5th BASQUE, CATALAN and GALICIAN CINEMA SEASON

We are pleased to invite you to the 5th BASQUE, CATALAN and GALICIAN CINEMA SEASON. This year’s season will be celebrated in May and will take place at the MAC Birmingham.

All films will be projected in original version with English subtitles. This event is free and open to all.

The activity has been organized thanks to the support of the Etxepare Basque Institute, the Institut Ramon Llull, the Xunta de Galicia and the University of Birmingham.






Thursday, 7th May, 2.30 pm: Basque film Aupa Etxebeste (Hurray Etxebeste), directed by Asier Altuna and Telmo Esnal. The directors Asier Altuna and Telmo Esnal will be with us to take part in a question and answer session after the screening. 


Fore more information on the film click here.


Thursday, 21st May, 2.30 pm: Catalan film Tots volem el millor per a ella (We all want what’s best for her), directed by Mar Coll. The director Mar Coll will be with us to discuss the film after the screening.


For more information on the film click here.


Thursday, 28th May, 2.30 pm: Galician film Encallados (Stranded), directed by Alfonso Zarauza. The director Alfonso Zarauza will be with us to discuss the film after the screening.


For more information on the film click here.


We hope to see you there!


Ira Ortigosa, Basque Studies
Elisenda Marcer, Catalan Studies
Gemma Segura, Catalan Studies
Paloma Serrapio, Centre for Galician Studies

4th BASQUE, CATALAN and GALICIAN CINEMA SEASON.

We are pleased to invite you to the 4^th BASQUE, CATALAN and GALICIAN CINEMA SEASON.

This year’s season will take place next 8^th, 13^th and 15^th of May  at the New Library of Birmingham.

The activity has been organized thanks to the support of the Etxepare Basque Institute, the Institut Ramon Llull, the Xunta de Galicia and the University of Birmingham.

Welcome to the new academic year 2013-2014

Galician, Basque and Catalan studies extend a warm welcome to all our new first year students! We wish you an enjoyable and successful time with us. We hope that you will find this blog a good way of keeping up with all the latest news from our languages. Remember that you can follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.

Throughout the year we will be organising parties, seminars, special lectures and many other surprises. Check our blog regularly!

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!

III BASQUE, CATALAN AND GALICIAN CINEMA SEASON, MAY 2013

We are pleased to invite you to the 3rd BASQUE, CATALAN and GALICIAN CINEMA SEASON taking place next 9th, 16th and 23rd of May, at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts (University of Birmingham).

A photonovel in Basque, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese

Basque, Catalan and Galician Studies, this time joined by Portuguese Studies collaborated on a original project during two academic years: a photonovel in Basque, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese.

“But wait… something is wrong in that corner…”

A photonovel, for those who are not familiar with the term, is a type of comic book, using film stills instead of artwork along with the narrative text and word balloons containing dialogue. Xabier Paya (Basque Studies), Raquel Navas (Catalan Studies), Antia P. Carreiro (Galician Studies) and Fátima Candé (Portuguese Studies) prepared five episodes about a mystery that takes place in the Ashley building.

“The mysterious case of the Ashley building” was published in Basque, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese. For those students who are not still ;-) learning one of the aforementioned languages, an English version was also published.

The third chapter is available here in Basque, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese and English!     

Professor R. L. Trask Lecture

Professor Robert Lawrence Trask (1944-2004)

 
“Waking the Hedgehog, Waking the Nation: By Way of Introduction to Basque Literature”

Prof. Mari Jose Olaziregi 
University of the Basque Country Etxepare Basque Institute

“Hedgehogs, Seagulls, Roses, Elephants and the Moon: hand in hand with some contemporary Basque poems”

Amaia Gabantxo

University of East Anglia

The University of Birmingham, in collaboration with the Etxepare Basque Institute, is organising the first "Professor Robert Lawrence Trask Lecture". The lecture on behalf of Professor Lawrence Trask, full-member of the Basque Language Academy and well-known scholar who made a sterling work in Basque linguistics, will take the 30th March 2011. The guest lecturers will be Professor Maria Jose Olaziregi from the University of The Basque Country and Amaia Gabantxo from the University of East Anglia.


The lecturers will present an introduction to Basque Literature:“This presentation attempts to give an overview of the history of Basque literature and make a diagnosis of our current literary scene. To that end, we have borrowed a few lines by the author Bernardo Atxaga in which he makes a comparison between our literature and a hedgehog that has been lethargic for too long, but has fortunately managed to wake up in the twentieth century. The second talk is a reading that is a journey through the best poetic voices in contemporary Basque literature” 

The lecture will take place in the Arts Building of the University of Birmingham, Lecture Room 8, at 4.30pm. This is the leaflet prepared for the lecture:

                           

Highly recommended for those interested in languages and literature!

"Who said Basque difference?"

The 16th of March, Imanol Galfarsoro, well-known collaborator of Lapiko Kritikoa ("basque critical stew") and member of the Department of Sociology and Social Policy of the University of Leeds, will give a lecture in one of the Research Seminars organised by the Hispanic Studies Department of the University of Birmingham.

The title of the seminar is the following: "Cultural Theory and Identity Politics: Who said Basque difference?"

"The contents of this paper are located along the flow of a transitional intellectual movement that is, slowly but surely, shifting emphasis from identity and cultural politics to political culture, including a newly re-invigorated critique of political economy. Along repeated appeals to the virtues of politics and political analysis proper, the form that this paper takes, on the other hand, relies on the interventionist Imaginary of my own political subjectivity. Hence, it is from within the concrete perspective of this imaginary dimension that I seek to argue for the possibility of an absolute political indifference to Basque cultural difference."

The seminar will take place in the Strathcona building, Lecture Room 7, at 4.00pm. Refreshments will be available after the seminar. 

For those who would like to know more about the seminar, Imanol Galfarsoro has prepared the attached document. Enjoy it!

Hope to see you there!