Films restored at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola 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.

Audiovisual installation in the Plaza space (Tabakalera).

Audiovisual installation in the Nave 2 hall (Tabakalera).

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in Spanish.

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in Spanish.

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in Spanish.

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in Spanish.

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in Spanish.

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in Basque and English.

A habitable film program

Arriving on a deserted island is a particular experience. What awaits us far from the mainland? The anguish of loneliness? The dream of liberation? An island, whether real or imaginary, is a place to begin again.

This new beginning is the starting point for this film programme, which takes place in the Tabakalera cinema. After all, the cinema screen is also an island that welcomes and unites – that opens the way to new possibilities. The curated films explore the notion of residing in a space, forging collective existence, and transcending isolation for self-discovery.

The programme, developed collectively by the group of Film Curating Studies of the 2023-2024 promotion of Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, consists of films by artists such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sílvia das Fadas and Sharon Lockhart. Moreover, two installations centered on Isla Santa Clara and Isla de los Faisanes accompany the event: Lika by Deva Pereda and ODOYÁ IS NOT HERE!, by Ana Júlia Silvino.

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera). O.V. with subtitles in English and Spanish.

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in English and Spanish.

Female Argentinian filmmakers

Film program (Kontadores).

Female Argentinian filmmakers

Film program (Kontadores).

Female Argentinian filmmakers

Film program (Kontadores).

Female Argentinian filmmakers

Film program (Kontadores).

Female Argentinian filmmakers

Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola and the Kontadores Youth Centre are co-organising a film season dedicated to female Argentinian filmmakers. The season will take place in San Sebastián over the course of four Fridays in October and November this year (20 October to 10 November 2023). The season, which is titled ‘Dejemos que la casa se ensucie. Ciclo de Cineastas argentinas’ (Let the house get dirty. Female Argentinian filmmakers), explores the country's contemporary cinema from a feminist and intergenerational perspective, focusing on filmmakers such as María Alché, Melisa Liebenthal and Clarisa Navas, and establishing a dialogue with works by other key female figures in the world of film, such as María Luisa Bemberg, Lucrecia Martel, Albertina Carri and Narcisa Hirsch.

Liminal cinema, bodies and spaces

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in English and Spanish.

Liminal cinema, bodies and spaces

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in English and Spanish.

Liminal cinema, bodies and spaces

Film projection and performance in Z hall (Tabakalera).

Liminal cinema, bodies and spaces

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in Spanish.

Liminal cinema, bodies and spaces

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in Spanish.

Liminal cinema, bodies and spaces

Audiovisual installation in the Nave 2 hall (Tabakalera).

Liminal cinema, bodies and spaces

exÓRBITA  explores the absence of limits, transitionality and fluidity in contemporary identities, and how the latter are formed as a result of the transit of bodies through spaces. At the same time, questions are asked about the forms that can be adopted by the passage through rituality, dance, the body in movement and the cinematographic space itself. To this end, the programming oscillates between three different forms: cinema screens, audiovisual installations and live dance.

Liminal cinema, bodies and spaces

Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).

O.V. with subtitles in English and Basque.

Cartografía de un cine comprometido

This programme moves through different flashpoints where film served a cause that has led to a violent conflict. To do this, "Arming the camera" will trace out a map illustrating these battles, outlining a path to help us reflect on the connections between social and political conflicts and the mechanics of divergent film production, both in terms of aesthetics and narrative.

Santos Zunzunegui

What would a running history of cinema be like if it revisited its sources again and again so as to be continually rewritten? We've asked Santos Zunzunegui –professor, historian and screenwriter– to make his personal selection of films from the history of the cinema so that, from that list of titles, (titles which are, to a greater or lesser extent, canonical, personal, profound, chronological) a certain "common ground" may be found to continue reflecting on the possible and impossible histories of the cinema.These sessions are part of EQZE's academic syllabus; therefore, all screenings will be accompanied by a prior presentation/lecture.

The San Sebastian Festival, the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE) and Artium, the Basque Museum-Centre of Contemporary Art in Vitoria-Gasteiz, will present the exhibition entitled The Festival has had 24 editions: We don't like it, running from September 9 until December 8. The show will focus on the San Sebastian Festival of 1977, the first to take place after management of the event was transferred to the city of San Sebastian.

This Summer Course proposes an introduction to festival studies, establishing dialogues between the past, present and future. On the one hand, the talks will make a historical analysis of different international film festivals and their relationship with the main contemporary social and political transformations.

Santos Zunzunegui

What would a running history of cinema be like if it revisited its sources again and again so as to be continually rewritten? We've asked Santos Zunzunegui –professor, historian and screenwriter– to make his personal selection of films from the history of the cinema so that, from that list of titles, (titles which are, to a greater or lesser extent, canonical, personal, profound, chronological) a certain "common ground" may be found to continue reflecting on the possible and impossible histories of the cinema.These sessions are part of EQZE's academic syllabus; therefore, all screenings will be accompanied by a prior presentation/lecture.

