Yo las he visto andar y andar sin saber a dónde ir

This project aims to study and preserve the films of Rosina Prado, a filmmaker born in Spain in 1935, who lived in exile in the Soviet Union until 1961 and worked at the Cuban Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (ICAIC) between 1961 and 1967.  

Rosina Prado was born in Cartagena (Spain) in 1935 and went into exile with her family in the Soviet Union at the end of the Spanish Civil War, in 1939. From 1955 to 1961 she studied Film Direction at the VGIK, where one of her tutors was Aleksandr Dovzhenko, and made the film Prijodiat y ujodiat poezda (The Coming and Going of the Trains). In 1961 she interrupted her studies and migrated to Cuba with her parents and her baby. From then until 1967, she worked as a director at the film studios of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). There she made the documentary short films that make up the rest of her filmography: Ismaelillo (1962), Palmas cubanas (1963), ¿Qué es lo bello? (1965), La llamada del nido (1966) and El zoológico (1968). In 1968, she began to work on a new documentary, Reportaje sobre Cabo Cruz, but filming was suspended due to a hurricane. Rosina Prado never made another film, and she returned to Spain in 1977. Her status as a female filmmaker and exiled anti-fascist contributed to her being erased from the history of cinema, and she therefore remains a little-known filmmaker.  

During the first year of the project, the film Prijodiat y ujodiat poezda (The Coming and Going of Trains) was digitally preserved; this was a film that Prado made whilst studying at VGIK (the Gerasimov All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography, USSR). A 35 mm projection print had been deposited by the filmmaker at the Filmoteca Española and was in a state of active deterioration, awaiting restoration. The project also involved research into the Moscow film school and the status of student films. In the second year, the project will focus on the study and preservation of Ismaelillo (1961) and Palmas cubanas (1962), the first two films that Rosina Prado made in post-revolutionary Cuba.  

The project builds on other lines of research into Spanish cinematic exile previously carried out at EQZE, such as the preservation project for En el balcón vacío (Jomí García Ascot, 1961). This continuity is not only thematic but also methodological: it is an interdisciplinary research project aimed at preserving films whilst simultaneously studying their history and context. The research will therefore combine archival and historical research practices, based on the recovery of film materials held in archival institutions.  

Furthermore, the project aims to identify, analyse and preserve the cinematic work of the Spanish children who went into exile in the USSR during the Spanish Civil War and who trained there in the film trades. This research project aims to identify and analyse the artistic work of these ‘Children of Russia’, as well as to preserve some of the films they made whilst in exile or after returning to Spain during the height of Franco’s dictatorship.  

Research project
Principal investigators: Sonia García López and Carolina Cappa
Associate researcher: Masha Salazkina
Partner institutions: Carlos III University of Madrid, Concordia University, Spanish Film Archive, Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industries 
Timeline: newly established