‘Artxiboa’, the website enabling citizens and specialists to freely consult the 70 years of San Sebastian Festival’s history, is intended to generate a living archive in the shape of a space for thought and discussion on the past, present and future of the Festival, open to dialogues critical with contemporary thought, research and creation. Thus, since the outset, the project has defined a variety of research subjects, in addition to which, every month, the ‘Artxiboa’ team chooses the document of the month, one of the digital collections through which to delve into the Festival’s historic archive, including the dailies, posters and photographs.  

In the case of the document of the month, the idea is to give clues to the Festival collection thanks to an image or file: in December, coinciding with the launch of ‘Artxiboa’, we unveiled the authorisation of an extremely young Pedro Almodóvar who, in 1980, gave his permission for the screening of Pepi, Luci y Bom y otras chicas del montón / Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom in different parts of the Basque Country and Navarre via the Barrios y Pueblos Committee initiative; in January, we recovered the poster for the event’s second edition, designed by the humourist, writer and moviemaker José María González Castrillo, aka Chumy Chúmez, the oldest material of its kind in the Festival collection; and in February, with a nod to the Berlinale, we published the Berlin Festival pass issued to Pilar Olascoaga, general secretary of  the Festival and one of its key figures. In March, the document of the month published today features the French actor and director Pierre Clémenti, who was invited to participate in the Festival’s New Directors section in 1979 with his film New Old. The archive abounds with references to the Belle de jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967) actor, who also worked under Visconti, Pasolini and Bertolucci. Among the documents is the iconic image of his entrance to the Victoria Eugenia Theatre on Ocaña’s arm.

The actor and artist José Pérez Ocaña and the actor and director Pierre Clémenti arriving at the main entrance of the Victoria Eugenia Theatre (1979) San Sebastian Festival Archive [+]

Kutxa Fundazioa video

The photograph of Clémenti and Ocaña is precisely one of the two shots chosen – from among 60,000 candidates – to appear in a video explaining the collaboration between the Festival and the Kutxa Fundazioa, thanks to which the Festival and Fototeka funds have been recovered, preserved, catalogued and published to coincide with the event’s 50th anniversary, making it available to the general public and specialists alike. In the audiovisual document, the voices of Ane Abalde, director of Art and Heritage at the Kutxa Fundazioa; Maialen Beloki, deputy director of the San Sebastian Festival; Pablo La Parra, head researcher of the Zinemaldia 70: all possible stories project; the photographer Juantxo Egaña; the curators-restorers Anna Ferrer, Lorena Soria and Andrea Sánchez and the Digitalization Technician Niko Iturralde explain the technical difficulties and the political social and artistic importance of ‘Artxiboa’.