INPUT
PERSONALISED TUTORING SPACE FOR FILM PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT
INPUT is a tutoring and consultancy space for film projects in development which was launched in 2017 as the result of collaboration between the Luis Seoane Foundation and the (S8) International Peripheral Film Festival (Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico). Through it, every year a group of filmmakers gain access to internationally renowned professionals in the sphere of cinema and art with whom they can discuss their projects, ranging from the writing and development stage up to distribution. These are individual, personalised tutorials, where each of the tutees selected can share their creative processes that are then analysed by the mentor to find new ways or foster existing ones.
INPUT is one of the main lines of work carried out by eSe8_LAB, which organises and fosters professional activities that involve modernisation in the sector, with an impact on the promotion of Spanish culture nationwide and internationally. The aim of these sessions is to foster professionalisation among new creators, boosting their training, lending them structure and networking within the cultural sector in Spain.
TUTORS
RAQUEL SCHEFER
Raquel Schefer is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Audiovisuals at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, where she took her doctoral studies. A filmmaker and curator specializing in film, she is also co-director of the quarterly publication on film theory and history, La Furia Umana. She holds a master’s degree in Documentary Film from the University of Buenos Aires and a bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences from the Nova University of Lisbon. She has been a postdoctoral researcher in Science and Technology at the University of Lisbon, the Nova University of Lisbon and the University of the Western Cape, and a visiting researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also the author of the book El autorretrato en el documental: figuras, máquinas, imágenes (Self-portrait in the documentary: figures, machines, images) (Ediciones Universidad del Cine, 2008) and various scientific and critique articles. Her main areas of research are the history and aesthetics of anti-colonial and militant cinema, as well as the intersections between experimental and ethnographic cinema.
BYRON DAVIES
With a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University, Davies is a researcher and visual artist, as well as a member of the @sa.ci.mu collective (Mexico) and a Maria Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Murcia with the research project “Materialism and Geographical Specificity in the Philosophy of Film”. He has collaborated with the FISURA Film Festival in Mexico City and the Cámara Lúcida Festival in Ecuador. His texts on cinema have appeared in October, Screen, Millennium Film Journal, The Baffler, The Experiments, and more. He is originally from the U.S. and a naturalized citizen of Mexico.
CATARINA DE SOUSA
De Sousa creates and produces films and visual arts. In 2023, she was selected as a producer and director for Berlinale Talents. In 2021, she co-founded the film and visual arts production company Foi Bonita a Festa, based in Porto, Portugal. She is also the founder of Casa do Xisto, an artistic residency based in northern Portugal that fosters connection and community spirit through film and the visual arts.
BELI MARTÍNEZ
Beli Martínez earned a PhD in Audiovisual Communication from the University of Vigo with her first thesis studying New Galician Cinema. She is now a teaching doctor in Audiovisual Communication, Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Vigo. She has also produced films such as La Parra (The Vine), Longa noite (Long night), Eles transportan a morte (They transport death), and Sycorax. Her works have been shown at film festivals such as Cannes, Toronto and the NYFF, and have received jury recognition at competitions like Venice, San Sebastián and Mar del Plata. She has given lectures at Harvard, Edinburgh and the Basque Country universities, as well as at the CCCB in Barcelona.
SELECTED PROJECTS
OH MONO, ADIÓS BY PAOLA BUONTEMPO
Oh mono, adiós (Oh monkey, goodbye) is a film that begins with the space voyage of the first Argentine astronaut, Juan, a capuchín monkey that left Earth in 1969 in a rocket launched from the arid plain of Chamical. Oh mono, adiós seeks out Juan’s ghostly traces in Córdoba Zoo, attempting to capture them using a pseudoscientific method from the early 20th century: ectoplasmic photography. She tries to imagine what his eyes saw on his incredible space odyssey using a variety of special effects and artisanal colour techniques.
Paola Buontempo is an Argentinian filmmaker, teacher and film programmer. She holds a degree in Audiovisual Arts from the National University of La Plata (UNLP), Argentina, and has studied Art History (FDA-UNLP) and Cinematography (CFP-SICA). She is currently studying a Master’s degree in Film and Audiovisual Archives at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. Her short films Las instancias del vértigo (2010), Los animales (2012) and Las fuerzas (2018) have been shown at a number of festivals and institutions. She is now developing her feature film La raza de los ligeros, selected for the Tres Puertos Cine writing residency (Chile/Mexico) and Proyecta, an initiative backed by Ventana Sur, Marché du Film and the San Sebastián Film Festival. Her photographs have been exhibited at several visual arts venues and have won a number of prizes, and she was selected for Berlinale Talents (2022) and Talents Buenos Aires (2012). In 2013 and 2023, she also received the Creation scholarship from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Argentina). In 2024 she was the recipient of a Flaherty Curatorial Fellowship.
