• ROMÁN CHALBAUD (Chairman)
• LOLA MILLÁS
• JORGE RUFFINELLI

The Donostia-San Sebastián International Film Festival has created a new award named “Horizontes”, aimed at increasing knowledge of feature films produced totally or partially in Latin America, directed by filmmakers of Latin origin, set around or dealing with Latin communities in the rest of the world.
Eligible for this award are all of the feature films selected to form part of the “Horizontes” selection which have neither been previously presented at other Spanish Festivals nor commercially released in Spain.

This award carries a cash prize of Euros 18,000.

• Rules (2006). Horizontes Award

Merida (Venezuela), 1931. From 1947 until 1949, he studied at the Teatro Experimental in Caracas, going on to study directing under Lee Strasberg in New York.

His relationship with cinema started in the 50s as assistant director to the Mexican Víctor Urruchúa, who directed two movies in Venezuela, Seis meses de vida and Luz en el Páramo. From 1955 until 1958, he was artistic director with Televisora Nacional, a position interrupted for political reasons. In 1969 he returned to television, this time working for Radio Caracas TV, where he stayed until his resignation in 1982.

Chalbaud is an important theatre writer and director. In 1965 he was named president of the UNESCO-dependent Instituto Latinoamericano de Teatro (ILAT). He holds the Premio Nacional de Teatro (1984) and the Premio Nacional de Cine (1990), in addition to the Orden Andrés Bello (First Class) and the Orden al Mérito (First Class).

In 1974 he founded, together with Miguel Angel Landa and César Bolívar, the company Gente de Cine, with which he has made the majority of his feature films. In 1978 he was named President of the Asociación Nacional de Autores Cinematográficos (ANAC). He was also Director General of the Fundación Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela.

All of his films have been screened at important festivals and institutions, such as the San Sebastian International Film Festival (which dedicated a retrospective to him in 1985; he was also an Official Jury member in 1990),  the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Universidad Autónoma de México and the Spanish Film Archive. El pez que fuma (The Smoking Fish) landed the Golden India Catalina Award for Best Film at the Cartagena de Indias Festival (1979) and Pandemonium the Best Film Award at La Cita (International Festival of Latin American Cinema) in Biarritz.

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Lola Millás founded and has been directing the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Film Archive since 1975. Prior to creation of the Film Archive, she worked for the Ministry’s Directorate-General for Cultural and Scientific Relations as a coordinator between International Cultural Organisations, and was head of the division responsible for novels and essays with the Índice Cultural publication.

From 1992 until 1995, she created and coordinated the Audiovisual Area of Casa de América in Madrid. She has moreover co-founded a number of international film festivals, including the Peñíscola Comedy Film Festival, at which she created an area dedicated to Latin American films, the Lleida Latin-American Film Festival and the African Cinema Festival of Tarifa.

She has been a member of juries at different festivals, including: the Huelva Latin-American Film Festival, Lleida Festival, Bahia Film Festival, and the Lisbon International Digital Film Festival.

She has given conferences at the Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid, La Casa Encendida, Casa de América, Majadahonda Latin American Film Festival, and at the Complutense, Camilo José Cela (Madrid), San Juan de Puerto Rico, San Carlos (Guatemala) and Mexican Autónoma universities.

Lola Millás wrote the book of short stories Edipo Tango, first published by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (1999) and subsequently in Spain by Celeste (2000). She has also written the books Con Agustín González hemos topado (2001) and Agustín González: entre la conversación y la memoria, published by Ocho y Medio and presented in 2005 at the Malaga Film Festival. She similarly co-wrote the book De Madrid al Cine: Una pantalla capital (2003).

She moreover coordinated publishing of the books Cine y libros en España, Ciclos y temas and Literatura Española: Una historia de cine, and is currently working on La historia de España a través del cine.

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Born in Montevideo, Jorge Ruffinelli is a film and literature critic and researcher. He has been a lecturer at Stanford University (California) since 1986, after having taught in Argentina (University of Buenos Aires, 1973) and in Mexico (where he directed the Centre of Linguistic-Literary Research at the University of Veracruz from 1974 until 1986).

He has published thirteen books, including: El otro México, La viuda de Montiel, El lugar de Rulfo, Las infamias de la inteligencia burguesa, Crítica en marcha, John Reed en México, Poesía y descolonización and La sonrisa de Gardel. His book Patricio Guzmán was published by Cátedra and the Spanish Film Archive in 2001, Víctor Gaviria: los márgenes al centro, by Turner in Madrid (2005), and Sueños de realidad. Fernando Pérez: tres décadas de cine, by Alcalá University (Spain) and the FNCL (Cuba).

In literature, Ruffinelli was twice jury member for the Casa de las Américas Award, in Cuba, and for the Juan Rulfo Award in Guadalajara (Mexico), and in cinema was a member of the Documentary and Feature Film Jury at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema (Cuba), at the San Sebastian International Film Festival (New Directors Award Jury, 2001) and at the Trieste Latin American Film Festival (Italy).

He has published essays on cinema in Cinemais, Cinémas de l’Amérique Latine, Casa de las Américas, Kinetoscopio, Nuevo Texto Crítico and Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, among other magazines. Over 500 of his essays have come out in different countries. He directed the literary section of Marcha in Uruguay, and currently directs the New Texto Crítico magazine.

In 1993 he made Augusto Monterroso, A Short Story, a documentary on the Guatemalan writer. He has announced the publication in Mexico of his Enciclopedia del Cine Latinoamericano in book, DVD-ROM and CD-ROM format, for which he has written 2,500 as yet unedited articles on Latin American films.

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