The San Sebastián Festival and the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola announce the fourth edition of the José Ángel Herrero-Velarde grants for research into the Festival’s historical archives with the support of the Culture Department of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. The aim of this programme is to back research into the Festival’s historical archives, generating completely new texts taking said archives as their main source to look back at the past of the event while engaging in permanent discussion with its situation today and tomorrow.  The ultimate goal of the scholarship programme is to produce three research articles, which will be supervised by a committee comprising the participating institutions.

Eligibility for the grant is twofold: it is open both to people born and/or living in the Basque Autonomous Community and to people born and/or living in the rest of Spain, in both cases for at least two years. The project must indicate the subject, methodology and sources of the research, along with a letter of intent and the candidate’s curriculum vitae. The submissions must be made through the Festival archive website platform, where applicants can find the rules and all details of the call.

The project submission period opens on Friday, 6 March, and will run until 20 April. The committee tasked with studying and deciding the candidates will be made up of professionals from the San Sebastián Festival and the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. The three successful projects will be announced in May and the research period will run from 13-24 July.

Residency conditions

The successful candidates will each receive 3,000 euros to proceed with their research residency. They will similarly receive per diems for their consultation dates during their two weeks’ access to the Archive premises. The programme will also cover the travel and accommodation costs of successful candidates who live outside Gipuzkoa.

During their time in the Tabakalera building, home of all materials making up the Festival archives, the candidates will be assigned a work and consultation space with Internet connection in the Filmoteca Vasca. They will also have access to the film collection and archives stored both in the building itself and in adjacent premises and will have access to the facilities, resources and activities taking place in the building, such as film screenings, workshops and master classes.

The works, of between 6,000 and 10,000 words, must be completed within eight months of the selection date, with the possibility of requesting an extension of up to two months.

Almost 4,200 digitalized documents from the San Sebastián Festival’s historical archives (letters, photographs, posters, newspapers, magazines…) are available for consultation on the Artxiboa website. In addition, this portal offers a catalogue of more than 39,000 items describing the materials available for examination on request by professionals and specialist teachers and researchers. Artxiboa contains digitalized versions of almost 3,000 photographs belonging to both the Festival’s own collection and that of the Kutxateka; 742 copies of the Festival daily (now going by the name of Zinemaldia), of which issues are available from 1953 until today; some 322 posters for almost all editions, and selected material from the General and Press Archives.

The grants are named after José Ángel Herrero-Velarde, known as Notario, as a tribute to the member of the Festival’s management and selection committee, an essential figure in the last four decades of the event, who died in 2022.

Research projects completed in the first three editions

• Felipe Cabrerizo: A window open to the East. The entry into Spain of cinema from countries in the Soviet orbit through the San Sebastián International Film Festival during the Francoist period (1953-1977).
• Endika Rey: San Sebastián and the canon. New filmmakers at the Zinemaldia.
• Neus Sabaté: From the film school to the festival. The San Sebastián Festival, setting of the reunion between the first three women to graduate from the Madrid Film School: Josefina Molina, Pilar Miró and Cecilia Bartolomé
   
• Minerva Campos: The San Sebastián International Film Festival’s “A” status at stake: negotiations with the FIAPF and cinematic diplomacy (1953-1985).
• Violeta Kovacsics: The cinema of the Transition and the San Sebastián Festival.
• Aida Vallejo: Meetings at the Zinemaldia. A sociocultural history of the San Sebastián Festival through its spaces.

• Harri X. Fernández: And who animates this festival? Approach to and contexts of the presence of animated films at generalist European festivals in the 20th and 21st centuries: the case of the Zinemaldia and its 101 barks to Basque feminist utopia.
• Sonia García López: Seeds for revolt: the International Meeting of Film Schools (1960-1966).
• Carlos F. Heredero: Mirror to mirror. The New Spanish Cinema and the San Sebastián Festival.

• Asier Aranzubia: Film festivals as leading players in the processes of lending critical and academic legitimacy to films. The case of ‘El espíritu de la colmena’ (The Spirit of the Beehive) and the San Sebastián Festival.  
• Zigor Etxebeste: The directing elite: the era of Miguel de Echarri. When the leading directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age flocked to San Sebastián (1967-1977).

• Paula Arantzazu Ruiz: The role played by the International Meeting of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cinema and TV in 1965 as the birthplace of the ecosystem of science film festivals in the Spain of economic development and the Transition.