Carlos Muguiro will be the director of the new Cinema School

Denis Itxaso has said that “the winning project, The hypothesis of cinema, with a brilliant development, proposes a model of School which fully concurs with the idea outlined in this project”.

Carlos Muguiro will be the director of the new Film School to be created in Tabakalera, which has been promoted by the Provincial Government. The jury has agreed to declare as winner of the contest the project "The hypothesis of cinema", which will be managed by Muguiro. Four proposals took part in the contest called by the Provincial Government.

"The project is based on a comprehensive knowledge of cinema, and reasonably adapts to the context and the working areas of the three institutions that conform its natural ecosystem: Tabakalera, the Basque Film Institute and the San Sebastian Cinema Festival. Brilliantly developed, an original and singular model of School is proposed which fully concurs with the idea that this project poses. Muguiro has an accredited experience in the world of cinema as programmer, creator, teacher and researcher", has said the Deputy of Culture, Denis Itxaso.

Muguiro was born in 1966 in Elizondo, and currently he is the head of the specialty Documentary Cinema in the Film School of the Community of Madrid (ECAM); he also designed the teaching curriculum of the school. Additionally, he is a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication of the University of Navarre. In the field of film creation, he has made, together Sergio Oksman, the films Goodbye, America (2006), Notes on the Other (2008), A Story for the Modlins (2012), and O Futebol (2015).

As film programmer, he was the founder of the Festival Punto de Vista of Navarre and its artistic director until 2009. He has commissioned retrospectives and programs in institutions such as Ha MNCARS (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía of Madrid) and festivals such as Documenta Madrid and Zinebi. He has been part of the jury in festivals such as FidMarseille (France), Visions du Réel (Nyon, Switzerland), Festival dei Populi (Florence, Italy) and DocLisboa (Portugal), among others.

He has edited, among other books, Antología de jóvenes escritores cubanos post-sovieticos (2005-2010); El cine de los mil años. Historia y estética del cine documental japonés; Ver sin Vertov. Una introducción a cincuenta años de cine de no-ficción ruso y soviético (1954-2004); and El hombre sin la cámara. El cine de Alan Berliner/ The Man Without the Movie Camera. The cinema of Alan Berliner.

He has also been coordinator of the Chair Direction of the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV) in Cuba and Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge (UK). Has done research stays in the Cinémathèque Française-Musée du Cinema (Paris) and the Cuban Film Industry (ICAIC) of Havana.

Muguiro es Doctor of Humanities by the University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona, Special Doctoral Award, Graduate in Communication by the University of Navarre and holder of a diploma of Film Direction by ECAM (Film School of the Community of Madrid).

The Cinema School

The pedagogical project to be developed is based on the integration of the areas in which the three institutions present in the building and linked to the audiovisual world are engaged: Tabakalera, the Basque Film Institute and the San Sebastian Cinema Festival.The school will be structured around three main areas:

1. Archiving, cataloging and restoration, which contemplates the preservation of memory, history...

2. Management and planning of film events: the Zinemaldia or Film Festival, which will deal with the programming, the organization of the festival, criticism...

3. Film creation and direction: the field of the Tabakalera cultural project, which deals with the audiovisual language, the image, the sound, the storytelling...

This centre, with which Tabakalera, the Basque Film Institute and the San Sebastian Cinema Festival will collaborate closely, aims to promote complementary and specialized training, support to creators in the audiovisual field and lay the solid foundations of the future for a sector which has great potential in the territory.

Tabakalera has lent an area of 539 m2 in its ground floor to set up the school to the Provincial Council for the next 25 years. The adaptation works have already begun and will end in August.