NEST

This is the space were we will discuss programmes created by members of the Tabakalera cinema involving year-round work, beyond film screenings and outside of the film festival dates.

The San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Elías Querejeta Film School and Tabakalera work together to research and disseminate cinematic knowledge. Added to this process of thought and reflection are our specific programmes to support emerging artists and train new talents.

NEST, part of the San Sebastián International Film Festival, is the competitive short film section for international film students. Everything starts here. It’s the foundation for the other sections of the festival. Only by nurturing this budding talent can the other competitive sections of the festival bear fruit.

We celebrated the 19th edition of this meeting in 2020. It’s therefore a young but established contest. However, this almost 20-year history is about to be rewritten.

Research by the Elías Querejeta Film School and the San Sebastián International Film Festival has revealed that the section started much earlier and that film students have had an active presence at the festival since the 1960s.  

And so, we draw on the old adage that to understand the present and imagine the future, we must know about our past. We are about to rewrite part of the history of the film festival. Thus, we are imagining its future.

THE NEW HISTORY

In December 4th, 2020,  Tabakalera held the second public programme of the Zinemaldia 70: All Possible Stories project on the Tabakalera shared screen, co-organised with the Elías Querejeta Film School as part of the ZINEMALDIA + PLUS spotlight. The programme showcased the importance of the resources stored in the festival archives since its founding year 1953.

In this session, Marcela Hinojosa and Noemí Cuetos, two students from the second intake of the curatorial speciality at the Elías Querejeta Film School, told the audience that their research had revealed that the first film schools meeting at the festival was back in 1960. According to the researchers, said meeting could be interpreted as a bridge between the Salamanca Conversations of 1955 and the 1st International Film Schools Conference in Sitges in 1967.

‘Nest didn’t start in 2001 but four decades prior. The 1st International Cinematography Schools Conference took place in the Teatro Gran Kursaal in 1960, at the eight edition of the festival. The programme included 20 short films, 4 feature films and talks, and all sessions were open to the public. There were films from France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Mexico, the Netherlands, Japan and Belgium, including When Angels Fall, the final degree film by a young Roman Polanski. Film makers such as Basilio Martín Patino and Víctor Erice brought their early works to the conference throughout those years’, said the researchers.

The purpose for establishing the students meeting was also recorded, and is still valid today: ‘To stimulate discussions capable of renewing the cinematographic art and to establish contacts between schools ‘.

A FESTIVAL SECTION IS BORN

The official story told to date is that the section began in 2002. It was initially called the International Film Schools Meeting before rebranding as the International Film Students Meeting. This change in emphasis from ‘schools’ to ‘students’ was an important acknowledgement of the festival’s interest in focussing on the film makers and their work, rather than on the academic institutions where they were trained.

Tabakalera joined the organisation of the section in 2008 and was behind the creation of tailored online registration platforms. This technical detail marked the start of a new age for the section, which has since seen an exponential increase in participating short films and schools. This year the section received the greatest number of works to date, comprising some 190 short films and 77 schools – a 233% increase with respect to 2007 (57 shorts from 17 schools). The meeting has since grown, and has not only more participants but greater ambition. The overarching goal has been to surpass the perception that NEST is a ‘minor section’ of the festival by providing it with resources that indicate its significance. The screenings of the participating works were complemented with a programme of masterclasses with film professionals (Bertrand Bonello, Nobuhiro Suwa, Marine Francen, Raymon Depardon, Todd Haynes, Christine Vachon and Albertina Carri) who discussed how they work. An extra day was added for the section and a crucial change was implemented, even though it may seem like a minor gesture: the prizes for the section started to be announced at the final festival gala and included in the official list of winners.

MORE THAN A THOUSAND TITLES, AND THE LONG TERM

We have always maintained that the future of the festival relies on NEST. Directors including Jerónimo Quevedo, Kiro Russo, Oren Gerner, Isabel Lamberti and Grigory Kolomytsev started out at NEST before bringing their films to San Sebastián and other international festivals.

Beyond these names and their films, the section is also a strategic, long term project involving all local film partners. The Tabakalera Medialab team has been working since 2016 (when it was originally called Ubik) to catalogue the shorts screened in the section. It currently has more than 1000 short films in the collection going back to 2008, all available in the public catalogue. Every year, during the festival, the Medialab shows part of this catalogue on its public screen. The archive also has interviews with all participating female directors over the last five years of the section. This is a unique collection covering the recent history of the section and highlighting its major role in the festival.

In these turbulent times, when both the film industry and film festivals are questioning their meaning and their future, a project such as NEST should help us decide where to go next. What is certainly clear is that the future will encompass all the research and knowledge of its past. From there, in collaboration with the film festival, the Elías Querejeta Film School and Tabakalera, we can strengthen our support for the emerging films of the present.

SELECTION COMMITEE

• Maialen Beloki Berasategui
• Lur Olaizola
• Amaia Serrulla