El SSIFF y EQZE presentan "Artxiboa", la web que recoge el fondo documental del Festival de San Sebastián

More than 4,000 documents in the San Sebastian Festival’s historic archives (correspondence, photographs, posters, dailies…) are available from today, 13 December 2022, for online and on-site consultation in the website artxiboa.sansebastianfestival.com. This new website also offers a catalogue of more than 27,000 fact sheets on materials available for consultation on request by professionals and specialists in the fields of education and research. The page offers digitalised copies of more than 3,000 photographs from the Festival’s own collection and that of the Kutxateka; 711 copies of the Festival daily (now going by the name of Zinemaldia), of which we have issues dating from 1954 until today; some 350 posters from almost all of its editions, and selected material from the General and Press Archive. The digitalised copies available on the website are published under the licence Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, except in cases which, for copyright reasons, require publication under more restrictive licences.

The website is made up of different sections covering the Festival’s 70 years of existence. In the "70 editions" section, visitors can consult data on the different editions, year by year; "Research" includes the chapter Historiak – informative essays written based on the archive materials – plus digital copies of the photography exhibitions held to date and information on the public programmes promoted by "Zinemaldia 70"; "Digital collections" encompasses the section "Document of the month", the Festival dailies, posters and photographs; "Catalog" includes search engines for the general public and professionals; and "Visit and use the archive" "gives information on how to access the material both online and in person. 

In keeping with the title of the project, "Zinemaldia 70: all possible stories", every time a person enters the website, the welcome page will bring up a new item from a wide variety of archive materials. This means that the website presentation will never be the same twice given the endless combinations that already exist and are set to increase as the archive grows with the addition of new digital material. At the end of this first phase, the team will continue to work on processes to conserve, catalogue and digitalise the collection, with the future inclusion of audiovisual material, while promoting research and critical thought on the subject of the archive itself.

On the other hand, the website contains an inventory enabling the consultation of more than 27,000 catalogued entries corresponding to objects conserved in the archive and which, independently of whether or not they have been digitised, come with an adequate description and their location. These materials (mainly administrative documents and correspondence, press files, photographs and posters) can be examined in person from January 2023 in the reading room of the Filmoteca Vasca. This option is exclusively reserved for education and research professionals who request a visit through the website.

Public presentation in San Sebastian

On Saturday 17, the Tabakalera cinema will host the public presentation of the San Sebastian Festival archive. At 16:30 there will be a conversation moderated by the head of the research project, Pablo La Parra Pérez, together with Maialen Beloki (San Sebastian Festival), Carlos Muguiro (EQZE), Arantza Mariskal (Medialab Tabakalera), Joxean Fernández (Filmoteca Vasca) and Ane Abalde (Kutxa Fundazioa). Following this, at 17:15, the restorers Lorena Soria, Andrea Sánchez and Anna Ferrer Homs will participate in a round table, explaining the key techniques involved in the process of conserving and cataloguing the collection. Irati Crespo, coordinator of the project "Zinemaldia 70", will give a practical explanation of how to access the Festival’s collection in her talk "An open archive: access, consultation and use of materials". Pablo La Parra will then give a talk entitled "A living archive, research and thought". The event will end with screening of the short film ¿Cuáles son nuestros años?, by Clara Rus, one of the first year of students to graduate at the EQZE, documenting the first meeting of the EQZE students with the Festival archive in 2018.