Presentation by Nikolai Izvolov

The Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov made his film debut with The Anniversary of the Revolution (1918), celebrating the first anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia and characterized by his distinctive style of filmmaking based on the principle of montage.

Presented by Ricardo Matos Cabo

Ogawa Shinsuke’s epic telling of the threat that bears down over a community after four years of conflict is a cutting and profound declaration of this fight—and one which pays tribute to civilians.

Michael Snow's Wavelenght became an emblematic piece in a cinema that thinks about its own language. Space and time, light and duration...

Menchu Gutiérrez

Based on fragments from her book, "Siete pasos más tarde" (Seven steps later), in these talks Menchu Gutiérrez explores some of the ways in which poetry has dealt with the calculation of time: from heartbeats to bell peals and from cock crows to the melting wax on a candle. This accomplished writer pauses at the thresholds of time and wanders round its cloisters, dwelling on experiences far removed from official clocks to offer a poetic inventory of times grown inside and outside of time itself.

Presentation by Manuel Asín and Jean-Claude Rousseau

The structure of La Vallée close (Jean-Claude Rousseau, 1995) was inspired by the sestina—the most challenging type of stanza for Late Middle Age and Renaissance poets. The plot revolves around blocks of image and sound and could be likened to a great love story, such as that between Petrarch and Laura.

Presentation by Erika Balsom

Line Describing a Cone (Anthony McCall, 1973) probes the boundaries between film and sculpture, light and dark, materiality and immateriality. As McCall remarked in 1974: "The film exists only in the present: the moment of projection...".

Presented by Mark Webber

Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928-92) was one of the most original filmmakers to emerge in post-war American cinema. His films, which encompass mythic themes, portraiture and studies of landscape and architecture, are celebrated for their extraordinary creativity, the sensuous use of colour and innovations in cinematic form. By employing complex editing techniques and spontaneous in-camera superimposition, he sought to unlock the mystery and energy contained within the single frame.

Santos Zunzunegui

What would a running history of cinema be like if it revisited its sources again and again so as to be continually rewritten? We've asked Santos Zunzunegui –professor, historian and screenwriter– to make his personal selection of films from the history of the cinema so that, from that list of titles, (titles which are, to a greater or lesser extent, canonical, personal, profound, chronological) a certain "common ground" may be found to continue reflecting on the possible and impossible histories of the cinema.These sessions are part of EQZE's academic syllabus; therefore, all screenings will be accompanied by a prior presentation/lecture.

Work sessions

Work session researching the creative use of technology in cinema.

Second conference

Second conference focused on the listening of unreleased recordings of the Russian filmmaker.

Hours: 11:00 - 14:00 / 16:00 - 19:00

A Half-Century of Showing Avant-garde Cinema

EQZE has suggested that the american historian should choose an ideal programme that might illustrate his 50 years as a programmer, curator, critic and spectator. The result is, at the same time, a crash course in experimental cinema, and an autobiographical overview of the life of an essential figure in contemporary cinema and an anthology of the very best experimental cinema, with films from 1968 to 1998.

Cycle

According to the British critic Frank Kermode, one of the basic conditions for a work to reach the "classic" category is the degree of "patience", or timelessness, that the text has. That is to say, the ability for successive generations, beyond the author's contemporaries, to take interest in the text and find reasons for identification and interpretation therein. That reflection is relevant when considering a filmmaker like Andréi Tarkovski, whose work has not ceased to be shown on a regular basis in cinemas around the world since he passed away in 1986.

Cycle

I think of a tiger. A sparkling fire. A lion. A labyrinth. The origin of stories. How Argentinian cinema became in the late 90’s a place where stories, images and sounds took a new form. How that new cinema amazed film festivals around the world, in the same way as a tiger, a fire, a lion looking at the camera could amaze us. Now, the primary question: Where did all this come from?

Cycle

This Focus could be called “Waiting for Zama”. Because it has been almost ten years since the last film by Lucrecia Martel. During this time, she went from being a young, little-known director who surprised Berlin with her directorial début -and established a new line to be followed in Argentine cinema-, to becoming a cult director with her own signature style in the international independent film circuit.

First conference

First conference focused on the listening of unreleased recordings of the Russian filmmaker.

Hours: 10:30 - 14:00 / 16:00 - 19:00

A journey through orphan films, amateur films and the concept of authorship

EQZE will open up its facilities and give it the form of a gallery hall to host an anthological exhibition of anonymous, orphan and amateur films throughout the history of cinema. The purpose of the project is to identify this "hidden side of cinema" made up of home and amateur films, films with no clear authorship and films that have been abandoned, are incomplete, silenced or not designed for public viewing, shedding light on the material, commercial, cultural and historical reasons that lead to a film being forgotten with no apparent authorship.

International seminar on amateur films and the concept of authorship

Based around the idea of anonymity and the exploration of film archives from this point of view, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola has convened an international seminar on October 26, 27 and 28 on the amateur cinema, films “without names” and the concept of authorship. The seminar, which is open to the general public, will bring together specialists, curators, visual artists, filmmakers and academics working on orphan films and secrets of the archives. All of the sessions are designed as mixed sessions and illustrated lectures with short screenings.