History and aesthetics focused on the specific forms of cinema. The subject has a dual, dialectic structure in terms of both content and methodology. It focuses on both the poetics of film and on the histories of film. In relation to the former, it introduces key issues in film theory, with a firm focus on establishing relationships, searching for connections and links to other art forms or philosophical questions. From this perspective, the subject aims to lay the groundwork for certain concepts that will be developed, explored in more complex depth and/or contradicted in Poetika subjects. We will study questions such as the difference between imaginal and imaginary, notions of realism and representation, the dichotomy between tongue and language, and approaches based on phenomenology and reception theories. From a methodological perspective, the aim is for all questions analysed to emanate from the formal operations of cinema itself at the limit of its own existence. In relation to the histories of film, the subject aims to be a space for analysing the problematic aspects of the concept of history itself, introducing the question of how to chart the history of film, based on some of the most important critical writings of the past twenty years. This second dimension takes the form of monographic conversations with film historians. The two parts of the subject are taught in parallel, with constant connections and cross-covers being established.

This course suggests an approach to Basque film. Beginning with an historical contextualization in order to provide the background of the birth and development of Basque film up to the present time, it will carry out a chronological and thematic review of the history of Basque film and will present the most notable Basque filmmakers from its origins to the present day, with particularly close attention to the three (or more) generations of Basque filmmakers who are currently active.

Zinefabrika encompasses the production, management and materialisation of curatorial activity. The subject plunges students into the creative dimension of production, providing them with the skills and abilities they will need as curators to generate cinematographic works. Some issues dealt with in this section include compiling a budget, curating leadership and dealing with artists and filmmakers. Finally, the subject provides firm practical support to graduation projects.

Curatorial thinking and practice, as a specific activity and even a specific profession, developed hand in hand with the emergence of museums, collecting, criticism and the culture of art exhibition during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, the role of the curator has acquired a high degree of artistic responsibility that is, in some cases, comparable to that associated with artistic creation itself. Understanding this process through the most relevant texts and actions is essential to contextualising the incorporation of film into galleries and museums as an exhibition object, particularly from the 21st century onwards. The first part of the subject syllabus focuses on these issues and explores what is, in a graphic sense, identified as expanded film. The second part focuses on the ideation and preparation of the Pedro Costa exhibition at the Tabakalera ICCC, which will open in September 2025 and will be curated by Javier Codesal. Alongside him, with input also from Pedro Costa himself, the more theoretical reflections of the first part of the syllabus will be materialised and turned into an ongoing creative dialogue with the filmmaker.

As well as being a cinematographic, geopolitical, socio-cultural, media and economic crossroads, festivals are themselves the subject of academic study. Essential agents of the audiovisual sector, some with an enormous driving force, festivals are, thanks to the transversal cut they make in the annual calendar of a specific reality, a vantage point for understanding the intertwining of film culture with historical, political, and social variables. This course takes as its starting point a comparative history of film festivals, from the early and changing uses of the term « festival » that circulated with the invention of the cinematograph to the crises, transitions and paradoxes that have shaped the contemporary international circuit. The i mis to develop a critical and multifaceted approach, which will interrogate the festivals from a plurality of points of view: as active agents in the writing of film history, as instruments of cultural diplomacy, as rituals with their own spatial-temporal coordinates, as formations shaped by major contemporary debates (urban transformations, diversity, ecological crisis). Always from a transnational and comparative perspective, the course will pay special attention to the San Sebastian International Film Festival as a case study.

This subject focuses on the new school cinema as the object of its study and academic practice, in order to provoke a collective reflection on theatre screenings. The new facility, which is located in the context of a centre for contemporary culture with a regular programme of events, opens up key debates regarding the specificity and profession of curating. In general, what philosophy should guide the activities of a school cinema? And, in particular, how should this specific school cinema be articulated through what is known as shared screen programming involving Tabakalera, the SSIFF, the Basque Film Archive and Donostia Cultura? And in the local context, how should it impact the map of film screenings in the city? The subject sets students the speculative yet realistic hypothetical task of inventing a cinema. In addition to addressing issues of identity and conceptualisation, the subject also proposes a practical exercise in management and sustainability, focusing on questions linked to the exhibition market, the problem of audiences and economic feasibility. Consequently, in addition to tackling issues linked to programming, the subject also proposes a real exercise in which students must decide upon the identity and management model of a cinema theatre firmly rooted in a specific context. The theatre therefore becomes an experimentation lab for the Film Curating course and the school in general.

The subject has a historic structure and adopts a multidisciplinary approach based on different yet complementary knowledge areas, including media archaeology, sociology and the aesthetics of film.  It is an approach to the idea of the screen as a vehicle for the culture of the last century. It is based on technological-audiovisual media archaeology: spaces, technology and reproduction formats in the history of film, media archaeology and the evolution of exhibition spaces. It carries out a sociological study of spectator habitats, adopting a quantitative approach to exhibition and the places of film: the sociology and psychology of audiences. It also explores reception theories in art and literature, as well as film. And it concludes with an aesthetic approach to screens today, as a format for any cultural, written, visual or sound product.

