Veinte años no es nada (2005)

In the late '70s, the Spanish writer-director Joaquin Jordà shot a documentary, Numax presenta. . ., which covers an arresting and media-diverting incident in Spain: the almost revolutionary decision ... read more of the workers at the Numax appliance factory to resist forced closure of that business -- and its concomitant layover -- in 1977, by "taking over" the factory themselves. That decision lasted until 1979, when the plant closed permanently. Almost three decades passed, and in the mid-2000s, Jordà returned with his cameras to examine what had transpired in the lives of the workers during the twenty-five year interim. The result is the documentary Veinte Anos No Es Nada (AKA Twenty Years is Nothing, 2006). This film begins with the closing "party" sequence of Numax presenta. . . and moves forward in time to tell the stories of many of the former Numax employees, one by one. What emerges over the course of the film is a picture of the shifting sociological currents in Spain (particularly those of industrial reconversion) during the '80s, '90s and 2000s, as mirrored, microcosmically, in the lives of the individual subjects. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi