The director of the Basque film school explains its postgraduate programmes, as well as the selection process and its scholarship requirements

The director of Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, based in Tabakalera and with ties to the San Sebastian International Film Festival, Carlos Muguiro, tells us about the centre’s postgraduate programmes, as well as the selection process and its scholarship requirements.

Cineuropa: How are EZQE’s postgraduate programmes structured in terms of academic content and collaborations with institutions such as Filmoteca Vasca, Tabakalera and the San Sebastian Festival?
Carlos Muguiro: The course is for fifteen months and divided into six modules. Five are taught modules with lectures and the fifth is for completing the final project. Like any university master's degree, it is based on completing 60 ECTS credits. However, because of both the context (the institutions you mention are in the same building) and of the very concept of the school as a "factory", meaning that it is a place you come to every day, whether there are classes or not, the academic structure is just one of the layers that make up the school experience. Our work with institutions is regular, totally naturalised, from day one, and not only through the curricular internship programme. 

What are the main criteria used by Admissions and the Academic Board to assess the applications for postgraduate programmes at EQZE?
There are objective criteria, such as having a bachelor's degree, to have attended a film school or to have experience in the field. Others, the most important ones, are to do with the candidate's idea and knowledge of cinema, why they wish to join the school (i.e. the more emotional or experiential reasons), the willingness to be "exposed" to the school and to change, and the nature of the project they want to carry out in the school.

Could you give more details on the selection process for the scholarships offered by the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Ibero-American Ibermedia Support Fund? What are the eligibility requirements for these scholarships?
The Ibero-American Ibermedia Support Fund will award 14 scholarships worth 3,571 dollars to candidates who are selected in one of the school's training programmes (Archive, Curatorship and Creation) and who come from the 23 countries that are part of the programme. To be precise, these are candidates from the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela. These scholarships have been created based on $50,000 being granted to the centre by Ibermedia, which has valued supporting projects "from their development to their commercialisation", "the importance of the studies in the field of preservation and curatorship", and "the partnership with the San Sebastian Festival, the University, other festivals and the Tabakalera Centre".  On the other hand, the Department of Culture of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa will award three scholarships to those who can prove their administrative residence in any of the municipalities in the Historical Territory of Gipuzkoa for at least five years, within the last ten years. Another requirement is age, as persons under 31 years of age are eligible for these scholarships.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)