Head of research for the Transnational Media Arts and Culture programme and director of the Master’s in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University (Canada), Masha Salazkina will undertake a research stay in February 2025. Her work incorporates transnational approaches to film theory and cultural history, focusing on the historical relationship between the socialist bloc and countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Her first book In Excess: Sergei Eisenstein's Mexico situates Eisenstein's unfinished Mexican project and his theoretical writings in the broader context of post-revolutionary Mexico and the global cultures of modernity. Her latest book, World Socialist Cinema: Alliances, Affinities and Solidarities in the Global Cold War, looks at the history of the Tashkent festival between 1960 and 1980, a festival focusing on the cinemas of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The book defends the socialist cinema of the period as a global phenomenon whose cultural and geopolitical networks spanned three continents. During her stay, and among other activities, Masha Salazkina will teach the subject Film Festival Studies.

This subject conducts a detailed examination of the various film programming paradigms, both those emerging on a regular basis over time (in archives and permanent establishments) and those concentrated in certain periods (one-off events and festivals). The subject features a historic/conceptual journey which pauses to dwell on specific creators, spaces and projects which have turned programming into an art of “putting on films”. It will also provide the students with the necessary tools to engage critically with different programming situations and to be able respond to practical and ethical challenges that sometimes exist when working with archival images and sound material. We will look the relation between programming, knowledge and writing of film history.

This is a theoretical and practical course around writing about cinema. It is divided into three blocks; the first will introduce students to some notions of critical writing, description of images and sounds, definition of concepts and the use of bibliographic tools; the second block will be dedicated to the essay, criticism and the editor work, and the third will be focused on working with texts, documents and publications on cinema.

This course addresses the production of critical thinking about cinema through writing with images and sounds. The classes offer an introduction to different ideas, practices, and film currents that can be considered as precursors of the audiovisual essay; a reflection on the role of editing and the different methods of recombination when articulating a reflection about cinema; an analysis of individual pieces with the intention of understanding the different processes and mechanisms that are put in place when preparing an audiovisual essay. The goal of this course is to provide students with a solid foundation that allows them—as spectators—to understand, analyze, and evaluate audiovisual essays; and—as potential filmmakers—to face the production of this kind of pieces. With this goal in mind, the course is divided into theoretical and practical classes.

Making a botanical film is first and foremost a work of patience and care. Taking as a starting point Stan Brakhage's off-camera filmmaking methods in films such as Mothlight and The Garden of Earthly Delights, we will explore some techniques and processes for the creation of a filmic herbarium.  

Somewhere between the techniques of filmmakers and botanists, we will address the collection of specimens, methods of working on film and the preparation of materials for exhibition, with the aim of creating a collective piece and, above all, to open up the methodology to new proposals.

This workshop is aimed at people from any background who want to explore alternative methods of filmmaking. Cinebotanicals are, after all, accessible proposals that allow the reuse of filmic support materials and tools to give rise to a piece whose control always remains in the hands of nature itself.

In this workshop we learn how to develop film mechanically on a film developing train. Developing film allows you to understand and appreciate every step of the photographic process, from the capture of the image to its materialisation into a visible negative.  
 
You will learn to control chemicals, exposure times and temperatures and you will develop precise technical skills, but it is not only a technical exercise, it is also an emotional and artistic experience.
 
In addition, by learning this technique, you join a long tradition of artists and technicians who have developed and perfected the art of analogue photography and will gain a richer perspective on the tradition of the medium, from the hand developing workshops to its professionalisation and final mechanisation.

The camera obscura (La Chambre d'ombres) is an absolutely unique project that includes a publication and a film of the same name, both by Camilo Restrepo and produced by EQZE. Its origins go back to a seminar that Camilo Restrepo gave to EQZE students in the 2019-2020 academic year. After completing the seminar, the filmmaker was invited by the centre to produce a work related to the object of study of the workshop: the questioning of the context in which an image, a representation or a vision of the world arises, and the impact that these have on reality. Having completed those two works (a book and a film), The Camera Obscura (La Chambre d'ombres) returns to its origin in the form of a workshop, closing the circle that began four years ago.

Using a case study format, this course engages students with complicated contemporary artworks in order to understand the primary issues and emerging strategies for the conservation of media art. Artists use a wide variety of audiovisual formats and technologies to create complex installations that are fascinating to study. Examples range from artworks using obsolete components like TVs (cathode ray tubes) to multi-channel synchronized works, works using game engines or custom code, or works that pull data from the Internet. These artworks typically contain many interrelated parts that must be deciphered and documented to ensure the artwork will function in the future in a manner that is faithful to the artist's vision. The course combines curatorial and conservation perspectives in the study of several artworks held in the collection of a local contemporary art museum. Students research exhibition histories, consult institutional files, examine an artwork's component parts, and discuss the artworks with museum staff. In the process, a great deal will be learned about the interpretation, care, and conservation of artworks in museums and archives. Students will produce short reports for the partner institution on the artworks studied. The reports will include a description of the work (content, aesthetic, and technical aspects), a statement of risks, and a set of recommended conservation strategies.

