Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola to present a publication, a film cycle featuring films restored at the school and a programme of shorts at the San Sebastián Film Festival

The work carried out in the different areas of study promoted by Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola will feature prominently in the 72nd San Sebastián International Film Festival. The school’s productivity, which is fruit of its intense research activities, the projects carried out by students and alumni, and the school’s own initiative, is materialised through several different proposals that reveal EQZE’s unique approach to cinema.

La Chambre d’ombres (The Room of Shadows) is a project consisting of a publication and a film of the same name, both created by Camilo Restrepo (Medellin, 1975) in response to an invitation extended by EQZE. The idea stems from a seminar given by the Colombian filmmaker during the 2019-2020 academic year. After the end of the seminar, the filmmaker was invited by the school to produce a work linked to the theme of the workshop, which was to question the context in which images and representations of the world arise and the impact they have on reality.

To this end, the project traces a pathway through numerous works of art, films, books and photographs that illustrate how art and its diverse manifestations have been used to establish economic interests, promote ideologies, implement strategies of colonisation and exercise all kinds of social and cultural discrimination. As Camilo Restrepo himself says, the works highlight the mechanics of domination, but also indicate possible tools and pathways for emancipation. Francis Alÿs, Fernando Botero, Bertolt Brecht, Guy Debord, Paul Klee, Alexander Kluge, Milan Kundera, Chris Marker, Susan Meiselas, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sophie Ristelhueber, Martha Rosler, Deborah Stratman, Kidlat Tahimik, René Vautier and Robert Walser are just some of the artists cited and referenced in La Chambre d’ombres.

Both the publication and the film (a mise en scène of the 26 works that make up the book) explore narrative forms such as essay and fiction and make use of visual elements such as drawings, photographs, film and the moving image.

Camilo Restrepo has lived and worked in Paris since 1999. His films have been screened at many different festivals, including Cannes (La Quinzaine des cinéastes), Toronto and New York. He has twice been awarded the Pardino d’Argento at the Locarno Festival. In 2020, his first feature film, Los Conductos, won the Best First Feature Award in the Encounters section of the Berlinale.

La Chambre d’ombres will be screened on 27 September.

A film restoration laboratory

Films restored at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola together make up the season ‘En la otra isla’ [On the other island], organised jointly by the SSIFF and the Basque Film Archive. The season, which forms part of the festival’s Klasikoak programme, includes a selection of Cuban films made between the 1960s and the 1980s that features little-know works by filmmakers such as Sara Gómez and Nicolás Guillén Landrián, key figures such as Santiago Álvarez and amateur movie makers working on the fringes of the institutional structure.

EQZE contributed to the conceptualisation of the season, which emerged from one of its research projects: ‘Second hand. Reuse and deviations of Ibero-American cinema’. It also curated the 18 films that make up the season, several of which were restored in its laboratories. Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola was also involved in restoring the films loaned to the season by the group Archivistas Salvajes, whose members include several students from the school.

The rest of the films were restored as a result of a collaborative effort between Cuban (Cinemateca de Cuba, ICAIC, filmmakers and private individuals) and international institutions such as Vulnerable Media Lab / Queen’s University (Canada), Arsenal-Institut für Film und Videokunst (Germany), Altahabana Films (Madrid) and the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (France). The season will be held between 23 and 27 September in the Elías Querejeta Film School’s new space in Tabakalera, located on the ground floor.

Memorias sinvergüenzas

On Wednesday 25 September, Tabakalera’s audiovisual laboratory will screen 12 short films created within the framework of the ‘Memorias Sinvergüenzas: Reescribiendo la historia queer’ [Shameless memories. Rewriting queer history] workshop, organised by alumnus Alejo Duclós and based on the graduation project he completed within the framework of the Film Curating Studies degree at EQZE. The project aims to support cinematographic creation focused on the queer history of the Basque Country. The programme will form part of the LGBTQIA+ Festival Encounter activities organised by the 25 Sebastiane - Gehitu Award, within the SSIFF’s Industry section.