A-Infos (en) Britain, Anarchist Federation Organise #67 - Culture - Armand Guerra: Typesetter, film maker, scenario writer, actor and anarchist

Armand Guerra was born Jose Estivalis Cabo at Liria near Valencia on 4th 
January 1886, the son of a farmer and of a mother who was already 
looking after a child of 5 years. First as a choirboy and then as a 
pupil at a seminary in Valencia, he developed an intense hatred for the 
Church.

He started working in a print shop in Valencia in 1899 at the age of 13 
then in an electrical workshop with his brother Vicente. In 1907 a print 
workers strike broke out in Valencia and Armand was arrested and 
imprisoned. The police thought that after his release that he was 
emigrating to the West Indies. In actual fact he and his brother went to 
Paris and made contact with the anarchist movement there.

In 1909 he attended the meetings of the Germinal anarchist group in 
Geneva, Switzerland and started corresponding with the outstanding 
anarchist militant and doctor Pedro Vallina who had taken refuge in 
London. He also edited the Spanish anarchist paper Tierra y Libertad in 
Nice during that year (after the crushing of the 1909 revolt and the 
State murder of Francisco Ferrer, anarchist publications had been 
forbidden in Spain). Between 1910 and 1914 he wrote very regularly for 
the Cuban anarchist weekly Tierra published in Havana. He also wrote for 
the Swiss weekly anarchist paper Le Reveil, edited by Luigi Bertoni, 
under the anagram of his real name-Silavitse.

But Guerra was footloose and in February 1911 he traveled down through 
Italy before catching a boat for Cairo where he took part in the 
activities of Italian anarchists grouped round a print shop in the 
centre of the city, near the El Muski bazaar. He helped bring out a 
paper L'Idea, edited in three languages- Italian, French and Greek. 
Guerra hoped to ignite a revolt in Egypt, but the authorities forbade 
the publication of any anarchist texts in Arabic.

*TRAVELS IN THE BALKANS*

He started a long boat journey from Istanbul to Braila in Romania and 
then on to Belgrade and Salonica, all the time tracked by the police. 
The situation arrived that he was ordered to leave the ship AND 
forbidden to land! Faced with this ridiculous situation, the captain 
came to his defence.

He returned to France and wrote several articles about his travels. 
During the summers, he worked in a printshop in Deauville. It was in 
this town in 1912 that the Gaumont operators shot the first animated 
colour footage in the history of cinema on the beach at Deauville.

Perhaps inspired by this, he returned to Paris in 1913 and produced a 
film for the ?clair company called Un cri dans la jungle ( A shout in 
the jungle), which came to the attention of Yves Bidamant, secretary of 
the rail union Federation des transports par voie ferree. This 
individual suggested that Guerra produce films with a social message.

This began the venture of the Cinema du peuple when Estivalis began to 
use the pseudonym Armand Guerra for the first time. He brought out the 
films les Miseres de l'aiguille, le Vieux Docker, and La Commune. At 
this time he lived at 22 Rue du Donjon, at Vincennes across the road 
from the Pathe factory. He worked as a typesetter in Paris at the Maison 
de la Presse, which printed most of the Parisian papers. Guerra 
continued to write for Tierra and to work for the Cinema du Peuple. From 
summer 1914, he began a correspondence with Marcel Martinet, a writer of 
"proletarian literature" and a member of the Cinema du people 
cooperative. His wife Renee contributed to the cooperative acting in the 
Guerra film Miseres de l'aiguille.

Unfortunately Guerra's concierge was informing on him to the police 
about his political activity and he was expelled from France in 
September 1915. He had been under police surveillance since 1909 for his 
editing of Tierra y Libertad.

Guerra now moved to Lausanne in Switzerland where worked as a typesetter 
in a print shop. At the end of 1917 he picked up his cinematic interests 
again by setting up the company Cervantes Films. After making 6 films, 
he abandoned the project, for reasons not yet known, although it was 
probably because of financial reasons. Most of his films were filmed 
outdoors rather than in a studio, incurring much higher expenses.

Most of the films were about gypsies or bullfighters, themes popular 
with contemporary audiences. The Curse of The Gypsy had nevertheless 
been produced to combat Spanish clericalism.In 1920 he went to Lausanne 
again and then on to Berlin.

