The filmmaker Thomas Lacoste reveals in preview in Bayonne this Friday at the Atalante his latest film on the conflict in the Basque Country. After a first short film on disarmament, and a medium-length film “Basque Country and Freedom” on the peace process, in “the democratic hypothesis” he proposes an immersion in the history of the organization with some of its actors. France Bleu Pays basque was able to meet the director Thomas Lacoste.
France Bleu Pays basque: This is the third film on the conflict in the Basque Country, what does the democratic hypothesis tell us that the first two did not tell?
Thomas Lacoste: So the first one spoke of the importance of supporting disarmament, it was a short intervention film. The second opus was a television medium that allowed us to introduce the history of the conflict of its exit, but rather seen from the international, by the diplomatic facilitators who entered the history to think the exit of the conflict. And this opus which is central in the project, The democratic hypothesis comes to propose, him, an immersion by means of the cinema, an immersion in this history and in the history of this conflict and its exit, but taken in charge with the first person by the actors of the conflict, the victims and negotiators of the exit. _U_n an immersive choral narrative in the first person, to try to conceive a sentence that comes to carry a narrative from the inside of the people who participated in this conflict and in its exit like a construction, a contribution to come to the historiography more broad, like one of the sentences that could be constitutive of tomorrow’s historiography on this conflict.
You have chosen to use numerous television archives, why?
Thomas Lacoste: it’s a documentary filmmaker’s trope, but it’s true that it’s interesting to recall the archives of the time in this case, what happens with INA and SONUMA is the Belgian equivalent of our French archives to show to what extent, in the 70s, the conflict was present on the national territory. Indeed, television sets, made discuss 5, 6, 10 guests of the Basque news, which is today, unfortunately, perfectly invisible. It seems to me that to show this contrast between the preoccupations of the time on both sides, whether in Madrid or in Paris, the gaze that was cast on this conflict was an acuteness quite different from what we know today. Yes, or we have the impression that there is a veil that has been laid over this story which might seek to make things invisible, whereas as a historian or as an intellectual, we all know that in order to lay the foundations for an exit from a conflict, it is necessary that the stories can emerge and that seeking to impose ideas, veils or to make invisible fabulous stories, there is nothing like to lay the seeds of a perpetual renewal.
You have chosen to make speak almost exclusively of the militants Abertzale, it is a deliberate choice?
Thomas Lacoste: Really, the choice for this casting, for this feature film, was that of not summoning the stories of the combatants and of the people who were involved in exiting the conflict. Suddenly, suddenly, indeed. Hence the presence of Jesus Eguiguren, who was at the time the president of the Basque Socialist Party and who indeed had in his time a major role in the preparation and the setting up and the participation in the negotiations in Switzerland. So, indeed, it is a deliberate choice. Then, with regard to people who are opposed to this conflict or to the peace process or who consider that there is no peace process because there are only winners and losers in this history, we hear them too much in the media in Madrid and Paris. It did not necessarily seem very interesting to me to summon them here in any case to narrate this conflict in which they did not directly participate.
After the release of your last documentary “Basque Country and Freedom”, associations of ETA victims accused the film of being pro-ETA * propaganda, do you fear the same outcry?
Thomas Lacoste: No, no, no. One expects more from a well-understood intelligence. That is to say that indeed, for conflicts to be resolved, the stories on both sides must be heard. And it seems to me shouting today that in the public space, whether it is Spanish or French, this voice of its activists from Abertzale is today and too silent. And it seems important to me to make it heard and to show how they too have embarked on the democratic path and to underline this trajectory.
Don’t you have a romantic vision of the organization?
Thomas Lacoste: Our desire was to give back part of the memory to the Basque population which for me was not treated, at least outside the territory, and I think that we need to think of the peace of two support of two legs and for the children of this country to be able to walk correctly we need these two legs and it seemed important to me to make heard this voice of the abertzale left which, for me, was until now in any case outside quite invisible Basque territory. I don’t see any romanticism in that. No, it is rather to welcome this democratic and polysemous hypothesis. For us, it is both a hypothesis in the face of a dictatorial regime represented by Franco’s, to think of the emancipation of a people, it was also in the face of a conservative nationalism to think of new forms of emancipation that were structured with the foundations of abertzalism, it is also to salute the capacity for a change of scene when, indeed, caught in the violence of a politico-military scene, an organization decides to choose a single political scene and or even faced with an island of very internationalized liberalism, to think of extremely strong forms of collective cooperation locally. And all this for me, represents the ground of this democratic hypothesis which seems to me a ground which seems to me extremely fertile on this territory.e.
* Thomas Lacoste had also lodged a complaint for defamation against his accusers. The case is ongoing.