ZINEBI Deposit
Research on the cinematographic background of the Festival Internacional de Cine Documental y Cortometraje de Bilbao.
This project aims to critically investigate the history of ZINEBI, the Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films. Created in 1959 by the Basque Institute of Hispanic Culture to establish cultural bridges between Spain and Latin America, the festival has been run since 1981 by the Bilbao City Council. In 2000, its name was changed from the Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films to ZINEBI. Its history reflects the changing role that film festivals take on in relation to the society in which they are integrated.
The basic working material for this project was the collection of international short films deposited by ZINEBI in the Basque Film Archive in 2018. The collection consists of 340 films, including documentary films, animation, fiction and experimental films, and including films with gauges of 35 mm (176 items) and 16 mm (163 items). The production dates begin in 1959, the first year of the festival, and end in 2011, when the industry discontinued photochemical support. This collection is therefore a privileged gateway to explore four decades of the festival’s history from different angles, decades marked by important cinematographic, political, and social changes.
The project lays out three fundamental lines of work:
- Identifying and cataloguing the collection. This work, in close collaboration with the Basque Film Archive, is complemented by the tracking of conservation materials in other international collections together with detailed research on the composition of the deposit and its archival history.
- Conducting critical research. There are multiple lines of research, from the creation of the festival as a broadcaster for neo-imperial Hispanism under the auspices of the Basque Institute of Hispanic Culture, through militant and exile cinema on both sides of the Atlantic and the strong collection of the Basque Country-USSR Friendship Association, to technological aspects, such as the conservation of the ORWO materials used in a large percentage of the films produced in Eastern Europe between 1964 and 1989.
- Designing public programs and dissemination. This includes curating programs aimed at raising awareness of the collection and reflecting critically on the history of the festival. These programs make use of a variety of formats, including the production of new digital copies of the materials held in the collection.
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2022-2023 Academic Year
Cataloguing and conservation of 100 items.
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2022-2023 Academic Year
Creation of the preservation plan and procedure manual, in collaboration with the Basque Film Archive.
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2023-2024 Academic Year
Cataloguing and conservation of 113 items.
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2023-2024 Academic Year
Publication of the article “Zinebi, año uno” (“Zinebi, year one”).
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2023-2024 Academic Year
Participation in the Radical Film Network Madrid 2024
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2024-2025 Academic Year
Completion of the process of identifying, cataloguing and preserving the photochemical collection, with a total of 340 items catalogued.
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2024-2025 Academic Year
Screening of Communiqué from Argentina (Lucha Films, 1978) during the Buenos Aires “Más Allá del Olvido” (“Beyond Obscurity”) Recovered Film Week.
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2024-2025 Academic Year
Cataloguing and conservation of 127 items.
More than six decades after its creation and given its well-established position among international festivals devoted to documentaries, it is almost obligatory to revisit the origins of ZINEBI in order to understand the evolution of the festival within the framework of the cultural policy of the Franco regime and the Transition. The lines of research emerged organically, in accordance with the interests of the different teams, those of the Elías Querejeta Film School and those of the festival itself. Cultural diplomacy, censorship, the technology and materiality of cinema, pedagogy, and the work of filmmakers whose filmography is closely linked to the festival together provide a critical and multifaceted overview of the evolution of the festival.
In parallel to the cataloguing and preservation tasks, research has been carried out in various local and state archives to document the cultural diplomacy of the first years of the festival, the relations between the festival and censorship bodies and the specialized press, the tensions among institutions and social movements reflected in the programmed films, and the struggle against the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina.
1.1. ZINEBI, year one
An analysis of the programming of the 1st International Festival of Ibero-American and Filipino Documentary Film of Bilbao, in light of the Hispanist doctrine that inspired the foundation of the Basque Institute of Hispanic Culture. This analysis allows us to verify in what ways political and diplomatic criteria were decisive over and above cinematographic criteria in the configuration of the festival.
