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.

Archives differ in terms of their identity-based characteristics and the context surrounding them, something that inevitably impacts how the collections are managed. This subject analyses the different variables affecting audiovisual archives and the methodologies they apply. We will discuss current standards and debates regarding how to manage material, ranging from its conservation and manipulation, to exhibition rights and accessibility, bearing in mind each institution’s specificities and possibilities. The course aims to provide the keys to enabling students to adapt to different situations in the world of archives and to gain the skills required to design and activate a strategic management plan for a collection.

Investigation into the history of video formats, their technical characteristics and use, risk factors, and principles and tasks for collection management. The course will cover both analogue and digital materials stored on magnetic tape, ranging from professional and broadcast formats to those used for independent production and home videos. Collection management topics include identification and inspection, the creation of inventories, standards for collection care and handling, and conservation/preservation planning. Based on the idea that magnetic materials are endangered, students will also be trained in digitization, the only tool available to ensure that valuable contents survive. We will examine the physical and chemical description of the material in order to understand and mitigate the effects of deterioration and the best way of treating it, with particular stress on digitisation processes. Students will learn how to assess deterioration in magnetic media, plan for digitisation and to understand the conservation requirements. By the end of the course, they will know how to digitise magnetically stored video material using the rack in the laboratory.

The aim of this course is to help students understand and become familiar with film restoration tools using the DaVinci Resolve 16 software package. It also aims to teach them, using real examples, how to apply techniques for facilitating the restoration of cinematographic materials, as well as how to resolve any technical doubts that may arise. During the workshop, students will develop the color of the proposed exercises in order to be able to work autonomously. They will see all the phases of the colorization of a project: forming, primary, secondary, mastering, etc. A personalized follow-up of the work of each student will be carried out during the class, resolving doubts and conflicts until their understanding. The purpose is that each student knows how to face the restoration material in order to recover it as much as possible.

The DIAMANT film restoration software is a professional solution for film restoration, cleaning and repair. The objective of this workshop is for the students to become familiar with the DIAMANT software, its different tools, its possibilities, its limits and its risks, through practice on specific materials.

The digitisation of photochemical material is a widespread practice today in all international archives and film libraries. In all modern archives, the conservation and dissemination of materials, as well as research activities, necessarily involve digitisation processes. Students will learn the basics of digitisation, along with the strategies they need to follow in each specific case. They will also have the opportunity to put their knowledge into practice in the school’s Film Preservation course.

Preserving “digital assets“ is by now nothing new. Yet, due to the fast and everchanging pace at which digital systems, and their underlying electronics are being changed, it has become more and more useful and necessary to getting to know not only the “nature“ of digital data itself, but also being aware of which components, trades and aspects influence their lifecycle.

In this class, the students will get to know and understand “what is a file“. Which parts, processes and systems should work together to not only preserve digital data intact, but also make it find-able and (re-)usable under yet unknown, future conditions.

This includes introduction to commandline interfaces, simple programming/automation basics and media-format conversion - which have proven invaluable for sustainable professional work with digital data.

This foundation of understanding digital data/documents is then gradually connected to best practice for deciding, defining and maintaining the infrastructure and workflows for building a proper digital preservation strategy. The students will learn theories and modern practices, and how these technical properties, access- and conservation-policies/strategies influence each other.

The restoration of audiovisual heritage differs from the restoration of other types of heritage and requires very specific processes depending on the nature of the individual work in question. After a theoretical introduction to the concepts of restoration and preservation, we will present specific case studies that explore ethical, technical and resource-related topics that impact the decisions made within the framework of each individual project. The seminars provide examples of restoration projects carried out by different types of institutions and professionals.

The Argentinian archivist, collector, researcher and programmer Fernando Martín Peña will carry out a research stay at the school in March-April 2025. Martín Peña will share his experience as a film archivist with the students, analysing specific cases such as the discovery and restoration of Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang). His classes will also deal with aspects that are sometimes little analysed, such as the economic sustainability and financing of preservation projects, as well as the dissemination and socialisation of heritage research. During his residency, Fernando Martín Peña will carry out research work on the Artxiboa film collection.

How has sound and image been recorded and reproduced? We will explore the various approaches that have been undertaken during the one and a half past centuries and discuss why some succeeded and others did not. Understanding the original processes is the foundation for successful modern restorations. This class is a technical history of both the sound and the moving image record and their reproduction. The acoustic, electrical, magnetic and digital era are considered for sound; the photographic, magnetic and digital era for moving images. Not only the current archival media (radio, film, television and video) are explored, but also computers, video games and even… space exploration.

The technology of each period gives rise to a specific type of audiovisual document. It is essential to understand the evolution of cinema and the moving image, as well as to read the contents correctly. The goal is to know the historical and technological environment in which an audio-visual work is created and how it affects the work, and to give tools to the students to obtain this information.

This course, which is eminently practical, enables students to familiarise themselves with manual film development procedures in the lab, in both black and white and colour. Using material filmed at the school, students learn about the specificities of each development process, how the chemical substances used interact with the structure of the film and key aspects for ensuring adequate conservation.

Study on the histories of film technology and its relationship with the identification of film documents within an archive. Technical characteristics of the elements. Physical inspection and critical examination of the material. Cataloguing levels by element and by work. Methodologies for inspection, inventory and evaluation of collections.

This course focuses on the technical, critical and historical study of film documents for research and restoration purposes. It explores the relationship between work and element: gaps, historicity, damage. Restoration problems: methods, technique, ethics. Brief introduction to digital restoration criteria. Standards and alternative conservation techniques. We will also study audio-visual supports from a physical-chemical perspective. Students will analyse materials such as polymers, metals, tints and emulsions, in order to gain a greater understanding of the properties of different film formats. We will also explore different chemical reactions linked to processes of degradation and will see how these processes may be affected by environmental factors.

The course adopts a theoretical-practical approach to the cataloguing of audiovisual works. Since the beginning of film at the close of the 19th century, right up until the emergence of video at the beginning of the nineteen-seventies, all audiovisual works were shot in photochemical format, and it was in this same format that it was both distributed and conserved. Digital technologies offer new ways of creating, storing and accessing works, but technological changes have destroyed some materials and rendered other inaccessible due to the obsolete nature of the devices required to reproduce and conserve them. From this perspective, the definition of new standards poses certain challenges for conservation, while at the same time facilitating documentation and cataloguing processes. The identification and classification of works and their various versions in standard and substandard formats constitute a key practical part of the course.

This course includes an initial theoretical part where the basic concepts of film identification will be addressed, with particular attention to sound materials. The main characteristics of the most common sound formats in film production, the primary physical characteristics of sound, and the most relevant concepts of audio digitization and restoration in cinema, will be analyzed. In the second, practical part, work will be done on film materials.

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.