The InternationalsÑUnited with the Spanish We Fight the Invader (1937).

Seattle-based filmmaker and lifelong political activist Abe Osheroff will screen his award-winning film Dreams and Nightmares (1975), a powerful account of Osheroff's personal involvement with the Spanish Civil War, Tuesday, November 7, at 7 pm in Gamble Auditorium. Joining Osheroff as part of “Dreams and Nightmares: Film and Poetry in the Spanish Civil War” will be Martin Espada, noted poet and professor of literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. MHC's history department is sponsoring the event.

Osheroff, who is 85 years old, was one of the roughly 3,000 American men and women who volunteered between 1937 and 1938 to fight in defense of the Spanish republic against the fascist forces of Francisco Franco and his allies, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The American volunteers, known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, were part of a larger international brigade of 40,000 people who went to Spain to try and stem the tide of European fascism in the late 1930s.

Often referred to as the “dress rehearsal for World War II,” the Spanish Civil War was a critical moment in twentieth-century history, and the international volunteers earned a reputation for idealism and heroism in defense of democracy and social justice. In addition to his involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Osheroff has been a committed political activist in the United States, serving as a trade union organizer and a participant in Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964. Says Daniel Czitrom, MHC professor of history, “Abe is a dynamic and engaging speaker, and he offers students a rare chance to hear a genuine “witness to history.”

Martin Espada has been called “the Latino poet of his generation,” Espada has published five books of poetry and has received numerous awards for his work. His latest book, recently published by W. W. Norton, is A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen. Espada has long taught courses on the literature of the Spanish Civil War, and he will be reading several of his own poems, as well as some of the classic poetry to come out of the conflict.