FILM/Screening/San Francisco
"Yoyes"
August 11, 6pm, 8:15pm

An insightful and controversial film about the first woman to hold a senior position of responsibility within the Basque separatist group, ETA.

Yoyes was the codename of Dolores Gonzalez Catarain. The film covers Catarain's early involvement with ETA, her rise to leadership of their political wing in France, and her subsequent desertion and voluntary exile to Mexico, after a bloody attack in a Madrid café left her disillusioned with the organization.

In Mexico, Yoyes changed drastically -- she attended university, had a child, altered her original political views, and tried to live an ordinary life.

But in the interim, Yoyes, the myth, had wiped out all traces of Dolores, the woman. Her high-profile involvement in ETA had made her a legend - and, later, a target.

She returned to Spain in the early 1980s, but was assassinated in a crowded market in 1986, reputedly by former ETA comrades-in-arms who saw her as a traitor to the cause.

"Yoyes" is based on a true story, yet it is not a documentary. It is a work of fiction, a recreation of the life of Yoyes, depicted as a contemporary and universal tragedy. In my film "Busto de un Poeta/Bust of a Poet," I included as an epilogue a quote by the poet José Ángel Valente, which stated: 'To speak of life itself is to fully enter the realm of fiction.' I concur with Valente in that all biographies are fiction, and nevertheless, I take great care to portray the truth in my work."
-- Director Helena Taberna

About the director: Helena Taberna began her career in the visual arts as Coordinator of New Technologies for the Government of Navarre. She produced educational videos and creative pieces, documentaries and shorts. In 1994, she abandoned the civil service to work exclusively as a writer/director. Since then, she has won several awards for her films.

Find it: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Get info: (415) 982-8522