De toekomst van ‘36

Presented by Floris Paalman, coordinateur du MA Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image, University of Amsterdam, with the director Willem Thijssen.

A young Belgian woman is in search of her past and that of her parents, and revisits the social revolution in Catalonia, in 1936, followed by the Spanish Civil War. Through a subjective journey, the memoirs of anarcho-syndicalist Juan Garcia Oliver, fictionalized scenes, archival footage, and documentary images, the hopes for a better future are juxtaposed to that future, exemplified by the great strike in Belgium in 1960, Provo in the Netherlands, May 1968 in France, and the feminist movement. Utopia meets Power. There are the pessimism of 1937 and the fatalism of 1983, so close to ‘1984.’ Will the optimism of 1936 and of 1976, with the rise of democracy in Spain, survive the confrontation with Power?

The different restauration entities collaborating on De toekomst van ‘36

The restoration of De toekomst van ‘36 is carried out by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, coordinated by Bas Agterberg, and executed by Bernhard André. As an archive and museum, NISV fosters Dutch media culture (TV, radio, film, press, internet, games). While the film’s negatives are at NISV, related materials are kept by Eye Filmmuseum (NL), International Institute of Social History (NL), Cinematek (B), and Het Vlaams Filmarchief (B). The collaboration is initiated by Floris Paalman, coordinator of the MA Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image, Univ. of Amsterdam, and Enrique Fibla Gutiérrez, film lecturer, Univ. Autònoma de Barcelona. They present the project in collaboration with director Willem Thijssen, stressing international exchange, and restoration as time travel.