Star wars’ in the Basque Country. It exceeded 120 million pesetas and had almost 700,000 spectators. Many heard Basque for the first time in a movie theater.
Ángel Amigo: “Minister Rosón took the film very seriously”
Ángel Amigo in the times of ‘La fuga de Segovia’.
Better spend it on books and movies instead of bombs and ammunition. The phrase is attributed to the Minister of the Interior Juan José Rosón, who not only gave the green light to the film, but also ordered police protection to the rooms that were showing it to avoid attacks from the extreme right, as had happened with ‘Black litter’. “Rosón took it very seriously,” recalls Ángel Amigo. “With the film, he sent the message that we could lead civil life and count our battles,” observes the producer, who just afterwards got into another impossible shoot: “The Conquest of Albania.”
Imanol Uribe: “Our reference was ‘La fuga de Alcatraz'”
A scene from ‘La fuga de Segovia’.
«If those walls of the María Cristina spoke …». Among the best memories of Imanol Uribe in the filming of ‘La fuga de Segovia’ is Zamora’s goal that gave Real Sociedad his first league. Those twenty-somethings who invented Basque cinema achieved their goal. “We showed that we could make adventure movies like in Hollywood. Our reference was ‘The Escape from Alcatraz.’ His debut with the documentary ‘El Proceso de Burgos’ had already announced his obsession with ETA. After ‘The escape from Segovia’ came ‘Mikel’s death’, ‘Counted days’ and ‘Far from the sea’.
Mario Pardo: «It is a historical film, but with its protagonists alive»
The actor Mario Pardo in ‘La fuga de Segovia’.
Mario Pardo was already an actor with a name when he arrived on the set of ‘La fuga de Segovia’: he had worked in series such as ‘Curro Jiménez’ and ‘Fortunata y Jacinta’. Imanol Uribe’s film gave him the opportunity to “make a historical film but with its protagonists still alive.” They all knew they were involved “in something important.” And one of the main concerns was “staying true to reality.” The actor looks back and realizes the importance of a film “fundamental in the lives of all of us who made it, even for meta-cinematic reasons.”
Ramón Barea. The first shooting of two key figures in Basque cinema and theater
On the right you can see Ramón Barea (with a mustache) and behind him Álex Angulo.
“The one with the mustache was me and the bald one was Álex Angulo.” Ramón Barea laughs when he remembers how forty years ago the two actors stepped on a set for the first time. They hadn’t even made a short. The two friends stood in front of Javier Aguirresarobe’s camera without even knowing that in the scenes in which they spoke in the courtyard, it didn’t matter what they said because their words were not recorded. Barea remembers the Civil Guards who guarded the twenty submachine guns and thirty fake pistols, the abundant ammunition and the ten assault cetmes in perfect working order.
After the living memory of Ellacuría
“My birth in El Salvador, my education with the Jesuits and the admiration I felt for Ignacio Ellacuría and his group are at the origin of ‘They arrived at night'”, lists Imanol Uribe, who has advanced in Zinebi some images of his next film . The murder on November 16, 1989, in the middle of the Salvadoran civil war, of six Jesuit priests, including Ignacio Ellacuría, is seen by the director from the perspective of an eyewitness, a cleaning employee, who overthrew the official version .
Juana Acosta, Carmelo Gómez on his return to the cinema and Karra Elejalde in the skin of Ellacuría star in a film that has taken its director five years, with interiors shot in Navarra and exteriors in Colombia. ‘They arrived at night’ was filmed with another title, ‘Lucia’s gaze’, the name of the witness who witnessed the massacre without the murderers noticing her. Elejalde is the Basque priest who, together with his companions from the Society of Jesus, proclaimed liberation theology giving a voice to the most disadvantaged, facing both the guerrillas and the iron dictatorship that ruled the country.
“I was lucky to meet Ellacuría,” discovers Uribe, who due to the pandemic had to suspend filming just when they were going to start in Colombia. “When I read the news of the massacre, I was very impressed. It is a film that I had to make, the one that has cost me the most in my entire career ».
The script for ‘They arrived at night’ has the approval of the Society of Jesus, which has advised producers from both Spain and El Salvador. «The important thing about the project is that it invites us to remember. Not to fall into oblivion of what happened in 1989 and what has been happening in many places in Latin America and Central America, which is the persistent experience of injustice and violence, “said the provincial of the Jesuits, Antonio Spain. The premiere of the film is scheduled for next year.
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