The re-emergence in recent years of various regional cinemas has been among the most auspicious developments for filmmaking in Spain. In this light, the release of The Burnt City must be seen as a major cultural event; shot in the Catalan language-which would have been unthinkable under Franco-the film was an enormous hit in Catalonia, where screenings were often interrupted by bursts of applause. A technically impressive, wide-ranging fresco of Catalan history from the loss of Cuba (1898) to the anarchist uprising of 1909, the film gives a vivid account of the rise of Catalan nationalism as seen through the evolution of a left-wing militant. The shifting alliances between classes and parties is rigorously detailed, as Ribas traces the crushing of the nationalist movement by both internal and external pressures. Richard Peña