Tabakalera presents its new cinema season for 2021. The institutions that have programming on the centre's shared screen - the Basque Film Archive, San Sebastian International Film Festival, Donostia Kultura, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, and Tabakalera- are starting their new season in January. We once again would like to emphasise the unique character of this programme based on the sum of partners -- a programme in which history and classics coexist naturally and in constant dialogue with contemporary cinema. Likewise, we wish to reiterate our commitment to training, research, and reflection on the processes of filmmaking and on the past and future of audio-visual language. We also want to mention and thank the public for their loyalty, as even in this time of COVID restrictions, the citizens' response has been enthusiastic, turning the Tabakalera cinema into a safe meeting point for culture.

On Wednesday, November 6, the Nosferatu cycle will get its start at Tabakalera, dedicated in 2021 to Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel (Calanda, Teruel, 1900 – Mexico City, 1983), with the projection of his two first films, An Andalusian Dog (Un chien andalou, 1929) and The Golden Age (L’Âge d’or, 1930).

The cycle is organised by Donostia Kultura, the Basque Film Archive, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, the San Sebastian International Film Festival, and Tabakalera, with the cooperation of Institut Valencià de Cultura – Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana (Valencian Institute of Culture - Valencian Film Archives) and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum.

This retrospective look will offer the Aragonese filmmaker's complete series of work as a director, being composed of 32 films which will be screened throughout the year. Said programming will be topped off by another 13 sessions, grouped under the name  Buñuel + PLUS , in which spectators can see films related in various ways with the director's life and work.

The cycle is complemented with the publication of two books on Buñuel – one in Spanish, the other in Basque. The first book, Luis Buñuel, number 17 of the Nosferatu Collection, was coordinated by Jesús Angulo and Joxean Fernández and will be published in January. The second, written by Harkaitz Cano, number 9 of the Nosferatu Collection, will be released in the Spring.

Luis Buñuel is, without a doubt, one of the most admired filmmakers in the history of cinema and an example to follow for several generations of artists. During his almost 50-year career which took place mainly between France and Mexico with some (notable) forays in Spain, he left for posterity some classics of twentieth-century art such as Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962), Belle de Jour (1966), Tristana (1970), and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, 1972).

Buñuel + PLUS, the focus accompanying the retrospective look at Luis Buñuel, is, in and of itself, a history of cinema, a review that goes from the films with which Buñuel was trained to contemporary cinema, in which it is possible to see features of that influence. Starting with his memoirs My Last Sigh (1982), we present a selection of 18 films that influenced the director and which were influenced by him. A “Buñuel universe” in which it is possible to distinguish direct relationships and political, film-related, and formal thematic dialogues. 

This approximation to his work is completed with an extensive list of more than a hundred titles related to the universe of Buñuel, as well as a series of texts that reflect on these influences and were drafted by a group of students who were the third group to study curating at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola and which will be presented on the Tabakalera website throughout the year. 

A shared screen for the San Sebastian International Film Festival all year round

The San Sebastian International Film Festival has previously undertaken one-off interventions on the shared screen at Tabakalera but, from now on, its contribution will be monthly through a focus known as  Zinemaldia + PLUS. 
The great film festivals of the world are asking themselves the question of what the role of the festivals of the future is. The new times in which we live are changing the festival/event paradigm very quickly and the aim is to incorporate the experience, history, and characteristics inherent to these new models. The San Sebastian Festival has made a strategic commitment to a year-round presence: to go beyond the nine days of the event and to be visible the twelve months of the year. To become an “all year” festival. A project which the Basque Film Archive, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Tabakalera and the San Sebastian International Film Festival are all involved in and working together on has become a key and hallmark for the festival of the future. 

The monthly programming on the screen will include works by filmmakers linked to the event as well as the event's programming meant to promote thought and reflection, to support emerging creation and the training of new talents. 

Cinema and Science Returns

In January of 2021, the Basque Film Archive will resume the Cinema and Science cycle which, for the fourth consecutive year, pursues the aim of transmitting film culture and scientific culture. Organised alongside the Donostia International Physics Centre (DIPC) and the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the programme will combine classic titles with more recent films whose projection seems more pertinent given the current context.

As usual, each screening will be accompanied by presentations and talks led by internationally renowned scientists. During the first quarter of the year, two special sessions will be added to the ten films in the cycle, which will be announced soon. In one of the sessions, Filmoteca will screen the short films of the Kimuak 2020 Programme for the first time for the general public, and in the second session the feature film Pour Don Carlos (1921) will be able to be seen in its restored version in cooperation with the Toulouse Cinematheque, the French Film Archives, and The San Francisco Silent Film Festival. This is a silent film co-directed by Jacques Lasseyne and Musidora, a famous French actress of the time who also stars in this film set in the Third Carlist War and shot on Basque sets.

As a result of the cultural exchange between the Basque Country and Quebec undertaken by Etxepare Euskal Institutua, during the second quarter of 2021 the Basque Film Archive will put its focus on recent Quebec cinema through a programme created in collaboration with the Quebec Cinematheque. After that, the films of the fifth edition of Jazzinema will be shown, a cycle organised together with the jazz festivals of San Sebastian and Getxo. Also, in the last quarter of the year, the first part of a multi-year cycle dedicated to Basque filmmakers  is scheduled. This cycle will also include a specific publication.

