Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola

Spotlight on films from the Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian), selected and accompanied by José Emilio González Calvillo, a student on their Curating Studies course. As part of Europalia: Spain.

Departures / Arrivals

"This programme is full of departures and arrivals, as in an airport or a train station: people leaving and arriving in a new place, people returning and leaving a story behind. This programme is also permeated by the following question: how can we talk and listen from a distance?

Voices are expressed through text and image, audio recordings, names spoken like a distant rumour. These journeys in the programme's short films are not exempt from the weight of history that forces people to move: wars, colonial invasions. But neither are they exempt from the possibilities of a new life.

The journey begins with Wild Flowers (Karla Crnčević, 2023): the filmmaker left her hometown, and she returns to it through her work digitising images filmed by her father thirty years earlier, in the midst of the Croatian war. In Il rumore dell'universo (Gabriel Azorín, 2022), a young musician returns home after a tour. His return is accompanied by the last audio message from his girlfriend. A casa do norte (Inês Lima, 2021) transports us inside a house filled with flowers and canaries, but where the complex relationship between Portugal and Angola shines through in the dialogues, which no one utters, but which appear textually on the image. Finally, Noizko basoa (Mikele Landa, 2023) is the final destination. This short film takes place in the mountains of the Basque Country and then shows the view from an aeroplane about to land. It quickly moves from high altitudes to inland areas, where we see the roots of a tree.

The programme also talks about the experience of the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola school, which brings together people from different backgrounds who have left their homeland to settle in the mountains of Donosti." (José Emilio González Calvillo)

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In the presence of filmmakers Gabriel Azorín and Mikele Landa, José Emilio
González Calvillo and Arrate Velasco (deputy headmistress of the school)

Wild flowers: Original version with English subtitles
Il rumore dell'universo: Original version with French and English subtitles
A Casa do Norte: Original version with French and English subtitles
Noizko basoa: Original version with French and English subtitles