See article published in Secuencias magazine (Santiago Aguilar, 2024)
1.2. Operación H
A document found in the censorship file of Operación H (Néstor Basterretxea, 1963) prompted researchers to start looking for the French connection of this new way of understanding industrial documentaries, in which Jorge Oteiza and Marcel Hanoun, Jean-Luc Godard and Luis de Pablo, Fernando Larruquert and Alain Resnais were all involved, and whose Le Chant du styrène (1958) is echoed in some formal structures. The results of the discovery include a video-essay and the notes on which it is based.
Notes on Operation H and Le Chant du styrène and the renewal of industrial cinema
Santiago Aguilar (2023)
Censorship file of *Operación H* (Nestor Basterretxea, 1963) in the General Administration Archives.
Santiago Aguilar (2023)
Video-essay Operation H / Le Chant du styrène
Isaac Tejedor (2023)
Isaac Tejedor (2023)
1.3. Edili, a scandal in Bilbao
Santiago Aguilar (2024)
The screening of the short film Edili (Ennio Lorenzini, 1963) at the fifth annual International Festival of Ibero-American and Filipino Documentary Film of Bilbao resulted in a major scandal. The circumstances that converged in the programming of this documentary highlight the ideological and social tensions, tensions pertaining not only to a change in mentality, but also to curatorship and reception, which were resolved in the enlightened conservatism of Bilbao in 1963 and in the evolution of this film festival, which aimed to serve as a showcase for the world.
1.4. Censorship and self-censorship at the Bilbao Festival
Santiago Aguilar (2024)
Throughout the 1960s, the International Festival of Ibero-American and Filipino Documentary Film of Bilbao suffered the same vicissitudes as the other Spanish festivals, with the aggravating factor that the concept of Hispanicity that underpinned its creation entered a state of crisis for reasons involving internal economic policy and diplomatic and cultural relations with the outside world. These tensions would be all too faithfully reflected in the links between the festival and the state body regulating it, which in 1963 would implement rules on film censorship for the first time.
1.5. The institutionalization of the Bilbao Festival through the archive
A seminar with Ernesto del Río (director of ZINEBI from 2000 to 2017) and Joseba Lopezortega (current director) based on the documentation held in the Municipal Archive of Bilbao and the ZINEBI Deposit on the process that first led the Bilbao City Council (1981) to assume ownership of the event, followed by the Arriaga Theater Foundation (1987). The festival had been organized since 1959 by the Basque Institute of Hispanic Culture.
From the time of its very foundation, the Bilbao festival was based on an erroneous Ibero-American order, erroneous because it based its affiliation on the Hispanist doctrine of Ramiro de Maeztu and on the established commercial relations that Biscayan industrialists and financiers maintained with Latin America. However, the social upheavals of 1968 and the establishment of a series of military dictatorships on the other side of the Atlantic at the same time that the Spanish dictatorship was dying a natural death led Bilbao to become the European broadcaster for a series of militant documentary projects that were the opposite of the official and tourist titles that had dominated the programming during the previous decade. Materials in the collection: 45 items, from Cuba (10), Mexico (7), Brazil (7), Venezuela (6), Argentina (3), Chile (3), Colombia (3), Bolivia (2), El Salvador (2), Peru (1) and Uruguay (1).
2.1. Lucha Film Collective through the film Comunicado de Argentina: Militant Cinema at the 20th Bilbao International Documentary Film Festival
Matías Fajn (2024)
In 2022, within the framework of the ZINEBI Archive research project, a copy of the film Communiqué from Argentina by the U.S. collective Lucha Film was located. The film was made in 1978 and tells the life story of Lili Massaferro, an Argentine Peronist militant and founder of the women’s branch of the Montoneros organization, interspersing it with the figure of Eva Perón and her historical relevance in the country. The characteristics of the film and the lack of information about it provided the opportunity to carry out research that is still ongoing.
Digitalization of the film from the 16-mm projection copy held in the collection
Matías Fajn, Kauri Ximon Jauregui (2024)
Extract of ZINEBI’s 16mm copy of Communique from Argentina (Lucha Film, 1978), USA: Lucha Film Collective.
