Organisers pleased with the turnout at the 3rd Basque, Galician and Catalan Cinema Season


The event proved once again to be appealing to the local audience, which along the years has been showing a sustained interest in the realities of these three nations of South Western Europe.

Although there was some initial concern that this year’s change of venue to The Barber Institute of Fine Arts might have had an impact on the attendance, this new edition of the Cinema Season attracted once more a remarkable amount of spectators. 

The audience applauded the screenings and contributed to very insightful and enjoyable Q&A rounds with our guests, Jabi Elortegi, director of the Basque film Zorion Perfektua, Gustavo Balza, director of the Galician film Doentes, and Gonzalo Bendala, co-producer of the Catalan film Els Nens Salvatges. They had all agreed on the interest of sharing their work with a foreign audience, as they could thus learn what reactions provoked their films in people of differing cultural backgrounds. Our guests were interpreted from their mother tongues into English —a special thanks here to Jennifer Arnold and her brilliant contribution in the last session. 

Basque, Galician and Catalan Studies at the University of Birmingham have already started to plan next year’s festival, which will probably come along with substantial changes to current arrangements, more suitable showing times being an objective everyone wishes to achieve.

See you next year!