This workshop looks at the production of home-made photochemical emulsions. Although it is based on film archaeology, it explores many contemporary creative questions. It is a workshop for those interested in the history of materiality, although it will also appeal to filmmakers curious about film not just as a means of storing their ideas, images and soundtracks, but rather as a material that actively forms and distorts these ideas, images and sounds.

This subject offers EQZE students the opportunity of taking on an exploratory role (creative, researcher, curator) within archive-related film and audio-visual practice, bearing the three tenses of cinema in mind: the past, linked to memory; the present, linked to action; and the future, linked to planning and foresight. This philosophical proposal aims to prompt students to think about historical and contemporary cultural and political problems from the perspective of the conceptual framework offered by the concepts of profanation (Giorgio Agamben) and the creative act (Gilles Deleuze).

The aim is to observe, reflect on and question the 'ritual' uses of archives in order to then subvert them through critical and/or playful practices. We will also analyse the practices of audiovisual creation, research and curation as potential means of expressing creative ideas, in the sense attached to them by Deleuze. From this perspective, students taking the subject are invited to question their own practices and ideas and view them as potential spaces for resistance or 'counterinformation'.

The last stage in the gradual acquisition of knowledge, skills and abilities linked to the processing of photochemical films. The subject introduces students to the techniques and workflows of a professional laboratory through the practical handling of specific technologies for developing (16 mm colour and black and white), colour correction and copying. By acquiring these practical skills, students also help maintain inter-generational knowledge of the film culture and industry that would otherwise be lost. Furthermore, those on the course can assume responsibility for processing the film materials generated at the school, thereby keeping the EQZELab service active.

The subject aims to prompt a reflection on language, performance and action, both in their specificity and in relation to the limits that define them. Special attention will be paid to the meeting points between different knowledge areas of artistic practice, the exploration of register and performance, action, the indicial quality of the performative register and its transformation into other languages, from drawing to sculpture, text, documents and video, etc. This will enable the definition of a landscape that will allow us to become aware of the body as a sign, as well as the positional value of language and its performative dimension. The embodiment of corporal signs, sounds, words and their transformative and political potential.

Seventy years ago, filmmakers and critics everywhere started to use the French term mise en scène as shorthand for the process of direction. The term remains useful today, but only if we expand its definition far past its classical, theatrical & pictorial origins, and consider the many changing dimensions of audiovisual history, including sound and digital post-production processes. This course is not devoted to the analysis of complete films, nor to the standard interpretation of themes and meanings in cinema. Rather, it is dedicated to looking closely at concentrated parts of films & other new media pieces in order to discern, as best we can, the way that their makers conceived the approach, the logic, the structure, the organisation of elements in the work (which is never exactly the same from one work to the next). How is the style and form of an audiovisual work (in film, TV or digital art) conceived from the inside out?

The Observatory is involved throughout the first trimester of the academic year, providing a space for training, practice and research in sound. In addition to pre-established themes, it can also adapt to the specific needs of group members at any time, linking into practical work and projects under development.

This course, which takes place the first four modules, seeks to confront students with the nature of their film and the methodology of approach. Where does your film come from? What is it about? What emotion is it trying to arouse? Can it be told in images? How does the author want the spectator to feel at the end of the screening? From these and other issues, the course is intended to initiate – or get back to, in some cases – the processes of reflection and development of the work process that will culminate in the film. The course basically focuses on three points: first, working with the Starting Point or origin of the film as the soul of the creative journey; second, the need to expand the scope of this journey from concrete elements capable of adding complexity and depth to the film and, finally, the concreteness of the project from the writing stage.

This subject focuses on the audio-visual of artist in the context of the Basque Country. It takes as its starting point the fluid relationships of the moving image and the displacements between cinema and artistic practices, especially those that take places in the art system: museums, art centres and galleries, or in the outskirts of the cinema itself. Based on a series of case studies, viewings, outings and guests, the subject examines the local landscape of audio-visual creation.

In the origins of film, the cameras used to record images were also used to project them. The operator who worked the crank to capture the moment was also the person in charge of making the gear turn so that, once developed, the images could be projected onto a screen. At what point did these two functions (and these two cameras) separate? And, above all, what were the consequences of this? Why is it that the profession of projectionist is now (and has been practically since the mechanisation of the reel drive and the creation of distribution circuits) so far removed from that of camera operator? The statement made by Henri Langlois, founder of Cinématèque Française, that his film camera was his projection camera, highlights the importance of reclaiming the art of projecting.

The workshop starts with an introduction to the equipment used for sound recording, mainly using the materials available at the school. Students will acquire both technical and practical knowledge. The second part focuses on how to coordinate the workflow in order to send and receive audio files, edit them and deliver the mix. The overall idea is to help students become familiar with the tools used to improve and enlarge the creative space.

Right from the very beginning, cinema has always been a colour medium, and many different processes have been developed to add a touch of colour to black and white images. From chemical tints and tones to manual painting, the development of Technicolor and modern emulsions, film has always used colour as a means of artistic expression. In this workshop we explore the original colour of film and the aesthetic possibilities that these techniques offer to filmmakers and artists.