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Important presence of Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola students at the 69th San Sebastián Film Festival

Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE) will be well represented at the 69th San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF). A large number of projects developed at EQZE by students from the first three intake years will be featured in the multiple activities scheduled for this year.

09/17/2021
Ana Cristina Barragán, Amat Vallmajor and Artur-Pol Camprubí will present their new films at the WIP Latam, WIP Europa and Nest Film Students sections of the festival
Important presence of Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola students at the 69th San Sebastián Film Festival

Marina Palacio and Magdalena Orellana, from Ikusmira Berriak, will talk to the industry about the progress of their projects

Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE) will be well represented at the 69th San Sebastián International Film Festival (SSIFF). A large number of projects developed at EQZE by students from the first three intake years will be featured in the multiple activities scheduled for this year.

Ana Cristina Barragán (Quito, 1987), a student from the third EQZE intake year, will present her second feature, entitled ‘La piel pulpo’ in the WIP Latam section. Her first film, ‘Alba’ (2016), won the Lions Film Award at the Rotterdam Festival and received a Special Mention from the Jury in the Horizontes Latinos section of the 2016 SSIFF. For his part, Amat Vallmajor del Pozo (Verges, 1996), an alumnus from the school’s second intake year, will participate in the WIP Europa section with his opera prima ‘Misión a Marte’. For the third year running, the film school students section, Nest Film Students, will include a film presented by EQZE. This year, the film is ‘Podul de Piatrâ’, directed by Artur-Pol Camprubí (Girona, 1991), a student from the third intake year. This short was selected, along with another fourteen films, from among the 310 candidates proposed by 157 schools from 42 countries.

Another two projects currently under development, both stemming from the latest edition of the Ikusmira Berriak programme, will also be presented at the SSIFF. Marina Palacio and Magdalena Orellana, alumni from the first and second intake years, will be talking respectively to industry representatives about their projects ‘Y así seguirán las cosas’ and ‘Hasta que el lugar se haga improbable’, within the framework of the second period of the residency organised by the festival, Tabakalera and the EQZE. Ikusmira Berriak is also the source of another four films that will be screened during the festival: ‘El gran movimiento’ by Kiro Russo, ‘Fantasía’ by Aitor Merino, ‘Pornomelancolía’ by Manuel Abramovich and ‘Eles transportan a morte’ by Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado (both teachers at EQZE). The four films will be featured in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera, WIP Latam and Zabaltegi-Tabakalera sections of the festival, respectively.

As part of the special programme designed to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Nest Film Students (the section dedicated to shorts by film students), Óscar Vincentelli and Inês de Lima, both graduates from EQZE, from the first and second intake years, respectively, will participate in an encounter with Kiro Russo and Mina Fitzpatrick (also Ikusmira Berriak residents). For their part, Marcela Hinojosa and Noemi Cuetos, both alumni from the second intake year, will publish a research project that offers a historical overview of this festival section. Hinojosa and Cuetos have also curated a series of ten shorts, selected from among the films that have competed in the last 20 editions of Nest. The films will be screen in October and November.

Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola will also be present at the SSIFF through Vitrine Filmes, a film distribution and production company set up in Brazil in 2010 by Silvia Cruz (Brazil, 1982), a student from the school's second intake year, which, with the collaboration of Julieta Juncadella, an alumna from the first intake year, has opened up an office in Gipuzkoa. This extension of the parent distribution company, which was ‘incubated’ in the framework of the school’s Film Curating Studies course, will be presenting two films at this year’s SSIFF: ‘Azor’ by Andreas Fontana, which will compete in the Horizontes Latinos section, and the previously mentioned ‘Fantasía’, which will be screened outside the competition. Another production company developed in the framework of EQZE by students studying at the school is Muxika Zinema, founded by Flor de Múgica, a student from the third intake group, and Michael Wahrmann (a resident with the fifth Ikusmira Berriak programme). This new company will be accompanying the presentation of ‘Misión a Marte’ within the WIP Europa section.

Alumni and students from the school will also be participating in other areas of the festival (industry, programming, technical department, communications and public relations, to name but a few), both through the professional work experience programme and as the result of direct contracts with the SSIFF. A total of twenty students from all three intake years will be participating in this way in the festival.

The 69th San Sebastián International Film Festival will commence four days after the start of the 2021-2022 academic year at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. Students from the third and fourth intake years (i.e., new incoming students starting this year) will follow a specific agenda, attending screenings, master classes and the Nest International Film Students Meeting and engaging in other activities, as well as gaining a first-hand glimpse into the festival's inner workings and organisation.

Created and funded by the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, EQZE is a unique educational initiative comprising three postgraduate courses (Film Preservation Studies, Film Curating and Filmmaking Studies) which stem from the specialist knowledge areas of the three film institutions involved in its running: the Basque Film Archive, the Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture and the San Sebastian Film Festival. EQZE is formally part of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).