''The Basque Ball: Skin Against Stone'' (; ) is a 2003 Spanish documentary film written and directed by

Julio Medem Julio Medem Lafont (born 21 October 1958) is a Basque film director, producer, editor, and screenwriter. Biography Medem was born on 21 October 1958 in San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain and showed an interest in movies since childhood, when ...

Overview

The film's purported intention is to create a

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

between the different political positions that coexist, sometimes violently, in the Basque Country. In order to do so, Medem edits the interviews giving a sense of dialogue between parties that refused to sit down and talk. Due to its lack of contextualization, the film may be hard to understand to audiences without previous knowledge of the

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

problem—it is obviously a film designed to be viewed by Spanish audiences, or people familiar with the issues. The movie also utilizes footage from the Basque portions of the 1955 travelogue ''

Around The World With Orson Welles ''Around the World with Orson Welles'' is a series of six short travelogues originally written and directed by Orson Welles for Associated-Rediffusion in 1955, for Britain's then-new ITV channel. Despite its title emphasizing the world, it was ...

'', and continually intercuts between interviews and

jai alai Jai alai ( : ) is a Basque sport involving bouncing a ball off a walled-in space by accelerating it to high speeds with a hand-held wicker, commonly referred to as a ''cesta''. It is a variation of Basque pelota. The term ''jai alai'', coined by ...

players.

Criticism

One of the main controversies of the documentary is that the two principal protagonists in the controversy, the then incumbent Partido Popular and

ETA Eta ( ; uppercase , lowercase ; ''ē̂ta'' or ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel, . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative, , in most dialects of Ancient Greek, it ...

refused to take part in the interviews. The former went so far as to request the organisers of the Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival to reconsider the film's suitability. This, in turn, has led some to call it an incomplete documentary. It has also been openly criticized by both extremes, and Medem, who is Basque, has been accused of being both pro-ETA and pro-"Spanish occupation". Indeed, two of the interviewees, Iñaki Ezquerra and

Gotzone Mora Gotzone Mora (b. Bilbao in 1948) is a Spanish social-democratic politician. She was a member of the Basque Socialist Party (''"Euskadiko Alderdi Sozialista – Euskadiko Ezkerra" / "Partido Socialista de Euskadi – Euskadiko Ezkerra"''/ PSE-EE ...

(both members of the intellectual group the Ermua Forum) demanded that Medem retract their interviews, accusing him of presenting the Spanish

Guardia Civil The Civil Guard (; ) is one of the two national law enforcement agencies of Spain. As a national gendarmerie, it is military in nature and is responsible for civil policing under the authority of both the Ministry of the Interior and the Minis ...

and police forces as torturers and ETA and their followers as victims.Dos miembros del Foro de Ermua acusan a Medem de presentar al entorno de ETA como víctimas
("Two members of the Ermua Forum accus Medem of presenting those connected to ETA as victims"), ''El Mundo'' (Spain), 16 September 2003. Accessed 9 March 2006. Despite these protests, their interviews remained due to the film's imminent release date. They did not, however, appear on the 7-hour

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

Edition. There is a three-disc special edition DVD () released with seven hours of edited

footage In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a digital video camera, which typically must be film editing, edited to create a motion picture, digital video, video cli ...

that goes deeper into the history of the Basque Country and a Spanish-language book ().

Awards and nominations

* 2004: Nominated,

Goya Awards The Goya Awards () are Spain's main national annual film awards. They are presented by the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain. The first ceremony was held in 1987, a year after the founding of the Academy of Cinematographic Ar ...

, Best Documentary * 2004: Nominated,

European Film Awards The European Film Awards (or European Film Academy Awards) have been presented annually since 1988 by the European Film Academy to recognize excellence in European cinematic achievements. The awards are given in 19 categories, of which the mos ...

, Best Documentary * 2004: Nominated,

Cartagena Film Festival The Cartagena Film Festival (), or FICCI, is a film festival held in Cartagena, Colombia, which focuses mainly on the promotion of Colombian television series, Latin American films and short films. The Cartagena Film Festival, which is held ever ...

, Best Film

Notes

External links

* . * {{DEFAULTSORT:Basque Ball: Skin Against Skin, The 2003 films Basque politics Basque-language films 2000s French-language films 2000s Spanish-language films Documentary films about politics Films directed by Julio Medem Spanish documentary films 2003 documentary films 2000s English-language films 2000s Spanish films English-language documentary films

Overview

Criticism

Awards and nominations

See also

Notes

External links