An Accidental Document of the Beginnings of the Civil War in Madrid: Notes on Carne de Fieras

The shooting of Carne de Fieras (Wild Animal’s Meat, dir. Armand Guerra, 1936) began on July 16th, 1936. The military coup in the so-called Spanish Morocco the day after initiated the Civil War. Carne de Fieras was filmed during the summer of 1936 in Madrid; a city that remained on the republican side until the end of the war after the military uprising in the city was crashed. This fiction film narrates a melodramatic story between two couples (a boxer and a cabaret artist, a lion tamer and a dancer) with no apparent connection to the war. And yet the film is a valuable and indirect document that manifests in various ways the very particular conditions and context in which it was made. I have identified a few elements that give the film this documentary resonance: the film production and its montage history, the narrative itself and finally the documentary scenes included in the film.