Created in 1959 under the supervision of the Instituto Vascongado de Cultura Hispánica (Basque Institute of Hispanic Culture), a body dependent on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the International Ibero-American and Philippine Documentary Film Competition (its original name) was conceived as a sister festival and in some way complementary to the San Sebastián Festival, which had got underway six years previously. Its sphere of action quickly expanded to include all countries and by 1968, in tune with the boom of the short fiction film that was being experienced in Spain at the time, a place was also found for this genre. Coinciding with the time that Roberto Negro acted as its director, the festival saw its most intense years between 1972 and 1981, when it fulfilled the double purpose of becoming a platform for debate on Spanish short film and also acted as a means of diffusion for works coming from the most diverse cinemas, paying special attention to cinema from Latin America.
In 1974 the competition gained the recognition of The International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) as a competitive festival in its three areas of fiction, documentary and animation, even though during the previous two years, echoing the fashion from abroad, in turn resulting from the hurricanes of ’68 which had deeply shaken the world of the film festivals of the day, it had renounced the presentation of awards, temporarily substituting them for democratic certificates of participation issued to the films that entered.
Additionally, the Bilbao competition has the honour of having served as a crucible for the genesis of what, in the years of the Transition to democracy, came to be known as Basque cinema, inasmuch as a significant part of the names that formed a roll-call liable to extension or reduction, depending on the vagaries of the autonomous subsidy policy of the time, brandished their arms during its sessions.
From 1981 onwards, the festival came under the institutional umbrella of Bilbao City Council and in 1987 it was integrated, for management purposes, into the structure of the Arriaga Theatre, which went on to become its new home, leaving to one side the classic Gran Vía cinema hall, taking with it a large part of the sentimental memories of the competition, which evaporated with its disappearance.
Coinciding with the arrival of a new, professional management team, the Bilbao Festival began a new era in the year 2000 which has seen it consolidate its place among the international festivals in its speciality (at present it attracts over 2,000 films registered to compete) and carve out its own path, while still acting as a platform for new Basque and Spanish filmmakers, in promoting a type of cinema that doesn’t wear itself out with the home-made repetition of stereotypical formulas, but commits itself to formal experimentation, the meaningful hybridity of new cultural products and the on-going investigation into an increasingly complex contemporary reality.
A brief look at the names in international cinema who have received awards in Bilbao reveals a list featuring outstanding figures such as Jacques Demy, Pierre Perrault, Michel Brault, Claude Lelouch, Gian Vittorio Baldi, Fernando Birri, James Blue, Santiago Álvarez, Robert L. Drew, Felipe Cazals, Peter Watkins or Peter Mullan. In this sense, it can be stated that the Bilbao Festival has fulfilled beyond all expectations the main function that can be attributed to a cultural event of its characteristics: to act as a testing ground for new trends and ways of understanding cinema, offering shelter to its most intrepid exponents and offering them the opportunity of making their work seen in a specialised context.
A similar checklist, made among the ranks of Spanish cinema, makes us realise that filmmakers belonging to at least three generations have emerged from this festival: Carlos Saura, Ramón Masats, Basilio M. Patino, Pío Caro Baroja, José Val del Omar, Javier Aguirre, Gabriel Blanco, Jaime Chávarri, Francisco Betriu, Imanol Uribe, Montxo Armendáriz, Julio Medem, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, Javier Rebollo or Santiago Segura. For a sizeable part of the most creative roster of our cinema, stopping off in Bilbao has turned out to be extremely fruitful, giving their work the springboard needed to put them in the critical and, as appropriate, public eye.
José Julián Bakedano
Santos Zunzunegui
