Forgacs and the Anarchists

I just came back from a disappointing, if beautifully researched and edited, documentary called "El Perro Negro: Stories of the Spanish Civil War," by Peter Forgacs, who told us that the CNT in Spain hated his film so much that he has to negotiate with them every time it is screened because he uses about 7 minutes of footage of Durruti and anarchist militias that they own. For this reason, he says the CNT has kept the documentary off Spanish TV.
I say, three cheers to the CNT for their success in intervening in the politics of representation. Despite the fact that the film portrays poverty and social conflict as the principle reasons behind the Spanish civil war, it is completely simplistic in its "cold war" style narrative that equates executions by Republican Spain and Fascist spain, never clarifying fully which parts of the Republican united front led the executions, or even what these executions were for. "You could be executed for wearing glasses, which were seen as bourgeois," is the uncontested quote from the diary of one of the film's two cameramen, Ernesto Diaz Noriega, and because it comes from a man who was there, it is probably read by the audience as true. The first cameraman, Joan Salvans Piero, is killed by an anarchist named "Pedro el Cruel" and this is presented as a great tragedy. According to the film-maker, "he was an innocent, and this film is dedicated to all innocents." He might appear innocent in his own home-movies, which make up 1/2 of the basis of the film, but perhaps from the perspective of "Cruel," who worked in the factory that Salvans Piero owned, the man had blood on his hands. Certainly, his family fled to "nationalist" (ie, fascist Spain) following his killing and did not return to Catalunya until Franco's victory.
Diaz Noriega's story is more interesting and does better what Forgacs said he was aiming at, a representation of the war by someone who did not want to take a side. This particular student first is jailed by the Republicans for (unbeknownst to him, he says) aiding a Phalangist leader, and then fights for the Republicans, and then is captured and joins the Phalange militia because it pays better than the other option they gave him. Describing how soldiers on his side traded tobacco for rolling papers from the other side, Noriega illuminates unusual and "every day" aspects of the war. However, Forgacs' vapid commentary after the film left me retrospectively increasingly appalled by the movie and its "politics" despite its artfulness.