*NOSFERATU*

Here, he worked as an actor, director, and translator of scenes (he 
spoke 7 languages). The Berlin film scene was vibrant and dynamic so he 
was rarely without work. He was involved in the realization of films by 
great directors like Murnau, Pabst and Lang.. Not only did he write 
scenarios but he wa sinvolved at all levels in production, including 
administration and writing of subtitles and the putting up of scenery. 
He acted of Hans Neumann's film A Summer Night's Dream alongside another 
anarchist actor Alexander Granach.(1). There is a likelihood that he was 
involved in the production of the film classic Nosferatu, in which 
Granach acted. Like another Spanish anarchist, Valerio Orobon Fernandez, 
Guerra worked translating scenes for the Spanish-German firm Filmofono.

He pioneered cinema with sound in Valencia, and brought out 3 films 
there. In 1928 another film of his produced in Germany was banned by the 
censors. Guerra became the Berlin correspondent of Popular Film, a 
Barcelona film review, directed by his friend Mateo Santos (who brought 
out the first documentary on the Spanish Civil War in 1936 for the CNT).

In 1930 he took over from another director for the film El Amour 
Soyeando (Love Sings). In 1931, because of protectionist laws put in 
place, he was forced to leave Berlin for good and settled in Madrid with 
Isabel Anglada with whom he had a child, Vicenta.

He played the role of a clown in La Alegria que Pasa of Sabino Antonio 
Micon in 1934.

*WAR AND REVOLUTION*

During the course of filming his first full length feature film Carne de 
Fieras the Francoists launched their coup. Later because the CNT wanted 
to honour all contracts for film workers the film was finally completed 
and has recently been re-discovered.

Guerra wrote a fascinating account of this period in his A Traves de la 
Metralla (Through the Grapeshot). Carne de Fieras was to be Guerra's 
last feature film. He made attempts to make a film about Durruti, and 
also brought out some newsreels Estampas Guerreras but the CNT needed 
his considerable gifts as an orator and he had to abandon the camera.

In the last months of 1937 he toured throughout southern France speaking 
on behalf of the CNT. To those who questioned whether Mexico was the 
only country to have given arms to Republican Spain, he replied that the 
Soviet Union has sold arms, not given them!

With Manuel Perez he translated a pamphlet about the Francoist massacres 
on Mallorca.

Guerra fell foul of the Communist Party that was carrying out its 
counterrevolution. He was arrested by the SIM (secret police controlled 
by the Communists) and imprisoned between 8th April and 26th August 1938 
on the Uruguay, a ship converted into a prison in Barcelona harbour. He 
was subsequently put under house arrest. He appealed to the General 
Secretary of the CNT, Mariano Vasquez for freedom.

With the final triumph of Francoism, Guerra managed to escape to Sete in 
southern France in February 1939, avoiding the French concentration 
camps that were to become the home of so many fleeing from Spain. On 
10th March 1939, a month after having found his family at Saint Mande, 
he died from a stroke, probably brought on by the extreme exhaustion of 
the last few years. Guerra's films were all confiscated by the Franco 
regime. Only over the last few years are they beginning to emerge from 
the archives. It would certainly be interesting to get access to them in 
the English-speaking world , especially his Carne de Fieras, and to see 
if they have weathered the test of time. The uncontestable fact remains 
that Guerra was not only a devoted anarchist, but had a significant role 
in the history of cinema.

*NOTE*

(1) Granach was born Jessaja Granach in in1893 in Webiwici (Wierzbowce), 
East Galicia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire in what is now the 
Ukraine. Born into a poor Jewish family with many siblings, he 
apprenticed as a baker. He came in contact with Russian-Jewish students 
with revolutionary ideas and in London in 1905 he set up a theatre group 
with other anarchists. During this time he met leading anarchists like 
Malatesta, Kropotkin, and above all Rudolf Rocker. In 1906 he went to 
Vienna and took part in Yiddish theatre, alongside his day job as a 
baker. In the 20s Granach became a big star in German cinema in films 
like Nosferatu and Kameradschaft. He gave money to the defence of Sacco 
and Vanzetti and starred in the play Staatsraison, written by his friend 
Muehsam which defended Sacco and Vanzetti and denounced the American 
judicial system. With the coming to power of Hitler, he fled to Russia. 
Arrested by the Stalin regime, only through the intervention of the 
German novelist Feuchtwanger was he extradited to Switzerland. From 
there he fled to USA, where he continued as a film actor in such films 
as Ninotchka and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Curiously, in later Hollywood 
films, Granach often played the part of evil Nazis!
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