Ciutat Morta (in Spanish Ciudad Morta) is a Spanish documentary film about the 4F case directed by Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega in 2013.
It was awarded at the Guía de Isora Festival, MiradasDoc, with an honorable mention, and also as best documentary at the Malaga Spanish Film Festival in 2014.[1].
Premiere
The documentary 4F: ni oblit ni perdó (4F: neither oblivion nor forgiveness) with an action of civil disobedience was previewed in Barcelona on June 8, 2013. This action consisted of the occupation by 800 people of a cinema closed 11 years earlier, in the center of Barcelona: the Vía Layetana Cinema Palace. The cinema was renamed Cinema Patricia Heras. Ciutat Morta includes images of the cinema occupation.[2][3].
Ciutat Morta was officially premiered on March 24, 2014 at the Malaga Spanish Film Festival.
Synopsis
Contenido
8 de junio de 2013. 800 personas entran en un cine abandonado del centro de Barcelona con el fin de proyectar un documental. El antiguo edificio lo rebautizan como Cinema Patricia Heras en honor a una chica que se suicidó dos años antes.
The case of 4F
The night of February 4, 2006 ended with a police charge in the center of Barcelona. It was in the vicinity of a busy old theater where a party was being held. While the police carried out their judicial order, from the roof the occupants began to throw all kinds of objects at the agents. According to what the mayor of Barcelona reported on the radio a few hours later, one of the police officers, who was without a helmet, was left in a coma due to the impact of a flower pot thrown by one of the occupants.
Three young detainees, of South American origin, were interrogated at police stations and subsequently sent to provisional prison, being deprived of liberty for two years, awaiting trial, without clarifying what they were accused of. When the trial was held, the Barcelona Court convicted the three young people for attacking a city guard who was left in a "persistent vegetative state." The sentence stated that "there is not the slightest doubt" that one of them, Rodrigo Lanza (later convicted of the murder of a person in Zaragoza in separate events),[4] threw a stone the size of a hand at the police officer from a distance of 10 meters.[5] The documentary denies these facts considered proven by the Justice system because it considered that the young people had been the objects of police manipulation. He maintains that the other two detained that night - Patricia and Alfredo - denied having been present at the scene of the events: they were detained in a nearby hospital and found suspicious due to their way of dressing.[6] Despite the evidence that exonerated all the accused, in the trial held against them, individuals were not being tried, but rather an entire group.[7].
Civility Ordinance
Introduction
Ciutat Morta (in Spanish Ciudad Morta) is a Spanish documentary film about the 4F case directed by Xavier Artigas and Xapo Ortega in 2013.
It was awarded at the Guía de Isora Festival, MiradasDoc, with an honorable mention, and also as best documentary at the Malaga Spanish Film Festival in 2014.[1].
Premiere
The documentary 4F: ni oblit ni perdó (4F: neither oblivion nor forgiveness) with an action of civil disobedience was previewed in Barcelona on June 8, 2013. This action consisted of the occupation by 800 people of a cinema closed 11 years earlier, in the center of Barcelona: the Vía Layetana Cinema Palace. The cinema was renamed Cinema Patricia Heras. Ciutat Morta includes images of the cinema occupation.[2][3].
Ciutat Morta was officially premiered on March 24, 2014 at the Malaga Spanish Film Festival.
Synopsis
Contenido
8 de junio de 2013. 800 personas entran en un cine abandonado del centro de Barcelona con el fin de proyectar un documental. El antiguo edificio lo rebautizan como Cinema Patricia Heras en honor a una chica que se suicidó dos años antes.
The case of 4F
The night of February 4, 2006 ended with a police charge in the center of Barcelona. It was in the vicinity of a busy old theater where a party was being held. While the police carried out their judicial order, from the roof the occupants began to throw all kinds of objects at the agents. According to what the mayor of Barcelona reported on the radio a few hours later, one of the police officers, who was without a helmet, was left in a coma due to the impact of a flower pot thrown by one of the occupants.
The documentary suggests that it was a generic enemy constructed by the press and politicians of "model" Barcelona, the Barcelona that shortly before, in 2005, had approved the "civility ordinance" as a legal framework for the gentrification plans of some central neighborhoods destined for tourism.[8] The boys arrested that night were scapegoats who fit perfectly, due to their aesthetics, with the image of the anti-system dissident: the internal enemy of the model city. had been generating those recent times.[9].
Years later, the news appeared in the media that two police officers had been sentenced to prison, with sentences of more than two years, for having tortured a young Ibero-American man in police stations. The conviction showed that the agents lied and manipulated evidence during the trial. In order to cover up the torture to which they subjected the young Ibero-American, they accused him of being a drug trafficker. However, in the course of the judicial investigation the judge discovered that this accusation was false and was only due to a police setup: the young man in question was, in reality, the son of the honorary consul of Norway in Trinidad and Tobago and was in Barcelona studying university studies.[10].
These agents turned out to be the same ones who had tortured the young people detained that night of February 4, 2006, in addition to having testified as witnesses against the accused during the trial. It was thus revealed that the torture agents used the same modus operandi in both cases. The only difference in the second case was the social origin of the victims: being the son of a diplomat, the tortured young man had a fair trial; Those accused in the process of February 4, 2006 did not have it.
Patricia Heras, the late poet
Beyond the city of Barcelona, the main character of Ciutat Morta is Patricia, whom we get to know through her poetry and the testimony of her friends and former romantic partners.[11] She is a young literature student, extremely sensitive, who hides her insecurities behind an eccentric aesthetic, fueled by the queer culture with which she identifies.
