Camilo Restrepo to teach a workshop at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola

The sixth module of the Elías Querejeta Film School's academic syllabus for the 2020-2021 academic year, which begins on 17 August, will include a series of workshops in which three active filmmakers (Camilo Restrepo, Lorena Bordigoni and Esther Urlus) will share their experiences with students.

The first workshop in the module (17-21 August) will be run by the Colombian filmmaker Camilo Restrepo (Medellin, 1973). A plastic artist by training and a self-taught filmmaker, Restrepo does not approach his projects in a classic manner; for him, film is formally embodied right from its very conception and progresses with the composition of sounds and images following a spatial order inherited from painting. During the workshop, Restrepo will encourage students to examine the audiovisual architecture that underpins his works, inviting them to adopt his methodology in their own projects.

Born in Medellin (Colombia) in 1975, Camilo Restrepo has lived and worked in Paris (France) since 1999. He has a Master's in Plastic Art from the National University of Colombia (1998) and l’École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2004). His films have been screened at some of the world's most important film festivals (Cannes, Berlinale, Toronto FF, Rotterdam FF, Viennale, New York FF, New Directors/New Films) and have been analysed many times by the specialist press and journal publications (CinemaScope, Variety, Cineuropa, Desistfilm, The Hollywood reporter, Sight & Sound, Screendaily). In 2015, his short film 'La Impresión de una guerra' won the Pardino d’argento at the Locarno Film Festival. The following year he won the same prize with 'Cilaos'. His latest short film to date, 'La Bouche', premièred at the Cannes Director’s Fortnight in 2017. His first feature film, 'Los Conductos', was included in the new international competitive section of the Berlinate 2020: Encounters, winning the award for best début work.

Within the field of archive and preservation, Lorena Bordigoni (Buenos Aires), specialist in restoration and technique in film restoration projects of filmmakers such as Walter Ruttmann, John Ford, Manoel de Oliveira and for institutions such as the Cinémathèque Suisse, MOMA, Cinemateca Portuguesa or the British Film Institute / BFI will give "Treatments of the image", a workshop (24-26 August) on digital restoration with the software Diamant.

The third workshop, entitled 'The art of primitive emulsions' (24-17 August), focuses on the production of home-made photochemical emulsions.  The workshop will be run by visual artist and chairperson of WORM Filmwerkplaats, Esther Urlus (Rotterdam, 1966), and is aimed at students interested in the history of the materiality of film, although it will also be of interest to filmmakers who view film not just as a means of storage, but also as a material that actively forms and distorts ideas, images and sounds.

The workshops are open to students from all three specialist courses (Archives, Curation and Creation).

Festival studies

The programme for the August-September period also includes two activities linked to the research project 'Zinemaldia 70. Todas las historias posibles', carried out jointly by the EQZE and the San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF). From 1 to 3 September, the course entitled 'A critical glance at film festivals: history, culture and politics' will be held within the framework of the University of the Basque Country summer courses. Organised by the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, in collaboration with the EQZE and the SSIFF, this course aims to analyse the history of different international film festivals and their relationship with key social and political transformations. Looking beyond more superficial media interpretations, which tend to see only the glitter and the glamour, the course aims to provide a meeting point for researchers and professionals from the film world–a place where they can come together to debate and deliberate on festivals from a critical, historical and comparative perspective. All places on the course (which is open to the general public) have already been filled, although anyone who is interested in attending can put their name down on the waiting list.

The following week, on 9 September, the exhibition entitled 'The Festival has run for 24 years. We don't like it' will officially open in Artium (Vitoria-Gasteiz). The exhibition focuses on the 1977 San Sebastián Festival, the first one held after management of the event was transferred to the city of San Sebastián. That same year, the festival celebrated its 25th anniversary, although more than a celebration, that year's event became a space and a platform for political struggle and demands. Using archive materials (photographs, posters and illustrations, etc.) from the SSIFF collection, this exhibition takes a closer look at this year and the radical changes it ushered in. The exhibition, which is linked to the showing of the museum's own collection, entitled 'Artium Zeru bat, hamaika bide. Prácticas artísticas en el País Vasco entre 1977 y 2002' will run until 8 December.

The first part of module 6, which concludes at the end of December with the presentation of the end-of-course projects carried out by students from the second intake year, will also feature the a new session of the Eskolatik cycle curated by the students of EQZE (‘Danses macabres, squelettes et autres fantaisies’ by Rita Azevedo, on August 28), as well as the two last screenings of the second part of the 'Historias de cine' cycle by Santos Zunzunegui ('Two-Lane Blacktop' by Monte Hellman on 22 August and 'Ukigumo' by Mikio Naruse on 9 September).

The 2020-2021 academic year begins on 14 September, with the third intake year at the Elías Querejeta Film School.

* Picture: San Sebastian Film Festival