Ciutat morta

Ciutat Morta (Dead City) is a 2013 Catalan documentary about the 4F case directed by Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega. The film covers the repercussions of the events of February 4, 2006, in Barcelona when a Guàrdia Urbana was grievously injured and several people were arrested, resulting in a long court-case. Ultimately four people were convicted and imprisoned, one of whom committed suicide.

Ciutat Morta
Poster
Directed byXavier Artigas
Xapo Ortega
Produced byMetromuster
Written byMariana Huidobro
Jesús Rodríguez
CinematographyXavier Artigas
Xapo Ortega
Marielle Paon
Release date
2013
Running time
123 minutes
CountrySpain
LanguageCatalan
Spanish
Budget4,700 euros

The film argues that the convictions were unjust and reflect general trends of police prejudice, violence and impunity to prosecution. The film generated controversy on its release, with a local media blackout. Catalan television (TV3) refused to produce or screen the film until 2015, after it had received positive reactions at film festivals. When it was eventually televised, five minutes had been cut by order of the court. Ciutat Morta was produced with volunteer labour by the directors after crowdfunding 4,700 euros, with La Directa staff pursuing the investigation. It resulted in a review of the convictions, none of which were overturned.

Synopsis

On the night of February 4, 2006, there was a rave in a squatted building in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona. When a Guàrdia Urbana (municipal police) patrol passed by, objects including flowerpots were thrown from the roof. A police officer not wearing a helmet was hit on the head, and grievously wounded. Three Latin American men holding Spanish passports (Alex Cisternas, Rodrigo Lanza and Juan Pintos) were immediately arrested on the street and allegedly mistreated at the police station. Pintos says the police broke his hand and a picture of lanza shows him with his arm in a sling and a black eye. Two other young people, Patricia Heras and Alfredo Pestana, were cycling in the area together on one bike and went to the hospital after crashing. Having taken the three arrestees to the same hospital to treat their wounds, the police decided to also arrest Heras and Alfredo, having profiled them as queer and punk, because of an allegedly suspicious text message on Heras' mobile phone. Heras always maintained that she had nothing to do with the incident. In total nine people were arrested that night.

These events became the basis of the 4F case (named after "February 4"), in which the three men were remanded for two years then convicted, Pestana was convicted then pardoned and Heras committed suicide, having received a sentence of three years' imprisonment. The documentary investigates whether those convicted were guilty of the offences and suggests that they were on trial more for their ancestry, the way the looked and their proximity to the events, not because they were the actual perpetrators. It features the poetry of Heras, read by an ex-partner, and interviews Rodrigo Lanza and Juan Pintos. It is noted that in 2011 two of the arresting policemen were convicted of torturing a young Latin American student who was the son of diplomat and in a fragment later cut from the film by order of the court before it was shown on Catalan television, it is alleged that the Guàrdia Urbana chief of information told falsehoods about what happened that night. Further, an anonymous witness claims that they could identify the person who actually did throw the flowerpot from the rooftop. Broadening its theme, the film examines police violence and the political atmosphere of a gentrifying Barcelona, the "dead city" of the title, in which the streets are cleaned of people deemed undesirable by the city council.

Themes

The original title of the film was Poeta muerta. 4F: Ni oblit ni perdo (Dead poet. 4F: Neither forget nor forgive), with the focus intended to be on Patricia Heras, the poet who killed herself after being convicted. The directors Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega then changed the title to Ciutat morta (Dead city) to broaden the themes of the film and so that they could enter it into film festivals.[1][2] By following the events of the 4F case, the film argues that the convicted people were not responsible for the police officer getting injured, since he was hit by a flowerpot thrown from a roof and they were all on the street (Heras and Pestana were not even near the building in question). Two of the three arrested men (Rodrigo Lanza and Juan Pintos) give oral testimony alleging they were subject to racist abuse and beatings at the police station.[1] The film argues that the convicted people were victims of prejudice, being insulted as "sudacas di mierda" for being Spanish of Latin American ancestry, being judged for the way they looked alternative and their hairstyles (Lanza having dreadlocks, Heras having a Cyndi Lauper style haircut) and being regarded as worthless for being squatters and gothic punks.[1][3]

Ciutat Morta focuses on human rights abuses in the 4F case and broadens the theme to discuss police violence, gentrification and neoliberal discourses in Barcelona. Since the 1992 Olympics, Barcelona had promoted itself as a tourist location and the directors wanted to create a counter-narrative.[1] They saw the documentary as activism, tied in with the 15M movement and its critique of austerity measures. The directors Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega had been inspired by the success of a documentary called Perdre un ull (Catalan), Perder un ojo (Spanish) or To lose an eye, which received 250,000 views online in 48 hours and created publicity around the issue of people getting blinded by the police using rubber bullets to control crowds.[1] Artigas commented to El Mundo "it's a documentary that comes out of rage" and said it was about a city "that thinks it is progressive but allows these things to happen".[4]

