How much history do images contain? Peter Friedl’s Bilbao Song (2010) deals with the political historicity of images, exploring and conjuring up their narrative potential in a paradoxical form that takes the shape of a documentary allegory. Bilbao Song was filmed on the empty stage of the Serantes Theatre in Santurtzi, near Bilbao. In static tableaux vivants staged for the camera, Friedl’s film captures the process of a phantasmagorical picture production, in this case inspired by Basque history. The cast includes professional and non-professional actors, and special guests, such as Julen Madariaga (lawyer, politician, former co-founder of ETA) or the popular clown duo Pirritx and Porrotx. Friedl’s tableaux vivants start with a reenactment of the painting Henry IV Receiving the Spanish Ambassador (1817) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Other references to Basque history are El paria castellano by Juan de Echevarría (The Castilian Pariah, 1917), El orden by Gustavo de Maeztu (Order, 1918–19), the Tríptico de la Guerra by Aurelio Arteta (War Triptych, 1937), and Soldado y Mulata by Víctor Patricio Landaluze (Soldier and Mulatta, ca. 1870), who was born in Bilbao and emigrated to Cuba in 1850. The only action that takes place on the stage is a live interpretation of Kurt Weill’s “Bilbao Song,” excluding the text written by Bertolt Brecht for their unsuccessful musical comedy Happy End.