Archive for Spanish Civil War
renascent
Posted in Books with tags Buenaventura Durutti, LP, Manchester, post-punk, situationists, Spanish Civil War, the Durutti column on September 15, 2026 by xi'ancircuses and bread
Posted in Books, Kids with tags 80's music, anti-fascism, Barcelona, Buenaventura Durutti, circuses and bread, CNT, FAI, International Brigades, New Wave, post-punk, Republican Spain, Spanish Civil War, the Durutti column on December 21, 2025 by xi'an
Pierre Christin (1938-2024)
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags A Suivre, bande dessinée, BD, cover, Ecology, Enki Bilal, fantasy, Franco, graphical models, graphical novel, hunting, hunting lodge, International Brigades, Jean-Claude Mézière, journalism, mai 1968, Métal Hurlant, obituary, Pierre Christin, Pilote, political assassination, science fiction, space opera, Spanish Civil War, University of Bordeaux, USSR, Utah State University, Warsaw Pact on October 15, 2024 by xi'anThe BD-ist Pierre Christin died on 03 October. His heritage is a huge collection of graphical novels he scenarized. Many of them masterpieces, from the political Black Order Phalanges with Enki Bilal, where a group of [very] former International Brigadists (pictured in 1937 on the cover below) reconstitutes to fight to death a parallel group of fascists who fought in Franco’s war against the Spanish Republic and rerouped (circa 1980) againstprogressive forces throughout Europe, followed by a scathing description of the decaying USSR in Hunting Party, again with Bilal, to
the science-fiction series of Valérian (and Laureline) [along with Jean-Claude Mézière] that spans decades and follows societal progress by seeing Laureline becoming the main character (rather than her female partner Valérian), fighting dictators, conglomerates, colonialism, and pollution—more a space social drama than a space opera, as he once stated—, to
the 86-ish ecology cum fantasy trilogy, La Croisière des Oubliés, again with Bilal. Plus other great books that I read and re-read during my (extended!) childhood, mostly in the BD journals that were created over that period, from Pilote to Métal Hurland, À Suivre, &tc. He was also involved in teaching, from a visiting position in contemporary French literature in USU, Salt Lake City, to a professorship in journalism and communication at the University of Bordeaux, where he created the first French public school of journalism, now Institut de journalisme Bordeaux Aquitaine. A great artist, may he now roam forever the deep space landscapes he and Mézière created!
Entre ici Missak Manouchian avec ton terrible cortège
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags 21 février 1944, André Malraux, antisemitism, aux grands hommes la Patrie reconnaissante, collaboration, communist party, French history, FTP-MOI, Jean Moulin, L'Affiche Rouge, L'Armée du Crime, Main d’œuvre immigrée, Mélinée Manouchian, Missak Manouchian, Mont Valérien, Nazi occupation, Panthéon, Parti Communiste Français, Résistance, Spanish Civil War, Vichy régime, WW II on February 21, 2024 by xi'an
a journal of the plague year [lazy August reviews]
Posted in Books, pictures, Running, Travel with tags amazon associates, Arthur's Seat, Babi Yar massacre, book reviews, Daniel Defoe, Dmitri Shostakovitch, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Airport, eugenics, film review, films, flintrock, homecooking, homegrown vegetables, Irvine Welsh, Journal of the Plague Year, Katyǹ massacre, Philip Kerr, Scotland, Scots, Spanish Civil War, trainspotting, TV series on August 22, 2020 by xi'an
Read Blood of Empire, the final volume in the Gods of Blood and Powder trilogy. By Brian McClellan. Which I enjoyed reasonably well as bedside literature, although its weight meant it would fall at the slightest hint of sleep… It took me longer than expected to connect to the story, given I had read the previous volume a few months ago. This series is classified as “flintrock fantasy”, a category I had never heard of previous, meaning a limited amount of gunpower is used in weapons, along with the aid of magical abilities (for the happy few). The style is a wee bit heavy and repetitive, but the characters are definitely engaging if over-prone to inner dialogues… The only annoying part in the plot is the presence of a super-evil character about to be become a god, which ruins most of the balance in the story.
Had a long-pending due watch at Trainspotting T2. (Loved the NYT label as “Rated R for a bagful of vomit, mouthfuls of bigotry and nosefuls of cocaine”, obviously in the same regressive spirit as the film.) This is definitely a sequel to the first film. And hence hardly comprehensible on its own. Except for a few locations like a run-down pub on the edge of nowhere, a flat overlooking a car part dump and Spud’s high-rise welfare housing, T2 lacks the gritty vision of Edinburgh found in its forbear. And the characters have lost their toxic edge, except maybe very much maybe for the psychopath 
Franck. Even the de rigueur final swindle has a rosy and predictable justification. Fun nonetheless! On the (tourist) side, I enjoyed a mostly superfluous scene where Renton takes Spud running up Arthur’s Seat along its most scenic route, with an iconic end image of Edinburgh gradually fading into fog. There is also a surreal (short) scene on Rannoch Mor, with the Oban train stopping at the hikers’ stop. (I never managed to start Welsh’s books, due to their phonetic rendering of Edniburghian Scots that make reading unbearable..! By comparison, most dialogues are understandable. A funny line when the hostess welcoming tourists at Edinburgh Airport with a mock Scottish accent acknowledges she is from Slovakia.) Camera tricks like fast backward and colour filters a wee bit old-fashioned and heavy-handed, in the spirit of the first movie as if nothing had ever happened since. Maybe the moral of the story. Not looking for a potential T3, though.
Read a forgotten volume in the Bernhard Günther series of Philip Kerr, A man without breath. As usual building on historical events from Nazi Germany to set this ambivalent character at the centre of the action, which is this time the discovery and exploitation of the Katyǹ massacres by the Nazi propaganda to drive an edge between the Soviet Union and the other Allies. The book is rather uneven, with too many plots, subplots, and characters, and open criticisms of the Nazi regime between complete strangers do not ring particularly realistic. And draw attention away from their own massacres, like Babi Yar (celebrated in Dmitri Shostakovitch’s Symphony No. 13). Interestingly, given that I read the book at the time of the JSM round-table, a thread in the story links to the Spanish Civil War and the attempt by fascist doctors like Vallejo Nágera to picture left-wing Spaniards as psychiatrically degenerates, fantasying the existence of a “red” gene… (It took me a while to trace the reference in the title to Goebbels’ quote “A nation with no religion is like a man without breath.” )
