- This year, the programme includes four sessions, with a projection in 16 mm analogue format and a meeting with Galician director Sandra Sánchez.
Ángel Rueda, co-director of the (S8) welcoming the participants. Photos: Andrea R.
The educational screenings by (S8) have been the start of the pre-festival activity for years, and this 2026 there will be nearly four hundred schoolchildren from state schools in A Coruña attending. In total there will be four sessions on 7, 14, 20 and 28 May, where schools from different neighbourhoods of the city will be attending to discover analogue cinema and have the experience of participating in a film festival. All the sessions are to be held in the Domus museum where, as the co-director of the Mostra Ángel Rueda explains: “the magic happens”.
And it is precisely that magical vibe that will make this year’s festival no exception. After the welcome, the lights in the hall go down and the rattle of the analogue projector begins. As soon as light floods the screen, the students from the CEIP José Cornide Saavedra and CEIP Ramón de la Sagra schools, were able to discover the A Coruña of their grandparents portrayed on 16 mm film. That will occur with the films El cochecito (1952) and Auriga (1955), both anonymous in origin, being what is known as “found footage”. The former film shows a group of children playing in the streets. In the latter, migrants are seen boarding El Auriga, a transatlantic ship that sailed the Italy‒Venezuela route and took many Galicians to Latin America.
After the screening, the hall fills with questions and the audience begins to share out strips of celluloid and Super 8 cameras, with most of them experiencing and touching analogue cinema for the first time. Yet this first part is just an appetizer, since they then attend the screening of several examples of experimental cinema.
The students have an interactive experience with analogue film.
SANDRA SÁNCHEZ, GUEST DIRECTOR
This year, the selection includes several films by the A Coruña-born director Sandra Sánchez, like Matías (2015), made at the Chanfaina Lab in San Sadurniño; A nena azul (2018), with which she has won numerous awards such as the Mestre Mateo for best short fiction film; and Ven a Bens (1992), her first work, made when she was a student and which portrays the community that lived off making use of rubbish from the Bens landfill in A Coruña, which no longer exists. After the films, the director herself joins the Q&A, in which schoolchildren ask about the filmmaker’s process, ideas, and career.
In the next sessions in this programme, the following schools will be taking part: IES Rafael Dieste, CEIP Concepción Arenal, CEIP Gándara Sofán, IES Ramón Menéndez Pidal, CEIP Curros Enríquez, CEIP San Pedro de Visma and IES Urbano Lugrís. In total, this year will feature educational screenings for approximately four hundred pupils aged 8 to 15 years old. This initiative can count on collaboration from Museos Científicos Coruñeses and the Concellería de Educación, Formación e Innovación Tecnolóxica of Concello da Coruña.
Sandra Sánchez during the Q&A with the students.
XPRESA: AN INCLUSIVE EXPERIENCE
Another essential event in the days leading up to the start of (S8) is the Xpresa social inclusion workshop, which is celebrating its ninth year. It takes place on 29 and 30 May and is made possible thanks to support from the Emalcsa Foundation and its Accessible and Inclusive Culture programme. This year, the participants are again users of the Adcor Foundation and Asperga, in addition to a new organisation and collective: the users of the Red Cross International Protection Reception System.
To conduct the workshop, which is to be held in the Luis Seoane Foundation, (S8) has invited the Mexican artist and filmmaker Marcela Cuevas, who plans to create moving images with collage and acetate drawing techniques. She will also suggest exploring objects, personal archives, and plants in the surrounding area with a microscope. The aim will be to work on an abstract self-portrait that can be presented as a collaborative work, emphasising the power of each user’s unique characteristics and the possibilities for integration.
O obradoiro Xpresa cumpre nove anos. Na imaxe, a edición do 2015. Foto: A. Morandeira.
The (S8) is sponsored by the Concellería de Cultura e Turismo of the Concello da Coruña, and the support of the Deputación da Coruña, the Axencia Galega das Industrias Culturais (Agadic), Instituto da Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA), Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Fundación Luis Seoane.
