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New documentary on “Europe’s Last Revolution”

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We’ve received notice of a documentary film, currently in production, that tells the story of the expropriated and collectively managed factories in northern Spain during the lead-up to the Spanish Civil War. The full title is translated as Collective Economy: Europe’s Last Revolution. Readers may recall Sam Dolgoff’s landmark book, The Anarchist Collectives, which was prefaced by Murray Bookchin, important historical accounts of the Spanish Revolution by authors such as Santillán, Augustin Souchy, Broué and Temime, and others, as well as Ken Loach’s classic 1995 film Land and Freedom. Now, with the prospect of Catalonian secession once again in the news, this story will be told for the first time in documentary form, with archival footage from the 1930s.

The project’s website (in Catalan) is http://economiacollectiva.com, and a trailer with English subtitles can be found at http://vimeo.com/52554201.  A crowd-sourced funding effort is described at http://www.verkami.com/projects/3547.

The filmmakers write:

Collective Economy. Europe’s last Revolution is a documentary that for the first time takes an in depth look into the most extraordinary episode of our recent history: the seizure and collective management of industry and services by the workers themselves…

Why are we interested in this history?

-Because it tells the story of a unique event in the world that has been hidden by power.
-Because some of its protagonists are still alive.
-Because it should be a point of reference for anyone committed to social change.
-Because without an awareness of these events it is impossible to understand the last 75 years of our history.