VITTORIO BOARINI

A lecturer in history and cinema, born in Italy. In 1961 he graduated in Political Science at Cesare Alfieri University in Florence. He was Head of the Culture Department in the city of Bologna from 1962 to 1966. At the end of the sixties he founded the Bologna Film library which he was director of until the end of the year 2000. During this time, the Film Archives received all kinds of awards, especially in recognition of the work carried out by the "L'Immagine Ritrovata" laboratory in recovering and restoring films. Until April 2001 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the FIAF. In 1995 the president of the Italian Republic presented him with an important honorary award and three years later he was named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French government. At the moment he is director of the Federico Fellini Foundation in Rímini and continues to give film classes at the University of Bologna.

CATHERINE GAUTIER

Born in Paris in 1951, she studied Spanish, English and Cinema, which she rounded off by regularly attending the French Cinematheque. When she was 19 she moved to Madrid where she studied Audio-visual Science starting in 1973. In 1975 she joined the broadcasting team at the Spanish National Film Library. In 1982 she obtained Spanish nationality and since 1989 she has held the post of Deputy director at the renamed Spanish Film Library, where she took charge of supervising films in storage and purchases, recovering Spanish films abroad and programming the Doré Film theatre in Madrid. For 27 years she has been responsible for locating copies of films that are unavailable in Spain, often through detective work, as well as dealing with the screening rights. This has enabled her to organise several hundred thematic seasons and comprehensive retrospectives featuring international filmmakers from every period for the Film Library. She has advised and collaborated with various institutions and festivals on a regular basis (including the Donostia-San Sebastián festival) for years and she has been a member of the FIAF (International Film Archive Federation) Programming Commission and is a member of the Executive Committee of the ACE (Association of European Film Libraries).

MARIE-PIERRE MACIA

A French festival programmer. When she finished her university studies in Classics, she went into the world of cinema. She began to work at the French Cinematheque and at the Louis Lumiére School. From 1984 to 1987 she worked with the Cannes Directors' Fortnight in Paris. In 1987 she got a grant to study restoring and conserving films in the United States in the archives in the MOMA, the Library of Congress and UCLA. In 1989 Peter Scarlet, the director of the San Francisco International Film Festival, suggested that she work with him. In 1995, back in France, she organised the programming of the "Rencontres Internationales de Cinéma à París" with the aim of establishing an annual meeting point for independent international cinema and encouraging exchanges between producers and directors and the public in the French capital. In 1997 she became a correspondent in France for the Rotterdam Film Festival. Since 1999 she has been the general delegate at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes.

LEANDRO MARTÍNEZ

Born in Zaragoza in 1955, he studied Chemistry at the university in the same city. Since 1972, he has been a programmer at the university and at film clubs, festivals and town councils throughout Aragón.
He has worked as a film critic with Radio Popular in Zaragoza, the Andalán review and the newspaper El Día de Aragón.
Since 1978 he has been working, through the Zaragoza Culture Assembly, on compiling a film archive in Aragón. He has been director of the Circulation and Exhibition Department of Zaragoza Film Archive since its creation by the local Town Council in 1981.

BERTHA NAVARRO

A Mexican producer, who was born in Mexico City. She collaborated on a regular basis with the group of directors who revitalised Mexican cinema in the sixties. She worked with Gregory Nava in 1981 on El Norte, and shortly afterwards she became a producer for some of the young directors who in the last ten years have put Mexico on the world map as far as cinema is concerned. These included Cabeza de Vaca by Nicolás Echeverría or Cronos, Guillermo del Toro's debut film who she has continued to work with on El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone). Her latest films have been La fiebre del loco, by Andrés Wood and Silencio roto, by Montxo Armendáriz. As well as working as a producer, Bertha Navarro is a promoter and co-ordinator at the Script Laboratories for Latin American scriptwriters in collaboration with the Sundance Film Institute and the Carmen Toscano Foundation. At the moment she is preparing the full-length film Asesino en serio, by Antonio Urrutia.

JORGE RUFFINELLI

An Uruguayan critic and essayist, he was born in Montevideo in 1943. He has taught at Universities in Mexico and Argentina. Since 1986 he has lived in California where he teaches Latin American cinema and literature at Stanford University. He ran the review "Texto Crítico in Mexico" for 12 years as well as the Centre for Linguistic and Literary Research at Vera Cruz University. In 1993 he made a documentary on Augusto Monterroso (Monterroso, A Short Story). He has written thirteen books of literary and film criticism and more than 500 articles and journalistic reviews, and currently edits the review "Nuevo Texto Crítico". At the moment he is preparing the first Encyclopaedia of Latin American Cinema and has just published in Spain the book "Patricio Guzmán" on the work of this prestigious Chilean director.

ARANTXA URRETABIZKAIA

A writer and journalist from Guipuzcoa, who was born in San Sebastián in 1947. She studied Geography and History in Barcelona where she graduated in 1975. She has always had close links with cultural circles in San Sebastián such as the Argia group and the LUR publishing house, and began to write together with Ramón Saizarbitoria, Ibon Sarasola and Ricardo Arregi. In 1970 in collaboration with Sarasola she translated an important book by Frantz Fanon into Basque as "Afrika iraultzaren alde" and wrote an essay on economic history with Saizarbitoria. In 1977 she began to work as a journalist for the newspaper "Egin" and later on for ETB, "Deia" and "El Diario Vasco". In 1983 she wrote the script for La Conquista de Albania with Alfonso Ungría and in 1987 the script for Lauaxeta-A los Cuatro Vientos with José Antonio Zorrilla. As a writer at the beginning of the 70's she published her first book of poems "San Pedro bezperaren ondoak" with which she won the Gipuzkoa Prize in 1971. In 1979 she wrote the novel "Zergatik Panpox" which was a great popular success and was made into a film by Xabier Elorriaga. Since then she has written books of short stories and two novels, "Saturno" in 1987 and "Aurten aldatuko da nire bizitza" in 1992, she won the City of Irún prize with her book of poems "Maitasunaren Magalean" in 1982 and has also won the National Literary Critics Award. She is a member of the Basque Academy.