Bones of Contention

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Andrea Weiss brings her talents in creating fascinating documentary portraits to the tragic life of acclaimed Spanish writer and poet Federico García Lorca, who was murdered by a right-wing Franco-regime firing squad during the Spanish Civil War and whose remains have never been found. Lorca, for many, is one of the most beloved early 20th-century authors. He was also gay—as dangerous then in Franco’s 1930’s Spain as it is today in Chechnya. Weiss uses the circumstances of Lorca’s death and disappearance to expand upon the larger stories of contemporary efforts to come to terms with and restore the historical memory of Franco’s more than 120 thousand victims and to excavate the hidden lives of lesbians and gays who lived under his dictatorship. Weiss writes that “This film brings together my love for the work of Federico García Lorca, my decades-long commitment to uncovering forgotten or erased corners of LGBT history, and the deep affinity I feel with Spain, as I have come to consider Barcelona my second home.” She brings together interviews with activists working in the movement for Spain’s “historical memory” (“la memoria histórica”), noted experts and scholars on the life and work of Lorca, performers and authors who have shared a connection with Lorca’s literary work, and Lorca’s niece, who is president of the García Lorca Foundation. As with her earlier films, Weiss brings her inquisitiveness as a historian and her skills as a filmmaker to bear on two urgent subjects, crystallized in the life of one of one of the great modern poets.

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