We are a nation. We decide for ourselves!

Had to post this here a Catalan film for Independence on Bella Caledonia
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2010/12/06/la-flama-de-tot-un-poble-in-moviment/

Well we must learn from each other and other stateless nations and be cool and imaginative over our progressive propaganda on film and communication and in our writings online, and in journals. We can make most from our own culture and learn to be attractive compared to the ugliness of British nationalism and it's unionists.
Larry


Stunning or what? As it is a campaign film for independence, I am going to have to ask you to put your hand on your heart and compare it with the Scottish National Party campaign film which is currently showing at that party’s website. If you had to say which is more captivating and highly absorbing, which would it be? Be honest. There is no contest, I venture to suggest. Regrettably, the SNP video seems to me to be in comparison a not conspicuously successful attempt to be both cool and inclusive.

Populated by more or less seemingly isolated and stiffly artificial characters affecting to be inspired by a more or less culturally alien sort of pop song which, however popular it may or may not be with a certain age group, certainly lacks trans-generational appeal and seems to represent nothing so much as a peculiarly perverse rejection of native culture. The Catalan film, on the other hand, is boldly authentic, richly symbolic and evocative, full of communal interconnectedness and emphatically and wholly convincingly real people who are tremendously easy to relate to. It is generationally inclusive and contemporary while asserting cultural identity and inherited and indeed cherished cultural tradition. It is a presentation and a demonstration of an inclusive national community working together, whereas the Scottish effort is a relatively feeble representation of not so much a convincing reality as an aspiration which is not shown to be well founded.

What the masterful Catalan demonstration of how the medium can be the message shows, on the other hand, is a popular art form known as a lip dub, which, as you are probably aware, although I was not until recently, is a kind of happening which does not, of course, simply happen. It has to be organized rather carefully, and the more people who are involved in it the more carefully organized it plainly has to be. Yet the end result is meant to give an impression that a degree of spontaneity is involved. A whole bunch of folk are assembled to mime to and in some imaginative manner communally perform a recorded song and have quite a lot of fun while doing so. In the Lip Dub for Catalan Independence shown above no fewer than 5,771 people (a world record) were brought together to mime to and perform a popular Catalan song, La Flama (The Flame), by the group Obrint Pas (Breaking Through), as part of the independentist election campaign for the recent parliamentary general election in the autonomous community of Catalonia in the north-east of the Castilian kingdom of Spain. This historic election took place on November 28th and was duly won by Catalan nationalists. An account of the election result, to which, unsurprisingly, not much attention has been paid by the UK media (out of fear of contagion?) appears at Newsnet here.

The song La Flama was chosen for this campaign event because the flame which is its subject and hence the theme of the lip dub is the flame of national sentiment which somehow did not die out in Catalonia after that country lost its independence when it was defeated at the siege of Barcelona in 1714 during the War of the Spanish Succession. As Catalan is a Romance language and thus relatively approachable, here are the lyrics:

No et limites a contemplar aquestes hores que ara venen
baixa al carrer i participa,
no podran res davant un poble unit alegre i combatiu.

Amb l’espurna de la historia,
i avançant a pas valent,
hem ences dins la memoria,
la flama d’un sentiment.

Viure sempre corrent,
avançant amb la gent,
rellevant contra el vent,
tranportant sentiments.
Viure mantenint viva
la flama a través del temps,
la flama de tot un poble en moviment.(bis)

Amb columnes de paraules,
i travessant la llarga nit,
hem fet de valls, mars i muntanyes,
els escenaris d’un nou crit.
Viure sempre corrent,
avançant amb la gent,
rellevant contra el vent,
tranportant sentiments.

Viure mantenint viva
la flama a través del temps,
la flama de tot un poble en moviment.(bis)

A rough translation into English appears here.

La flama a través del temps, la flama de tot un poble en moviment (the flame kept alive down the ages, the spirit of a nation on the move) is what is represented in the lip dub, which opens at a point in the distant past, from where the flame of national sentiment is snatched by a modern-day Catalan youth and transported through time, through the ancient narrow streets of the town of Vic, past representations of Catalan history and culture, including the traditional building of human castles, which is apparently very popular and is a televised sport, past the giants and the bigheads and the flag-waving and the brandishing of gigantic symbols, a Catalan peccadillo which is noticeably reflected in the Catalan-designed Scottish Parliament building. The flame passes through the generations to the present one, the representative of which ultimately carries it into the present day by bringing it into the main square of Vic, holding the flame aloft before a vast cheering crowd, which is brandishing more Catalan flags than you can wave a stick at and chanting “I-inde-independència!” (a very common chant in Catalonia these days), as a line of people at the back are gradually seen to be holding up large white letters of the alphabet forming the word independència, whereupon the song comes to an end and a rendition of Els Segadors (The Reapers), the Catalan national anthem, erupts. Banners are waved. The people cheer, and giants and bigheads representing Catalonia’s past are discerned in the midst of the throng, which fills the square, which is the heart of the town, just as the flame of national sentiment is the spirit of the people, which is overflowing.

The Lip Dub for Independence is a self-evidently powerful demonstration of national solidarity intended to reach out to the world to let it know that Catalonia has survived as a nation despite Castilian efforts to suppress it and oppress it. Furthermore, it is becoming more assertive. Soon its new government will take over in Barcelona, and demands for greater autonomy will be made by an administration which could hold an independence referendum if they are not met, a referendum the result of which will be foreshadowed by the result of the unofficial locality-by-locality people’s independence referendum which reaches its climax in Barcelona on April 10th, in time to astonish the world and alarm Madrid and possibly even grab the attention of the Scottish electorate as it gets ready to vote in the Scottish general election of May 5th, when the UK government’s AV referendum may, of course, just possibly be hijacked, as recommended by . . . Bella Caledonia, to assert the inalienable right of the people to determine the constitutional future of their country, as the people of Catalonia have done by taking matters into their own hands. As they say there, and keep repeating, in very loud piercing voices, “Som una nació. Nosaltres decidim!” (We are a nation. We decide for ourselves!)

In preparation for the Scottish general election, and the hijacked referendum, Scotland needs a campaign event and a campaign film as powerful as the Lip Dub for Independence, which to date has been viewed about 885,000 times since it was uploaded to YouTube on October 27th. Not as sensational as Susan Boyle perhaps, but not bad. Not bad at all, and the whole of Catalonia is still talking about it (as indeed am I), in between flag waving and building human castles and the like. Maybe Bella’s referendum idea could attract enough support for it to be comparable to the unofficial Catalonian independence referendum? Perhaps a lip dub to publicize both it and the cause of Scottish independence could be organized. Maybe even more than one, as has happened in Catalonia? Cross-fertilization of superbly subversive ideas between sub-state nations is precisely what the Establishment does not want.

That is precisely why we should do it. Visca Catalunya. Visca Catalunya lliure! Saor Alba!’