Production

Patricia Heras committed suicide in April 2011 by throwing herself off a seven-storey balcony. The following month, Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega met at the occupied Plaça de Catalunya at the beginning of the 15M movement and discussed making a short film in tribute to Heras.[2] They decide to produce the film themselves under the name Metromuster.[5]

Production began in 2011 with a crowdfunding appeal which raised 4,700 euros to produce a film under Creative Commons license. The directors put in their audiovisual work as unpaid labour and staff at La Directa carried out the investigation. Originally in a group of four, the directors ended up as Artigas and Ortega. They made twenty interviews and compiled around fifty hours of archive footage.[3] Mayor Jordi Hereu, the city's head of security, representatives of the Guàrdia Urbana and the family of the injured policeman were invited to participate, but they all declined.[6][2] The directors estimated that had everyone been paid for their work, the film would have cost 90,000 euros.[6]

Release
The temporary occupation of Palacio del Cinema de Barcelona in 2013

The first screening of a version of Ciutat Morta took place on June 8, 2013 with an action of civil disobedience. Over a thousand people temporarily occupied the Palacio del Cinema de Barcelona on Via Laietana and renamed it Cinema Patricia Heras. The documentary begins with footage from this event.[1] The Catalan press did not report about the premiere nor about the documentary later winning prizes at film festivals.[2] Director Artigas saw this as "pure and simple censorship".[2] The film screened at the Málaga Spanish Film Festival[7] and was also shown at Doclisboa 2014[8] and DocsBarcelona.[9][10]

After the first screening at the occupied cinema, the directors showed the film at over 250 local venues, preferring to get feedback from affected communities and the film was made freely available on the internet.[1] TV3 (Catalan public television) had declined to co-produce the film twice.[2] After months of negotiations and following the intervention of a politician from the Popular Unity Candidacy who accused TV3 of lying about its reasons not to show the film, the documentary was screened on TV3 in January 2015 and the film-makers received 3,000 euros.[2][11] It received a screen share of 20% and an audience of 569,000 people.[12] During the screening, the union of the Mossos d'Esquadra tweeted that it was "fantasy".[12]

The film was shown on Channel 33 with five minutes of footage removed by order of a Barcelona court, after a case brought by Víctor Gibanel, the ex-head of the Information and Documentation department of the Guàrdia Urbana.[13] The footage did not pertain to the case itself but showed Gibanel being admonished by a judge for telling falsehoods in another matter. The film implied he had also lied about the events on February 4 and thus had aided the prosecution case improperly. The five minutes were still available online and within 24 hours had been viewed over 200,000 times.[14] Regarding Gibanel's courtcase, director Xapo Ortega said "he has made a grave mistake".[15]

Critical response

El Mundo called it "a wonderful work" in 2014.[4] Filmblog La Crítica lauded the film's passion whilst criticising its onesidedness, although conceding that nobody from the police had wanted to participate in the film.[16] Ciutat Morta won the award for Best Documentary at the Málaga Spanish Film Festival in 2014.[3] It won an audience award at a festival in Cádiz and was voted best Spanish documentary at Miradas Doc in Tenerife.[6] The directors received the City Award of Barcelona (Premi Ciutat de Barcelona) in 2014.[17] Juan Pintos released a statement saying he was unsatisfied with the arguments presented by the film in 2015.[18]

Legacy

After the film's release caused controversy about the 4F case, the Catalonian Parliament recommended that the convictions were reviewed.[6] Following the eventual success of the film, a book of poems by Heras was released.[1] The self-published book Ciutat morta: Cronica del caso del 4F (Dead city: Chronicle of the 4F case) collected writings about the 4F case. It was launched in February 2016 at 55 Calle Sant Pere Mès Baix, exactly ten years after the events had occurred.[19]

The city council of Barcelona under the leadership of Ada Colau introduced several changes to the Guàrdia Urbana, so that all custody areas including police vehicles would have surveillance cameras and arrestees would have the right to see a doctor without the presence of the police. It was not possible to investigate the Guàrdia Urbana further because all documents relating to the case had disappeared.[20] In 2017, El País noted that the release of Ciutat Morta and the resulting controversy had not led to the case being reopened or any of the convictions being overturned. It also commented that the film had shone a spotlight on police violence and recalled that Ada Colau had organised her 2015 campaign to be mayor with a friend of Patricia Heras.[21] The injured policeman has never spoken publicly about the events. He was left in a coma and now is tetraplegic; doctors were surprised that he survived the attack. He received the Police Merit Cross in 2013.[6]

