Students at the EQZE to help plan the films to be screen in Tabakalera

Once a month throughout the academic year, students at the EQZE will programme a session at the Tabakalera cinema, during which they will screen films linked to their syllabus, their work as filmmakers and their concerns and interests regarding the art of filmmaking

'Eskolatik' is a twofold initiative, since it is both a window onto the Elías Querejeta Film School (EQZE) and a programme that emerges from that very school. Once a month throughout the academic year, students at the EQZE will programme a session at the Tabakalera cinema, during which they will screen films linked to their syllabus, their work as filmmakers and their concerns and interests regarding the art of filmmaking in any of the three specialist areas on which their course focuses: Archives, Curation and Creation.

The aim is to transfer the school's philosophy to the Tabakalera cinema, and to share its vision with the general public. Taking to heart the spirit of rebellion which characterises Jean Vigo's film Zéro de conduite (or Zero for Conduct), which was screened to welcome the first crop of Elías Querejeta Film School students, the Tabakalera cinema theatre will be turned into a place of experimentation and play. Different dynamics will be developed to accompany the screenings, all based on students' group work, reflection and discussions around programming.

Thus, students will become active agents in Tabakalera's film screening programme, and will contribute, with their own discourses, to the shared public screen project in which the Elías Querejeta Film School already participates.

Programme

The person charged with initiating the cycle is María Antón Cabot, a student on the Creation course. Following her première in DOK Leipzig and her appearance at the Seville European Film Festival, on 26 January she will screen her debut feature '<3' (in the image), a documentary which infiltrates the trees and fountains of Madrid's Retiro Park to ask the young people there about love. The director will be present during the session and will share her creative process and influences with the audience.

In February and March, the students (now also programmers) will show the public the working processes they follow through two films. Firstly, in February, they will screen '★' (2018), by Johann Lurf, a collection of star sequences which aims to prompt viewers to think about the practice of making video essays. Then, in March, students on the Archive and Curation course run by the EQZE will chart the latest progress made in the research project 'Women's past is always present', which focuses on the collection of feminist films owned by the London-based distributing firm Cinenova.

All the sessions of 'Eskolatik' will be accompanied by an explanatory sheet and will include presentations, colloquia and other methods for encouraging viewers to participate in the intense experience being offered by the students. The ultimate aim is, in the words of Alain Bergala, 'to take the personal experience out of the personal domain to one that is more universal than the experience of our small selves, in the here and now'.