The experience that she goes through starting that morning of February 4, 2006, when she is detained along with her friend Alfredo in a hospital, gives a radical turn to her life. Two years of anguish waiting for trial, exhausting all his life savings to pay for lawyers. Three years in prison. Apart from destroying his life, these events trigger his literary productivity, which is recorded in a blog presciently titled: Dead Poet.[12].
Patricia committed suicide during a release from prison in April 2011. The authors of this film tried to pay tribute to her.
Diffusion and impact in the media
Licenses
The film is published under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.
Financing
The documentary film Ciutat Morta was financed exclusively with a crowdfunding campaign on the Verkami platform from microdonations, obtaining €4,720 of the €4,211 requested. The surplus was allocated directly to the support group for Patricia Heras and Rodrigo Lanza with the "De-Montaje 4F" campaign.[13].
The real cost, if all construction costs had been covered, would amount to approximately €90,000.
Diffusion
The media minimized the coverage of its premiere and its winning of awards at different festivals.[14] TV3 "TV3 (Catalonia)"), Catalan public television, rejected the co-production of the film when it finished recording and delayed its broadcast as much as possible despite the fact that it was offered for free, with the director of TV3, Eugeni Sallent, even lying in this regard in parliament.[15].
Finally, the documentary was broadcast on January 17, 2015 on Channel 33 in prime time, although not in its full version, achieving a screen share in Catalonia of 20% and an audience of 569,000 people[16] The broadcast version had about 5 minutes removed, in compliance with a court ruling,[17] which was considered a possible form of partial censorship.[18].
Three young detainees, of South American origin, were interrogated at police stations and subsequently sent to provisional prison, being deprived of liberty for two years, awaiting trial, without clarifying what they were accused of. When the trial was held, the Barcelona Court convicted the three young people for attacking a city guard who was left in a "persistent vegetative state." The sentence stated that "there is not the slightest doubt" that one of them, Rodrigo Lanza (later convicted of the murder of a person in Zaragoza in separate events),[4] threw a stone the size of a hand at the police officer from a distance of 10 meters.[5] The documentary denies these facts considered proven by the Justice system because it considered that the young people had been the objects of police manipulation. He maintains that the other two detained that night - Patricia and Alfredo - denied having been present at the scene of the events: they were detained in a nearby hospital and found suspicious due to their way of dressing.[6] Despite the evidence that exonerated all the accused, in the trial held against them, individuals were not being tried, but rather an entire group.[7].
The documentary suggests that it was a generic enemy constructed by the press and politicians of "model" Barcelona, the Barcelona that shortly before, in 2005, had approved the "civility ordinance" as a legal framework for the gentrification plans of some central neighborhoods destined for tourism.[8] The boys arrested that night were scapegoats who fit perfectly, due to their aesthetics, with the image of the anti-system dissident: the internal enemy of the model city. had been generating those recent times.[9].
Years later, the news appeared in the media that two police officers had been sentenced to prison, with sentences of more than two years, for having tortured a young Ibero-American man in police stations. The conviction showed that the agents lied and manipulated evidence during the trial. In order to cover up the torture to which they subjected the young Ibero-American, they accused him of being a drug trafficker. However, in the course of the judicial investigation the judge discovered that this accusation was false and was only due to a police setup: the young man in question was, in reality, the son of the honorary consul of Norway in Trinidad and Tobago and was in Barcelona studying university studies.[10].
These agents turned out to be the same ones who had tortured the young people detained that night of February 4, 2006, in addition to having testified as witnesses against the accused during the trial. It was thus revealed that the torture agents used the same modus operandi in both cases. The only difference in the second case was the social origin of the victims: being the son of a diplomat, the tortured young man had a fair trial; Those accused in the process of February 4, 2006 did not have it.
Patricia Heras, the late poet
Beyond the city of Barcelona, the main character of Ciutat Morta is Patricia, whom we get to know through her poetry and the testimony of her friends and former romantic partners.[11] She is a young literature student, extremely sensitive, who hides her insecurities behind an eccentric aesthetic, fueled by the queer culture with which she identifies.
The experience that she goes through starting that morning of February 4, 2006, when she is detained along with her friend Alfredo in a hospital, gives a radical turn to her life. Two years of anguish waiting for trial, exhausting all his life savings to pay for lawyers. Three years in prison. Apart from destroying his life, these events trigger his literary productivity, which is recorded in a blog presciently titled: Dead Poet.[12].
Patricia committed suicide during a release from prison in April 2011. The authors of this film tried to pay tribute to her.
Diffusion and impact in the media
Licenses
The film is published under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.
Financing
The documentary film Ciutat Morta was financed exclusively with a crowdfunding campaign on the Verkami platform from microdonations, obtaining €4,720 of the €4,211 requested. The surplus was allocated directly to the support group for Patricia Heras and Rodrigo Lanza with the "De-Montaje 4F" campaign.[13].
The real cost, if all construction costs had been covered, would amount to approximately €90,000.
Diffusion
The media minimized the coverage of its premiere and its winning of awards at different festivals.[14] TV3 "TV3 (Catalonia)"), Catalan public television, rejected the co-production of the film when it finished recording and delayed its broadcast as much as possible despite the fact that it was offered for free, with the director of TV3, Eugeni Sallent, even lying in this regard in parliament.[15].
Finally, the documentary was broadcast on January 17, 2015 on Channel 33 in prime time, although not in its full version, achieving a screen share in Catalonia of 20% and an audience of 569,000 people[16] The broadcast version had about 5 minutes removed, in compliance with a court ruling,[17] which was considered a possible form of partial censorship.[18].