The San Sebastian Festival and Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola promote the third edition of the José Ángel Herrero-Velarde grants for research into the historiacal archives of the Festival with the support of the Culture Department of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. The aim of this programme is to promote research into the Festival’s historical archives, generating completely original texts that take said archives as their main source and look back at the past of the event while enabling an ongoing dialogue with its present and future.  

The ultimate aim of the grants is the production of three completely new research articles, which will be supervised by a committee of representatives of the institutions participating in the programme. The Festival will back the publication of the projects and can act as an intermediary between the authors of the works and publishers or prestigious journals potentially interested in publishing them.

"These grants are an extraordinary opportunity to delve into the history of the San Sebastian Festival and further demonstrate our commitment to promote research and the dissemination of Gipuzkoa's cultural heritage", said Goizane Álvarez, Deputy of Culture of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. “In particular, by supporting the research and production of these texts, we will learn more about the event's past and the impact it has had and continues to have on today's film culture”, she added.

The grant is open to applications from researchers who were born or live in Gipuzkoa and or were born or have lived in the rest of Spain for at least two years. The project must indicate the research subject, methodology and sources, and be submitted with a letter of intent and their curriculum vitae. Applications must be submitted to the platform of the Festival archive website, where interested applicants can find the rules and all details of the call.

The period for submitting research projects opens on Friday, 7 March, and will run until 22 April 2025. The committee responsible for assessing and selecting the candidates will be made up of professionals from the San Sebastian Festival and the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. The three selected projects will be announced in May and their stay will take place from 7-18 July.

Grant conditions

Those selected researchers will receive a grant of 3,500 euros. In addition, during their two weeks of access to the Archive facilities, they will receive per diems corresponding to the days of consultation. The programme will also cover the travel and accommodation costs of beneficiaries who live outside Gipuzkoa.

During their stay in the Tabakalera building, home of all materials making up the Festival archive, the researchers will be assigned a space for work and consultation with Internet connection at the Filmoteca Vasca. They will also be guaranteed access to the film collections and archives located in and adjacent to the building and will have access to its facilities, resources and activities, including film screenings, workshops and master classes.

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

Almost 4,000 digitalized documents from the San Sebastian Festival archives (letters, photographs, posters, dailies, magazines, etc.) are available for consultation on Artxiboa website. In addition, this portal offers a catalogue of more than 35,000 items describing the materials available for examination on request by professionals, specialist teachers and researchers. Artxiboa contains digitalised versions of more than 3,000 photographs from the Festival’s own collection and those belonging to the Kutxateka; 733 copies of the Festival daily (now going by the name of Zinemaldia), of which issues are available from 1953 until today; some 320 posters from almost all its editions, and selected material from the General and Press Archives.

The grants are named after José Ángel Herrero-Velarde 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.

First and second editions’ researchs

• Felipe Cabrerizo: A window open to the East: the entrance to Spain of movies from the Soviet orbit through the San Sebastian Festival (1953-1977).
• Minerva Campos: San Sebastian International Film Festival's 'A' category at risk: negotiations with the FIAPF and cinematic diplomacy (1953-1985).
• Violeta Kovacsics: The movies of the Transition and the San Sebastian Festival.

• Endika Rey: New directions: New Filmmakers at the San Sebastian Festival
• Neus Sabaté: Ripples of the reunion between Josefina Molina, Pilar Miró and Cecilia Bartolomé.
• Aida Vallejo: Meetings at the Zinemaldia. A sociocultural history of the San Sebastian 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 Zinemaldia, of its 101 barks to the Basque feminist utopia.
• Sonia García López: Seeds for revolt: the International Meeting of Film Schools (1960-1966).
• Carlos F. Heredero: Mirror to mirror. New Spanish Cinema and the San Sebastian Festival.