Ibermedia to award Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola $49,994 to establish scholarships for Latin American students

Fourteen students will be awarded scholarships to cover their enrolment fees during the 2022-2023 academic year

The Latin American Support Fund, Ibermedia, has once again selected Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola within its Framework for Supporting Training Programmes (2021 call), which is open to film and television schools, universities, specialist professional education centres, private companies and professional organisations or associations from the entire Latin American audiovisual industry.

The committee charged with awarding grants to training and education programmes highlighted (among other aspects) the ‘ambition and ingenuity’ of the EQZE project, which ‘approaches the contemporary problems of the film world in a unique way’. It also underscored the high quality of the school’s ‘teaching model and the possibilities it offers participants in terms of exploring their creative processes’. The members of the assessment team also mentioned the close ties between EQZE and the San Sebastián International Film Festival, which they believe is a ‘strategic advantage for opening up a channel of communications with the industry and facilitating the circulation of the works generated’. The contents of the postgraduate courses, the teaching staff, the quality of the facilities available and the academic antecedents of the school itself all obtained the maximum possible scores.

After ratifying the resolution published at the beginning of this month, the fund will provide EQZE with $49,994 for establishing scholarships and grants to cover enrolment fees for the 2022-2023 Academic year. The school will distribute the money in the form of fourteen scholarships, each to the value of $3,571, which will be awarded to selected candidates from any of the 23 countries that form part of the programme: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola is one of two schools in Spain (the other being the Madrid Autonomous Community Audiovisual and Film School - ECAM) that have obtained the support of the fund in this category, which includes 14 other training projects also in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Italy, Mexico, Panama, Portugal and Uruguay, selected from a total of 42 initial proposals. The aims of the programme are to foster the training of audiovisual production and business management professionals, promote the use and development of new technologies and aid cooperation and knowledge exchange within the industry.

The Ibermedia programme was established in 1998. Since that time, there have been 30 calls for applications, resulting in support being provided to 996 coproduction projects and 1,085 audiovisual projects under development. Furthermore, almost 3,000 training grants have been awarded to students in 23 different countries. In total, the programme has invested $113 million in grants awarded to nearly 3,200 projects. In 2021, a total of 112 projects benefited from Ibermedia funds as a result of the call in the four categories (coproduction, development, TV show development and training) that accompany the stimulus programme.