Following the conviction of Lanza for killing a man in Zaragoza, a political controversy split the Barcelona city council. The Cs, PP and PSC parties demanded that the City Award of Barcelona given to the directors was cancelled, with Barcelona en Comú and ERC objecting to the proposal.[22] A representative of PP called the film a "lie" and for Cs Ciutat Morta was "not just a farce, but an orchestrated attack".[22]

References
  1. Woods Peiró, Eva (June 1, 2018). "Subveillant narration, digital tools and videoactivism: Ciutat morta (2013)". Screen. 59 (2): 249–257. doi:10.1093/screen/hjy027. ISSN 0036-9543.
  2. "El caso más grave de torturas en Barcelona, silenciado por los medios". Publico. December 28, 2014. Archived from the original on November 11, 2020. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  3. Brisset, Demetrio E. (April 8, 2014). "'Ciutat morta': El vídeoactivismo rompe el silencio | Periódico Diagonal". Diagonal. Archived from the original on December 14, 2017. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  4. Blanco, Leticia (June 19, 2014). "Contra el olvido del 4-F". El Mundo (in Spanish). Archived from the original on January 16, 2017. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  5. ""Ciutat morta sorgeix de la ràbia"". Llibertat (in Catalan). August 2, 2014. Archived from the original on October 24, 2017. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  6. Benvenuty, Luis; Figueredo, Enrique (January 23, 2015). "Ciutat Morta: Historias tras la película del 4F". La Vanguardia (in Spanish). Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  7. "El Caso 4F llega al Festival de Cine de Málaga de la mano de 'Ciutat Morta'". lamarea.com. March 24, 2014. Archived from the original on June 1, 2019. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  8. "Doclisboa 2014". doclisboa.org. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  9. "El DocsBarcelona estarà carregat de d'activisme social". Ara.cat (in Catalan). Archived from the original on April 11, 2018. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  10. "'Ciutat Morta': rèquiem per Barcelona". Time Out Barcelona (in Catalan). Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  11. Directa. "Cinc correus electrònics demostren que el director de TV3 ha mentit amb relació al documental 'Ciutat Morta'". Directa (in Catalan). Archived from the original on January 18, 2015. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  12. associats, Partal, Maresma i. "La censura dispara l'expectació per 'Ciutat Morta'". VilaWeb.cat (in Catalan). Archived from the original on January 21, 2015. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  13. Directa. "Un jutjat de Barcelona ordena que TV3 emeti 'Ciutat Morta' amb cinc minuts de censura". Directa (in Catalan). Archived from the original on January 18, 2015. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  14. Chavarria, Marical (January 19, 2015). "Ciutat Morta: El vídeo censurado un éxito en visitas". La Vanguardia (in Spanish). Archived from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  15. Staff writer (January 17, 2015). "Un juzgado censura cinco minutos de 'Ciutat morta'". El Periódico (in Spanish). Archived from the original on March 24, 2016. Retrieved May 26, 2017. Ha cometido un grave error
  16. Lorenzo, Claudia (January 7, 2015). "Ciudades muertas, sistemas deficientes | La Crítica" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on December 14, 2017. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  17. "Premis Ciutat de Barcelona". Enciclopedia.cat. Archived from the original on August 4, 2020. Retrieved November 29, 2020.
  18. Group Against Criminalization (2018). "Some recent mainstream media representations of squatting in Barcelona". In Squatting Everywhere Kollective (ed.). Fighting for spaces, fighting for our lives : squatting movements today (1. Auflage ed.). Münster. pp. 325–342. ISBN 9783942885904.
  19. Luesma, Berta Jimenez (February 5, 2016). "El recuerdo como lucha: 'Ciutat Morta, crónica del caso 4F'". Diario Libre d'Aragón (in Spanish). AraInfo. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  20. Liñán, Gemma (February 4, 2016). "La Guàrdia Urbana després de 'Ciutat Morta'". El Nacional (in Catalan). Retrieved November 29, 2020.
  21. Colomé, Jordi Pérez (December 17, 2017). "La polémica en torno a 'Ciutat morta'". El País (in Spanish). Archived from the original on November 23, 2019. Retrieved November 26, 2020.
  22. "El Ayuntamiento rechaza retirar el Premi Ciutat de Barcelona al documental 'Ciutat Morta'". Europapress (in Spanish). October 20, 2020. Archived from the original on October 20, 2020. Retrieved November 29, 2020.

Further reading
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