Between 2013 and 2017 she programmed Festifreak – Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente de La Plata (Argentina). Then, from 2018 to 2023 she was on the programming team for the Mar del Plata International Film Festival. She is currently a member of the Documenta Madrid selection committee.
DE LA NOCHE A LA MAÑANA (OVERNIGHT) BY ORISEL CASTRO
After years of partying in the communist side of Germany, a group of Cuban workers had to return to their island when the wall fell. This film attempts to lend visibility to the presence of those Caribbeans at that historical moment, and to highlight their way of living, creating and reminiscing; the poetry of the now extinct working class will come to life through letters, dances and communal day-to-day life in 8 mm.
Orisel Castro was born in Havana in 1984. A filmmaker, curator and academic, she graduated from the ISA University of Arts and the International Film School of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. She holds an M.Sc. in Visual Anthropology from FLACSO, Ecuador, and is a doctoral candidate for the PhD in Art: Production and Research at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Her first feature film, El hombre que siempre hizo su parte (The Man Who Always Did His Part) has been screened at many international festivals and she has been a film programmer and lecturer in Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Spain, where she is currently working on her new film De la noche a la mañana (Overnight) and her research into female aesthetics and cinema.
WHAT IS A MOUNTAIN? BY FRAN RODRÍGUEZ CASAL
What is a mountain? A place for forestry speculation? Wildfires, wind farms and mines like open wounds? A sacred site where a centuries-old pilgrimage takes place? An open-air archaeological museum, with wolf pits, stone huts and monasteries? Home to a deer? Witness to the tectonic forces that brought Pangaea to an end? What is a mountain? This is a film essay that uses various media—sound and visual—in seeking to capture the significance of a mountain. Multiple perspectives confront each other over the same terrain: the institutional view is contrasted with the popular one, as well as with animal, geological and philosophical viewpoints.
Fran Rodríguez Casal is a multidisciplinary artist interested in exploring the relationship between the body and the environment. He works with media such as film, photography, and sound, pushing back the boundaries of artistic genres. His first feature film, Da túa man para a miña (From Your Hand to Mine), co-directed with Coral Piñeiro, is currently in production. His most recent work, Patios de luz, has been screened at a number of festivals. He has also taken part in several artistic residencies, including the 10th Encontro de Artistas Novos at the Cidade da Cultura and a residency in the Aran Islands, Ireland, promoted by Stills and Motion. Recently, he took part in the exhibition “Paisaxe_0” with the Poligonal Collective at Galería Metro and was a finalist in the 13th Premio de Artistas Novos at the Auditorio de Galicia.
In 2024, he was in charge of directing the opening performance at the 19th MICE, 586 cantos, a tribute to Dorothé Schubart. Furthermore, for his performance project Do outro lado, he was selected for the residencies on literature and thought at Mariñán and the Paraíso Residency held by Colectivo RPM. He is also one of the artists chosen for the Nortear residencies, a gathering of artists from northern Portugal and Galicia.
VÊHTIHIO BY VIOLETA SARMIENTO
Vêhtihio is a film that acts like an unfolding fan, displaying connections with structural cinema and pre-cinema from the chronophotography of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne Marey to Werner Nekes’s conception of “kine”—where the fundamental unit of film is the difference between two frames, and analogue cinema works with the sequencing of still images, which we perceive as motion. The work is based on this principle by airing and reconsidering self-representation and the critical relevance of the medium of film. The final piece emerges from a source film, unfolding its fibres and stretching them into the exhibition space in the form of a triptych or fan, expanding one’s gaze on a hackneyed image hollowed out on being so threadbare and worn: the image of a woman in a flamenco dress has been overused exhaustively as a symbol of “Spanish culture”.
Violeta Sarmiento, artist and activist, graduated in Medicine from the University of Seville, while getting involved in activism and studying cinema and audiovisual creation by herself. She has participated in collectives and social movements since 2011. She has also been a member of the feminist videoguerrilla collective Hyksos since 2017, which is committed to critical and alternative programming of workshops, exhibitions and film screenings from a feminist perspective. Sarmiento has also been a collaborator of La Digitalizadora de la Memoria Colectiva since 2022, where she is especially involved in Mireya Forel’s collection and the spin-off project “Enredar la memoria” (“Entangling memory”). She is co-creator of the film Ahora aquella utopía (Now that utopia) (2022), made with recovered discards of Super 8 mm footage from the feminist activist Mireya Forel, concerning the autonomous movement in Andalusia in the 1980s. At present, she is exploring the possibilities of analogue film, a tool she used in the film-performance Vera (2023). She currently lives in Madrid, where she is studying at Master-LAV: Audiovisual Laboratory for Contemporary Creation and Practice (2024–2025).
