This is a subject that analyses aesthetics focused on the specific forms of cinema. The aim is to provide an introductory approach to fundamental questions about the theory of cinema, from a non-diachronic perspective and with an intentionally relational gaze, searching for connections and links with other art forms and philosophical questions. The subject aims to lay the groundwork for certain concepts that will be developed, explored in more complex depth and/or contradicted in other core 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 issues to emanate from the formal operations of cinema itself at the limit of its own existence. In the context of the subject, this search is identified as ‘the art of aberration’. The term is used with the meaning given by theorist Jurgis Baltrušaitis in his discussion of the peculiar and specific legend of forms, their deformations, their masks and their monsters.

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).

Opening up images means making them talk in the present tense through an appropriate act of reading that adheres to their complex singularity in order to build, patiently, a meaning that combines seeing with knowing. We will reflect on the performative dimension of cinema images in relation to the construction and understanding of a story about the past, along with its ethical, aesthetic, and political consequences.  Secondly, we will explore some of the instances involved in the writing and transmission of a history of cinema: from the politics of the canon to programming, paying special attention to the fundamental role played by film and cinema archives in ensuring the recognition of films as works of art and part of our heritage. For some decades now, museums have also been another key element for ensuring their existence as a field for experimentation, a reciprocal and complementary movement between cinema and museum, in which the former has found an alternative to traditional production and exhibition channels, and the latter has discovered the opportunity to rethink itself through this interruption. We will evoke that movement linked to the contemporary cinematographic experience and will end up asking ourselves about the forms of a cinema that is separate from its traditional technological device.

This course poses a series of historical, methodological, and theoretical reflections to interrogate the political dimension of film culture. It takes as a central case study a heterogeneous set of radical practices developed in the Sixties and Seventies of the twentieth century, which we will approach under the concept of "militant cinema", understood in an expanded sense. At this period, film culture experienced one of its most convulsive periods of radicalization on a global scale: in the heat of the struggles of the "long '68" and a series of crucial technical developments, the ways of making, thinking, and sharing moving images were transformed. The course proposes to critically revisit the archive of militant cinema and interrogate how these images of the past continue to reverberate in the present and how we relate to them through the tools of research, archiving, curating, and creation. The course does not aim to present a chapter in the history of cinema, but rather to become an exercise in methodology and thought that overflows its case study to delve into the interrelations between theory and practice, aesthetics, and politics, past and present.

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.

Based on an examination of texts from different disciplines, this course proposes a series of meetings designed to invite students to reflect on our cultural era. It is a critical and cross-cutting approach to defining the figure and functions of a curator. Students will discover or review interpretations that will prove valuable to them in their professional development and encourage them to question individual motivations.

This course charts artistic and cinematographic curatorial thinking from the 19th to the 21st century. Divided into two independent sections, it addresses theoretical questions about programming and cultural mediation practices, while at the same time speculating (through case studies) on the relationships and contrasts that exist between artistic and film curating. The first part of the course focuses on ways of presenting contemporary art, as well as on the specific school of thought that has arisen around curatorial activity. Having defined the long tradition of artistic curating, the second part of this course explores the characteristics inherent to film curating throughout its history.

An approach to the idea of the screen as a means of transmitting the culture of the last century. The course has a historic structure and adopts a multidisciplinary approach based on different yet complementary knowledge areas, including media archaeology, film sociology, the aesthetics of taste and reception theories.

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.

The physical, academic and conceptual closeness between EQZE and the SSIFF acquires in this case the form of a theoretical-practical course that seeks an approach to the different departments of the San Sebastian Festival. The sessions aim, on the one hand, to invite reflection on the SSIFF from the experience lived by the students during the concluded edition. On the other hand, to seek a first approach to the workteams and the work dynamics carried out by the festival not only during the event but throughout the year. The subject has an introductory character that is complemented later with the offer of practices that the SSIFF summons throughout the course.

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 course proposes a theoretical-practical exercise of curatorship of a public program, defined and managed by students of the Film Curating itinerary, in the cinema of Tabakalera during the week of April 8, 2024.  In practical terms, it addresses central questions of curatorship: what to program? Why? For whom? With what legitimacy? From and to where? What do we want to achieve? Whom do we invite, what audience? What films do we leave out, and why? Who will come to see us? Who usually comes to see us? Who do we want to come and see us? Do we want, need, to program movies? And the viewers, who are they, and who are not?
The subject does not seek to replicate existing programs, but to think collectively from the cinema theatre, its technical characteristics, but also physical, sociological, environmental, ideological, political, cultural, climatological, and determine what can be contributed, what is missing, what is left over, and how to intervene in the debate and public dialogue through a program. A week will be above all a collective work, an essay and also a result, an experiment, a hypothesis, a leap into the void, a game and serious work.

After the A WEEK experience, for those who wish to engage in a second theoretical-practical exercise in curating, we propose a film programming initiative in Bidebieta, a suburb of San Sebastián. The programme will be developed by EQZE Film Curating students and facilitated by the Kontadores Youth Centre, a municipal association dedicated to collective meeting and creation. Agents and projects from the local area will participate in the process.

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.

Zinefabrika encompasses the production, management and materialisation of curatorial activity. The subject focuses on the tools and competences inherent to the circulation and exhibition of the moving image, exploring questions linked to exhibition rights, the location and transfer of copies and the relationship established with exhibition spaces. It also 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.

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.

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.

Another step forward in the film development technique is to explore the possibilities offered by developing and other photochemical processes for creating images, from a contemporary perspective. This workshop focuses on creating improbable images based on the exploration of diverse creation, manipulation, alteration and combination techniques using non-conventional photochemical processes: cross, alternative, natural, multi-exposure, rayographs, flat print, alternation and manipulation of emulsions, Lift off, mordançage, and solarised in b/w and colour, etc.

This subject specifically addresses all phases of the design and construction of audio universes: ideation, work criteria, relations with images, gestation of projects based on sound, mixing etc. The multisensory power of images and sound. The synaesthetic sensory stimulation of images and sounds and the articulation of their paradoxical power in film.

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. 

This course introduces students to the primary issues and emerging strategies for the conservation/preservation of new media and digital artworks. These artworks go beyond single video or film projections; contemporary artists use a wide variety of audio-visual formats and technologies to create complex installations that are fascinating to study. Examples range from older 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. Complex 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. Students will learn analyse the artworks and to identify potential risks by studying several artworks in the collection of a local cultural institution. They will research exhibition histories, consult institutional files, examine an artwork's actual component parts, and discuss the artworks with museum staff. In the process, a great deal will be learned about the care and conservation of artworks in museums and archives.

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.

The Internet is a huge container holding a large part of humanity’s knowledge, practices and materials. Apparently accessible and transparent, manifested through sophisticated and predetermined search networks, the Internet is the largest archive (and the large film archive) in history, with a set of characteristics that are apparently similar to those of other archives but with totally new resources. This course examines the specificities of the Internet from an archivist perspective, although always with a critical, creative and curatorial outlook. In this sense, ‘Internet as Archive’ adopts a dynamic, non-static approach to film preservation, blurring the lines between creative practices, curating and creation itself.

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 class begins with an introduction on file formats. Building on this the students will practically explore free and open-source software, such as FFmpeg (for in-depth file transformation), QCTools (for quality control), AEO-Light (sound extraction from optical tracks) and DCP-o-matic (DCP encoding), as well as various media players. Resources on infrastructure and workflows for film and video digitisation will be presented and discussed, taking account especially of solutions which can be implemented in difficult environments at little expense. An overview on data preservation and migration, as well as disaster planning and recovery, will round off this class.

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.