Matías Fajn, Kauri Ximon Jauregui (2024)
Screening of Communiqué from Argentina during the Buenos Aires “Más Allá del Olvido” (“Beyond Obscurity”) Recovered Film Week
2.2. Dissident Voices
Claire Mullen (2025)
The focus of this report is on two films that are not considered part of the Depósito ZINEBI’s Latin America collection, but could be: School of the Americas: School of Assassins (1994), directed by Robert Richter; and El Salvador, Another Vietnam (1981), directed by Glenn Silber and Teté Vasconcellos. Both films were produced in the United States, and made by directors who had been trained within the public broadcasting system. Both films heavily critique the US government’s economic and political interventionism in Latin America, through using first-hand footage of the gruesome atrocities they witnessed, alongside in-depth journalistic reporting that ties this violence directly to specific US policies and decisions. The result is two interrelated films that provide a critical examination by US filmmakers of their own government’s role in the ongoing injustice, and a call to their fellow citizens to take action and denounce the violence being perpetrated in their name.
2.3. Other works
Digitalization of 35-mm and 16-mm copies of Y se queda silencio (And Silence Remains; Mario Jacob, Alejandro Legaspi, 1978), Peru: Grupo Marcha; La persecución de Pancho Villa (The Persecution of Pancho Villa; Grupo Cine Sur, 1978), Mexico: Grupo Cine Sur; Crónicas del Caribe (Caribbean Chronicles; Emilio Watanabe, Francisco López, 1982), Mexico: Taller de Animación. Carried out by Muriel Holguín and Matías Fajn (2024).
The recognition of Category A for the 1974 Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films meant its specialization in the short film format. Without losing sight of the documentary spirit that always reigned over the event, the new programming was divided into non-fiction, fiction and animated films, whose nature invites brevity and experimentation. One fifth of the collection consists of animated films using a wide range of techniques (stop-motion, cut-outs, claymation, sand, etc.), from a wide range of geographical origins and with a wide ideological scope. Materials in the collection: 68 photochemical items from titles produced between 1970 and 2006.
3.1. Manuel Otero/Cinémation/Studio Guernica 5 at the Bilbao festival
Andrea Warszatska, Santiago Aguilar, Isaac Tejedor, Luis Alberto Juárez (2023-2025)
Exiled in France in the first months of his life, in the mid-1960s, Manuel Otero became one of the most active animators on the international scene. From the platform of the Cinémation production company and the Guernica 5 animation studio, he also promoted the training of an entire generation of filmmakers. The examination of his continued participation as a director and producer in the Bilbao festival has borne fruit in a text that presents the first documented approach to his work and the most complete filmography to date.
3.2. Digitalization of films by Cinémation / Manuel Otero from the 16-mm projection copies held in the collection
Isaac Tejedor, Luis Alberto Juárez, Andrea Warszatska (2023-2024)
Although there are a dozen films from the former Soviet Socialist Republics among the photochemical materials deposited by ZINEBI in the Basque Film Archive in 2018, the sixty copies submitted to the festival by the Basque Country-USSR Association of Bilbao on the dissolution of the Soviet Union are an autonomous collection.
4.1. The Russians are coming! The Basque Country-USSR Association collection at the ZINEBI Film Archive
Santiago Aguilar (2025)
The collection of the Spain-USSR Friendship Association in Bilbao – restructured in 1983 as the Basque Country-USSR Association – consists of 60 documentaries produced between 1970 and 1981 under the presidency of Leonid Brezhnev. During this decade, the national production of fiction feature films rose to approximately one hundred and fifty a year, while documentaries reached four hundred; that is, the sample in the collection is only the tip of the iceberg. Nevertheless, it is sufficient for an analysis of propaganda strategies, thematic recurrences – childhood, music, the space race, etc. – and formal resources.
4.2. Digitization of five films from 16mm and 35mm projection copies preserved in the collection
Reys v more dozhdey (Flight to the Sea of Rain, E. Kuzis, 1970) USSR: Tsentrnauchfilm (TsNF); Yapuray, eto znachit Zhuravli (Yapuray Means Cranes, Yuri Ryabov, 1973) USSR: Lendoc (LSDF); Po Sovetskomu Soyuzu 160 (For the Soviet Union 160, 1979) USSR: TsSDF/SSOD; Pravo na zilise (Right to Housing, K. Bakshi, 1979) USSR: Ukrainskaya Studiya Khronikalno-Dokumentalnykh Filmov; Drug, moj pesnia (Song, My Friend, Yuri Zanin, 1980) USSR: Lendoc (LSDF) / SSOD.
