The 2023-2024 academic year begins for the sixth intake year at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola

Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola has opened its doors to the sixth intake year with a welcome programme for its new group of students. The 2023-2024 academic year starts today and will conclude in fifteen months' time, in December 2024, with the presentation of the assignments carried out at the school. During this first week, which will also see the start of the 71st San Sebastian Festival, initial meetings will be held between students on the three postgraduate courses that make up the school’s current offer (Film Preservation Studies, Film Curating Studies and Filmmaking Studies). Other items on the agenda include the presentation of this year’s syllabus, an introduction to the centre and the institutions and projects that make it up and activities designed to help students get to know the different areas and spaces in Tabakalera.

The students accepted onto the course for the 2023-2024 Academic Year were selected by the school’s Academic Management Team (made up of representatives from the Basque Film Archive, Tabakalera, the San Sebastián Film Festival and EQZE) from among the 215 applications received from thirty different countries during the admissions period (1-28 February). The 46 successful candidates comprise 28 women and 18 men: 4 from the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, 11 from the rest of Spain and 31 from other countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the United States, France, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Switzerland and Venezuela. The mean age of this year’s student group is 30 years.

Their profile is very varied, featuring individuals whose short films, feature films and installations have been premièred and won awards in a variety of festivals, or whose works have been exhibited in museums and galleries. The group also includes graduates in Visual Anthropology, Visual Arts, Audiovisual Communication, Fine Art, Literary Studies, Philosophy, Humanities and Journalism from universities all over the world, film school graduates, university lecturers, specialists in the field of archives and film preservation, curators with extensive experience in production, management and programming in the framework of film festivals, film archives, seasons, programmes and artistic exhibitions and installations, film critics, professionals from the field of film production and distribution and researchers, among others.

For its part, the teaching team working in the three specialist areas includes professionals from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, as well as renowned filmmakers. Guest lecturers who will be coming to the school during the 2023-2024 Academic Year include Rick Prelinger, Reto Kromer, Esther Urlus, Pamela Vizner, Luciano Berriatúa, Carolina Cappa, Dennis Lim, Adrian Martin, Gonzalo de Pedro, Manuel Asín, Beli Martínez, Mariano Llinás, Rita Azevedo, Takashi Makino, Érik Bullot and Catarina Vasconcelos. The team of local faculty features Niko Iturralde, Oskar González, Beatriz Herráez, Xabier Erkizia, Arantza Santesteban, Peio Aguirre, Xanti Salvador, Itziar Okariz and Michel Gaztambide. They will be joined by the team of tutors and professionals from the institutions participating in the project, who also form part of the faculty at the school.

The academic year is organised around six modules of varying duration. The first five modules (September-July) are teaching modules and are conducted face-to-face. The sixth (August-December) is a mixed module (teaching and end-of-course assignment) and is semi face-to-face. Courses last for a total of fifteen months, structured in a circular fashion in order to reflect the philosophy of learning and experience that underpins the entire EQZE initiative. 

The academic year begins four days before the official opening of the 71st San Sebastián International Film Festival, in which students from the fifth and sixth intake groups will enjoy a specific agenda which will include screenings, master-classes, the International Film Students Encounter (Nest) and other activities, as well as gaining an insider's view of how the festival works and is organised. Regular classes at EQZE will commence on 2 October, after the end of the Festival.

Scholarships

A total of 16 students will benefit from the scholarships awarded by the institutions that directly support Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. Twelve students will each receive a grant totalling $3,333 from the Latin American Support Fund, Ibermedia, which has once again selected EQZE within its initiative for Supporting Training Programmes (2022 call). The programme 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 assessment commission responsible for this scholarship programme highlighted, among other aspects, ‘the sound and innovative training system’ offered by the project, which ‘strikes a good balance between theory and practice’. The commission also valued the school’s ‘emphasis on accompanying emerging filmmakers and its aim of generating new cinematographic realities’, a challenge that it described as ‘stimulating’.  Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola is one of only two Spanish institutions (the other being the Community of Madrid Film and Audiovisual School, ECAM) to have received support from the fund within this category. Three students from the province of Gipuzkoa will receive one of the ‘Izango Zara’ grants awarded by the Culture Department of the Provincial Council, which bestows three scholarships worth €2,500 each to cover registration fees, and one Brazilian student will be the recipient of the grant awarded by the Paradiso Project’s Olga Rabinovich Institute (Brazil).

The number of students receiving scholarships may increase at the end of the application process for the ‘Stimulating capacity-building’ grants that form part of the ‘Economic stimuli for cinematographic and audiovisual 2022’, granted by the Peruvian Government’s Ministry of Culture and which aims to help train specialists in the audiovisual and film fields. Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola is one of 4 priority centres in this programme, along with ECAM (Madrid), ESCAC (Barcelona) and EICTV (Cuba).

Created and funded by the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola is a unique educational initiative comprising three postgraduate courses (Film Preservation Studies, Film Curating Studies and Filmmaking Studies), which stem from the specialist knowledge areas of the three institutions involved in its running: the Basque Film Archive, the Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture and the San Sebastian Festival. Since 2019, EQZE has formally been a part of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).