This is a course on the aesthetics and history of cinema, approached from the crossroads of the present; a moment in which, beyond the crisis being experienced by the very concept of history as a totalising narrative, real suspicion is spreading about the ordering of diachronic time and the idea of progress. Specifically, the subject questions whether it is even possible to chart the history of cinema from our own time. And it does so in the hope that it is, or in other words, with the aim of telling the (hi)stories (plural) that together make up the history of cinema.  In a more general sense, it is also a subject about time, pure and simple.  Throughout the first two decades of the 21st century, the categories that have traditionally be used to structure a hundred years of cinema, all of which are based on stylistic dichotomies (classicism vs. modernity) or teleological parameters, have been called into question by the different movements of revisionist historiography that often transcend the cinematographic. Cultural studies, affective theories, media archaeology, the analysis of reception, cultural materialism, ecocriticism and gender and postcolonial studies are just some of these critical approaches. Historians have added the word ‘turn’ to their vocabulary (the affective turn, the archival turn, the materialist turn), graphically demonstrating the need to rethink the linear and evolutionist approach that has traditionally been adopted in relation to cinema. 

However, from localised places of resistance, collectives and minorities focused on microhistory and subaltern histories, alternative narratives from below, critical stances that oppose academic hegemony and university sufficiency have arisen.  How, then, can we approach the narrative of film history without automatically rejecting our heritage or falling into the trap of denialist cynicism, an exogenous and scientistic perspective, or a simple lack of curiosity? To what extent should the narrative of film history in a film school also be the narrative of our own memory? Are we part of that history we reject? In this sense, this subject on time in cinema is also a subject on our time in cinema. 

With the aim of addressing the possibility of history not only theoretically but also from an applied perspective, the subject proposes a dialogue-based methodology featuring divergent yet complementary voices throughout the different sessions. The idea is to construct a paradoxical and plural history that is open, rhizomatic, nonlinear, carnivalesque and metamorphic. In this sense, we will follow the path laid down by Nicole Brenez when she warned that ‘cinema never ceases to tear itself apart, to deepen its fractures, to vary the powers of the discontinuous and its double, to work on the caesura and to allow defection to work.’

The cinematic arrangement of the projector, the beam of light, the screen, the spectator and the cinema is one of the many configurations that emerged in the late 19th century, and whose dominance was neither inevitable nor unique. Through the varied histories of lanterns, optical boxes and hand-cranked devices that recorded, developed and projected, these functions gradually became separated, and the screen took on the form we now recognise as standard: rectangular, white, frontal and fixed in a darkened room. This seminar focuses on that arrangement and the histories that produced and challenged it. It examines how film projection has been continually naturalised, yet also diverted, dismantled and reinvented—through expanded cinema, projections onto bodies, smoke, water, buildings and landscapes, and practices that transformed the projection booth into a performative space. Approaching projection as something simultaneously material, ideological and metaphysical, the course considers how technologies of light shape not only images, but also the viewer’s experience, the ritual, the architecture and the collective experience.

This course is an introduction to curating and programming as critical and situated practices, shaped by film cultures, institutions, political contexts and the audiences they bring together. Rather than offering a fixed model, the course approaches curation as a way of thinking with moving images, sounds, spaces, rhythms, temporalities and audiences, examining how this thinking takes shape through practices of selection, juxtaposition, contextualisation and exhibition. The course explores histories of exhibition and the programming practices they have generated, paying particular attention to the ways in which films produce meanings, relationships and encounters by entering into dialogue with one another. The course also addresses various traditions that have shaped curatorial thought and practice — cinephile, historicist, feminist, decolonial, militant, ecological, amongst others — not as fixed positions to be adopted, but as sets of practices and reflections from which to learn, question, draw inspiration and think collectively.

In ZINE, the cinema room serves as an object of study and academic practice to stimulate collective reflection on cinema exhibition. The subject invites the Curatorial group to take over three screens in the city through a practical exercise in public programming. This is a site-specific programme because the exercise takes place within a specific context, Donostia / San Sebastián, and takes into account the specific characteristics of each cinema. Furthermore, the course addresses distribution, exhibition and communication-related issues. The cinema room thus becomes a laboratory for experimentation for the Curating itinerary.

This subject adopts a theoretical-practical approach to the cataloguing of audiovisual works and associated documentary processes. Where can we find reliable information?  How should we manage the issue of copyright? Why is the unitary concept of a work losing ground to perspectives based on versions and manifestations? 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 they were both distributed and conserved. Technological changes have always destroyed some materials and rendered other inaccessible due to the obsolete nature of the devices required to reproduce them. From this perspective, the definition of new standards poses certain challenges for preservation, 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 this subject. This subject is common to both the Film Preservation and the Film Curating itineraries.