Alejandro Martos, students of the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 Academic Years.
The corpus of materials held in the ZINEBI Deposit promotes research on the evolution of film technology and its preservation. The two milestones in the development of color cinema, as it was understood since the early 1950s in Western countries, are the appearance of the American bichromatic Technicolor in the 1920s and the commercialization of Agfa 16-mm film beginning in 1936. A derivative of the latter, manufactured in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between 1964 and 1989, is known as ORWO. Items in the collection: 74 35-mm and 16-mm copies from the USSR (41), the GDR (11), Czechoslovakia (8), Poland (6), Romania (3), Belarus (1), Hungary (1), Cuba (1), France (1) and Spain (1).
5.1. ORWO, an East German color procedure in the ZINEBI Deposit
Santiago Aguilar, Marta López Lázaro, Izaro Cuesta (2023-2025)
An approach to the conservation of materials in ORWOColor in the ZINEBI Deposit, where they have a very significant presence. In contrast to the degradation of color that contemporary print runs have suffered in the ubiquitous Western-Eastmancolor, ORWOColor prints have a high level of stability and a surprising chromatic richness.
5.2. Digitalization of a series of films
Digitalization of a series of films that use the ORWOColor technique from the 35-mm and 16-mm projection copies held in the collection.
Marta López Lázaro, Muriel Holguín, Matías Fajn (2023-2024)
The Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films with Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann was a six-year idyll of unconditional mutual dedication in which anti-imperialism, Pinochet’s coup d’état in Chile and Ho-Chi-Min’s victory in Vietnam were the real protagonists. In 1976, Heynowski and Scheumann won the Special Jury Prize and two years later a special mention for high documentary and cinematographic quality and for the high quality of the content of the films they submitted to the festival. In 1986, their “Chilean” films constituted the core of the retrospective cycle entitled Latin America Yesterday and Today. In 1989, the year in which the Berlin Wall fell, they returned to the festival with an “appropriation” documentary about the Holocaust.
The Zinebi Collection catalogue is the principal outcome and tip of the iceberg of the first phase of the project, which involved cataloguing all the materials in the collection. The catalogue enables combined searches based on free text, with certain selection filters. The results include a small file of all the titles in the collection, with references to the different avenues of research opened up during the process.
Santiago Aguilar
Santiago Aguilar holds a degree in Image Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid. From 1985 to 1995, he worked as a documentalist at the Spanish Film Archive and has since continued to collaborate with this organization both as a researcher and in defining the Digitalization Plan of the archive. As a member of “La Cuadrilla,” he is a film director and screenwriter and a self-confessed Azconian. In collaboration with Felipe Cabrerizo, he has carried out various research works on 20th-century Spanish and Italian cinema and comedy literature. On his own account and at his own risk, he has been a television screenwriter, has produced documentaries, and has published books and articles on less researched aspects of the history of Spanish cinema.
Students C08:
Andrea Velasco Caderot, Andrés Monraz, Ane Garcia Sanchez, Carmina Frankel, Carolina Monti
Students C07:
Andrés Martínez De La Viña, Claire Mullen, Esmeralda Esther Reynoth Flores Hernández, Ester Borràs Sabaté, Izaro Cuesta Arrizabalaga, Juan Pablo Labonia
Students C06:
Alejandro Martos, Andrea Warszatska, Hector Antonio Márquez Baca, Luis Alberto Juárez, Maria Aizpurua Ayastuy, María Victoria Moreno
Students C05:
Isaac Tejedor Martín, Kauri Ximon Jauregi Arias, Marta L. Lázaro, Matías Fajn
Associated institutions: ZINEBI, Basque Film Archive.
Project timeline: 2022 - ongoing.
