The Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa’s Department of Culture promotes submissions for the first José Ángel Herrero-Velarde grants going to researchers born or living in the province of Gipuzkoa. The first year of the initiative, jointly organised by the San Sebastian Festival and the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, offers three grants.

These grants are intended to promote research into the Festival’s historical archive, generating new academic texts focused on the Festival’s historical archive as a way of looking back into its past while engaging in an ongoing dialogue with its present and future. The launch of these grants is the result of the work conducted to open the archive thanks to the research project Zinemaldia 70: all possible histories, coordinated with the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola over the last four years.

The grants are named after José Ángel Herrero-Velarde aka ‘Notario’ by way of a tribute to this member of the Festival’s management team and selection committee, a hugely important figure in the last forty years of the event, who died last year.

The ultimate aim of these grants is the production of three new academic articles to be supervised by a committee of members from the institutions participating in the programme. The Festival will ensure that the projects are published, acting as an intermediary between the researchers and publishers or prestigious journals with a potential interest publishing them. The research studies may also be considered by the editorial committee of the academic journal Zine: cuadernos de investigación cinematográfica jointly published by the Festival, the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola and the Filmoteca Vasca.

Applicants must submit a project indicating the subject, methodology and sources of their research work, together with a letter of intent and their CV. Applications must be submitted via the Festival archive website, where the interested parties will find the rules and all details of the call for submissions.

The period for presenting the research projects will run from 15 March until 17 April 2023. The committee responsible for studying and selecting the applicants will be made up of professionals from the San Sebastian Festival and the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. The three selected projects will be announced at the end of May or beginning of June and the residency will take place in July.

The selected research residents will receive the sum of €3,500. Added to this, during their two weeks of access to the Archive facilities they will receive a per diem for every day of consultation. The programme will also cover the cost of travel and accommodation for beneficiaries eligible for participation in the programme who live outside Gipuzkoa.

During their time in the Tabakalera building, where all of the Festival archive material is stored, the researchers will be given a space with Internet connection in which to work and proceed with their research at the Filmoteca Vasca. They will also enjoy guaranteed access to the cinematic collection and archives stored in and adjacent to the building as well as access to the building facilities, resources and activities, such as film screenings, workshops and masterclasses.

The studies, which must have between 6,000 and 10,000 words, must be completed within seven months from the selection date, with the possibility of requesting an extension of no more than two months.

The Artxiboa website represents the end of the first stage of the project Zinemaldia 70: all possible stories, launched in 2018 by the San Sebastian Festival and the Elías Querejeta Zine Escola for the purposes of preserving, studying and opening to the general public for consultation the Festival’s historical archive, compiled since the event was founded in 1953.

More than 4,000 documents in the San Sebastian Festival’s historical archive (letters, photographs, posters, dailies…) will be available for consultation on the website. In addition, this new website will offer a catalogue of more than 27,000 fact sheets for the materials available for examination on request by professionals and specialists in the field of education and research. The website offers digital versions of more than 3,000 photographs belonging to the Festival and Kutxateka collections; 711 copies of the Festival daily (now known as Zinemaldia), with issues dating from 1954 until today; some 350 posters for almost all its editions, and selected materials from the General & Press Archive.

The period for presenting the research projects will run from 15 March until 17 April 2023.