Outtakes from a forgotten documentary film
Fury Over Spain is a documentary film produced by CNT-FAI in Barcelona in 1936. I strongly believed the film was put together by Emma Goldman in the role of executive producer when acting as a liaison between the CNT in Catalonia and the Anarchist Movement in the United States the UK. Fury Over Spain was released in the United States in 1937, first in New York, and reviewed by The New York Times, later in fundraising events around the country, also in Canada and Australia. The New York Times exalted the role of Peter Weinschenk as one of the camera operators, and photographers. Pablo Weinschenk would later change his name to Pablo Tabernero in Argentina where he lived between 1937 and 1967. My film "Searching 4-Tabernero", approaches the life of Pablo Weinschenk in detail.
It is believed that Fury Over Spain was shown by Eleonor Roosvelt in the White House, although I have not been able to confirm the rumor, also that the film inspired late comers to join the International Brigades fighting agains Franco during the regional conflic.
By the time Fury Over Spain was released in New York, Pablo Weinschenk had already made his way out of Spain and was living in Amsterdam. It is my believe that his inmigrant-visa to the United States was denied to Mr. Weinschenk on the basis that most critics had agreed that Fury Over Spain was a propaganda film siding with the Republican side in the conflict. Although Mr. Waisnchenk himself was not of Anarchist or Socialist persuation he will eventually have to change his name to Pablo Tabernero during the forthcoming years of exile in Argentina 1937-1967.
Further notes: When Paul Weinschenk arrived in Buenos Aires on October 27, 1937, he found himself in country where noone had the experience he had in documentary filmmaking. Almost forgotten today, Pablo Tabernero -as he would be know in Argentina- was the founding father of a documentary tradition later cultivated by such prominent documentarians as Fernando Birry, Pino Solanas and Raymundo Gleyzer to name but a few. The use of Wagner's "Der Fliegende Holländer" in Fury Over Spain is an interesting coincidence that I find remmarcable.