This subject explores the spatial, social and institutional dimensions of cinema, analysing how moving images are shaped by—and in turn actively shape—the environments in which they are exhibited, circulated and experienced. It views cinema not only as an architectural or theatrical space, but as a social, political and curatorial one that is sensitive to its historical contexts and audiences.

Starting from the emergence of film as a social form in the early 20th century, the subject charts its development through diverse exhibition contexts—from travelling cinemas and community screenings to gallery installations and international festivals. Students will explore the many different histories, practices and geographies of cinema, including formal and informal, physical and digital, and local and transnational spaces.

This module aims to provide students with a theoretical, critical and systemic framework that enables them to understand the current audiovisual media ecosystem as a connected whole. Students will learn to identify the tensions between artistic creation, the entertainment industry and the dynamics of social media, extending curatorial practice into the digital sphere as a strategic form of mediation capable of providing context and meaning to contemporary audiovisual flows.

This subject offers EQZE students on the Film Curating and Film Preservation itineraries the opportunity of taking on an exploratory role (researcher and curator) within film and audiovisual archive practice, bearing in mind the three (always intertwined) tenses of cinema: the past, linked to memory; the present, linked to action; and the future, linked to screening. This subject aims to equip students with the theoretical, methodological and practical tools necessary to undertake academic and curatorial research based on archival collections. This subject is common to both the Film Preservation and the Film Curating itineraries.

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. This subject is common to both the Film Preservation and the Film Curating itineraries.

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.

Making a botanical film is above all a work of patience and affection. Taking as a starting point the methods of film without a camera and some tricks of the amateur gardener, we will create a collective filmic herbarium, from the collection of specimens to their projection.
 
This workshop is aimed at people from all backgrounds 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.

This courseseeks 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 Observatory  provides a space for training, practice and research in sound. It starts from the zero degree of listening to deny the existence of silent cinema, explore the impact of technology, the sound design of gestures and everyday objects, radio art, sound ethnography, sound art... 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. 

Film history and film criticism are disciplines that are constantly engaged in a creative and critical process of rewriting. Filmmakers and critics do not create from scratch—their work is always, consciously or unconsciously, a response to previous artistic manifestations. In recent years, audiovisual essays have become a prominent example of this critical rewriting. In this subject we will establish relationships between different audiovisual essay formats and different periods, trends and ideas in film history and criticism. The subject also includes a practical exercise.

Words are worn out, sunk under the weight of unconscious use. They come and go in a lazy drift, victims of inattentive use and learned inertia. This subject invites you to set fire to that dull tumult of dry words. It aims to rescue them from indifference, open them up, one by one, and place them in a text. But to do this, we must first cultivate a certain degree of linguistic craftsmanship. It is not about waiting for inspiration to strike, but rather about writing a lot and reading even more. Genius, the muse, pneuma, or the duende, as Lorca would say that ‘mysterious power that everyone feels and no philosopher can explain’, cannot be taught and has no instructions manual. Yet, as Baudelaire observed it ‘obeys, like hunger, like digestion, like sleep’.  Therefore, the only way to reach it is through work, process, practice: immersing oneself in the technique, so that when it arrives, it finds fertile soil. 

Igniting the word is therefore about observing with open senses, searching for the precise word, the exact phrase, the necessary image. It is, in essence, a writing workshop that uses the ignited word to summon emotion.

Five sessions that explore cinema as a game full of chance, poetry and mystery, featuring screenings of ‘nameless’ films and field trips just an hour’s bus ride away—combining a visit to a sand cemetery with the oldest stone age map, or shutting oneself away in a temple designed to harbour the night within. Inside, it is always night. Experiencing cinema in a personal and bespoke way, bearing its rules in mind—above all, to break them. Just as George Perec and his allies did with limitations, turning them into freedoms, guided above all by the gaze of that dark cat called Duchat who would always perch on his shoulders to meow in his portraits.

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 advent of AI in contemporary cinema goes well beyond the generation of images; it serves as a tool for reading, classifying and reorganising archives, and as a means of synthesis capable of producing plausible images, sounds and textures without leaving any trace of an index. The workshop offers applied and critical training focused on documentary and non-fiction cinema, with specific attention to archives, evidence, transparency and how to uphold values when whatever has been recorded, altered or fabricated become indistinguishable. It combines technical literacy, a methodological framework for maintaining credibility and practical exercises using current tools.

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.