A total of 247 documentary works were admitted to Espiello, International Ethnographic Documentary Festival of Sobrarbe. On October 15, the deadline was closed for directors and producers to present their work at the next edition of the competition, which will be held from March 17 to 26, 2023 in Boltaña.
A total of 280 articles were received, although 33 were not admitted for various reasons, such as lack of documentation, having been presented in other years or exceeding the maximum duration of 90 minutes, for example. This figure represents a slight drop compared to the documentaries presented in the last edition. They are 20 less this year, even if the level of internationalization has increased and 60% of the works presented come from abroad, a percentage that has increased by 5 points. In addition, the Festival management considers that this slight decrease in the number of documentaries presented can result in more specific works related to the ethnographic theme of the event.
The origin of documentaries is very diverse. They arrived from 51 different countrieswith Spain as the one presenting the most documentaries, with 111. It is followed by France with 17 works, Mexico with 14 and Germany with 13. 10 works came from Brazil, and 9 from the United States and Portugal. Although works were also received from Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Cameroon, Cuba, Czech Republic, Chile, from China, Cyprus, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Denmark, Ecuador, Slovenia, Estonia, Philippines, Finland, Gabon, Italy, India, Iran, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Norway , Netherlands, Palestine, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Serbia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania and Turkey.
And of all titles, some are of Aragonese origin like “The solitude of those who do not exist”, by Alfonso Burgos; ‘The Shepherd’s Way’, by Silvia Pradas; “Pierres Vedel and the magician of water”, by José Ángel Guimerá; “Empty Walls”, by José Manuel Herráiz and Isabel Soria; ‘Nabateros del Sobrarbe’, by Daniel Mingus; ‘Lo chapurriau’, by Ferrán Rañé and ‘Los balances’, by Raúl Capdevila.
Selection process
Now it’s the turn of pre-selection jury, made up of 60 people They have a heavy task ahead of them. In the coming months, they will watch all the selected documentaries, divided into 11 groups of five or six members. In a first round, they will see about twenty documentaries and during the evaluation meeting, on December 10, between 30 and 40 documentaries will be selected to move on to a second round. The last meeting will take place on January 28 to choose the selected documentaries, which usually last between 12 and 20which will be screened at the Espiello Festival and compete for a prize.
This pre-selection jury is made up of about thirty inhabitants of Sobrarbe who are part of the Espiello association or have a particular interest in cinema and anthropology. The rest is completed by experts from both disciplines to give a more precise vision in these areas.
Training workshop with the Trasfoco school
As every year, the organization of the Festival convenes a training workshop intended for the members of this approach. In this edition, it is an ‘online’ training given by the Trasfoco film school, which won the Espiello Chicorrón award in the latest edition of Espiello. This award recognizes an individual or group for their work in the field of literacy or audiovisual research and for their ethnographic fieldwork with children and youth.
This year, the workshop focuses on use of audiovisual language. During two sessions, concepts such as the process of making audiovisual works will be worked on; from the idea to the diffusion; Audiovisual language: something more than audio and video; Morphological elements of audiovisual language and syntactic elements of audiovisual language. The objective is provide the members of this committee with an informed and critical view, so that they can carry out their work within the pre-selection jury in a professional and complete manner.
.