Focus: Patric Chiha, Pietro Marcello, Alice Rohrwacher, and Kelly Reichardt

Tabakalera's film programming once again has its annual focus events set on four great names in contemporary cinema. Four figures present at international festivals and which represent the diversity of present-day cinema and the paths of the cinema of the future: Austrian director Patric Chiha, Italians Pietro Marcello and Alice Rohrwacher, and the American Kelly Reichardt to close the year. The full retrospectives will be topped off with four Cartes Blanches featuring key works from the history of cinema.

The full retrospective look at Patric Chiha (Vienna, 1975) will review his medium-length and feature films and will show a career established in major festivals like those in Venice and Berlin. Direct cinema, documentaries, fiction, and work based on the observation of movement and the sensuality of the skin, as is evident in his latest work, Si c'était de l'amour (2020) – pure choreography based on a piece by the artist Gisele Vienne and which was awarded the Teddy Award for the best documentary at Berlinale 2020. 

The spring/summer cycles will have in common our attention to Italy and to two of its key names in auteur cinema with great awards and a unique perspective. Pietro Marcello (Caserta, 1976) was one of the great sensations of last year's Venice Festival: his film Martin Eden was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actor thanks to Luca Martinelli and was considered by critics as one of the titles of the year. In Toronto he received the Platform Prize, and at the Seville European Film Festival he received the award for best film. His entire set of work will be reviewed, from his beginnings as a documentary maker with a seafaring spirit and a small budget to his latest and much-lauded adaptation of Jack London's novel.

Alice Rohrwacher (Fiesole, 1981) is one of those names that have been shining for years and whose career is associated with the Cannes Festival, where she was awarded the Grand Prix for Le meraviglie (2014), and the award for best screenplay with Lazzaro felice (2018). Her three feature films directed to date will also be present, and there will likewise be the opportunity to enjoy her short films. The films of Rohrwacher are often defined as “new humanism”: based on the classic heritage of Italian character cinema, her work portrays the clash between tradition and modernity, materials (she always films in 16mm), and the fantasies of the working classes. 

The year closes with a focus about Kelly Reichardt (Miami, 1964), whose seven feature films to date will be screened. The start of her career is associated with a Sundance Festival of the 1990s, River of Grass (1994), in which the term “independent American film” made sense for the first time. Old Joy (2006), her second feature film, was recognised as the Best Film at the Rotterdam Festival and from then on her legend as a great independent author crossed from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Road movies, westerns, films about characters looking for their place in the world, narrative cinema, and exquisite attention to pace, portraits of characters, and landscapes of rural America. Her latest piece, First Cow (2019), has just been awarded with the Best Feature Film Award at the Gijón Film Festival. 

In addition to the aforementioned, the cinema programming will be completed with the already popular focuses entitled Cartes Blanches and From the Beginning. Histories of Feminist Cinema (which is also being programmed at Artium Museum), as well as Original Soundtrack, Kameleoiak Gara! (family cinema), and Permanent History of Cinema.

The screen as a meeting place and place for talent development

With the aim of promoting the professionalisation and development of talent, and to create a relationship between new talent and the public, Tabakalera puts its screen and cinema programming to the service of creation and its processes. In 2021, we will continue this line of work by strengthening programmes like Cine hablado (“Spoken Cinema”), in which directors share with the public the processes of creating their films, and Eskolatik. This focus, planned by the students studying curation at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, is part of the talent development line promoted by Tabakalera – in this case in relationship with film programming. Once a month, three students from the school will plan the programming at the Tabakalera cinema hall to be able to share with the public their vision of cinema and their learning process at the school. 

In addition, during 2021 the third edition of the  Histories of Cinema. Santos Zunzunegui programme will continue, put on by Tabakalera in cooperation with Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola and featuring 10 titles that represent his take on cinema. Screenings will continue to be accompanied by a prior presentation/lecture, making this a programme worthy of educational merit. The cycle, which is also being scheduled at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, will become a triple publication during 2021 as all the texts associated with the programme will be published by the Shangrila publishing house.

Cinema pass 2021 and the new quarterly cinema newsletter/magazine

The new cinema pass allows you to access, for just €100, 40 films of all those programmed by the partner institutions who are part of Tabakalera's shared screen programming throughout 2021: Donostia Kultura, Basque Film Archive, Elías Querejeta Zine-Eskola, SSIFF (San Sebastian International film Festival) and Tabakalera.

The pass's purchase includes the  2021 Nosferatu cycle publication (in Spanish) , dedicated to the filmmaker Luis Buñuel, which will be available in February.  

The pass can be purchased from December 22, 2020 at 12:00 noon to January 31, 2021 at 12:00 either on the Tabakalera website or at the centre's information desk.
The pass can be used from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021 (inclusive), and can be managed via the Tabakalera website and at the centre's information desk, being able to undertake the following actions: pass purchase, send the pass as a gift to someone else, buy tickets for films with the pass's discount, and check available balance.

 All of the information related to the 2021 cinema pass can be consulted on the Tabakalera website. 

Another new feature will be the publication of a new quarterly film newsletter in digital format about the shared screen programme which will replace the paper flyer that was used before the pandemic and which will be launched for the first time next week. The new digital newsletter includes exclusive material in the form of interviews, podcasts, and videos that will highlight the contents of everything happening inside and outside the Tabakalera cinema hall. The first issue of the newsletter will include a presentation of the Patric Chiha cycle and interviews with the filmmakers Luis López Carrasco and María Álvarez, among other contents.  

Subscription to the newsletter is open now.

Full programming for January-March 2021

The projections scheduled for January, February, and March can be found here.

2020 Data
Theatre audience: 15,452
Film sessions: 215

More information:
prentsa@tabakalera.eus
943011311 / 688743500
www.tabakalera.eus