Guests 2020

Sophie Winqvist Loggins has an absolute pitch for images. Her imagery spans visual excess and pure simplicity and is characterized by an outstanding sense of colour, rhythm and humour. In her work, Winqvist Loggins makes the well known uncertain and charges the insignificant with meaning. She conveys far more than is contained in the individual frames.

Sophie Winqvist Loggins is a Swedish cinematographer living in Österlen, Copenhagen and Bombay. Apart from attending the internationally renowned National Film School of Denmark, she has a university degree in art history and has studied gender and postcolonial theories. Her first feature film was a commercial Bollywood horror flick, which is something that few western women directors of photography have taken on. Her second feature, Aniara (2018), was a Swedish sc-fi shot on location.

Producer of the film Klaus, nominated to the Oscar for Best Animated Film in 2019

Marisa Román started her career in the Animation Section at the Communications Department of Walt Disney Feature Animation in Burbank (California), where she worked on films such as Mulan, A Bug’s Life (Bichos) and Tarzan. Back in Spain in 2004, Marisa co-founded the company SPA Studios with Sergio Pablos, where she supervised the operations to give high quality animation services during 15 years to a list of clients including Disney, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures Animation, and Blue Sky Animation. 

Additionally, Marisa led the efforts of the Studio in the area of original content development and some of them achieved worldwide recognition, such as Despicable Me (Gru: Mi Villano Favorito) at Universal Pictures, and Smallfoot at Warner Bros. Marisa has recently been the Producer of the first feature film entirely produced at SPA, and the first original Animation feature film of Netflix, Klaus. This movie has been a huge success with both critics and the audience, and it was nominated as Best Animated Film in several prestigious festivals, including the Oscar, Bafta, Annies and Goya Awards.

Maite Ruiz de Austri is a television and film scriptwriter and director. She directed 7 feature films and 2 animation series. Two of her films are in the Top 10 animation blockbuster films in Spain, a ranking made by the European Audiovisual Observatory. Among her other awards, she won 2 Goya Awards for Best Animated Film, 2 Gold Medals at the Houston International Film Festival, a Silver Medal and a Bronze Medal at the New York TV Festival. She recently directed the first anime series in Spain, The Idhun Chronicles (Memorias de Idhún) for the Netflix platform.  

Chairwoman of AEC, the Spanish Association of Directors of Photography

She studied Visual Arts and Sound at Universidad Complutense in Madrid. At the same time, she combined her university studies with shootings, where she started as an intern and worked her way till she became a camera assistant.

Teresa was admitted into the American Film Institute and she was the first woman selected as Director of Photography to undertake the second year project and obtain her Master.

She lived in Los Angeles for 12 years and worked in many productions, such as Things I Never Told You (Cosas que nunca te dije) and the first season of Gilmore Girls (Las chicas Gilmore).

Her work has been recognized and has received awards such as the “Kodak Vision Award”.

She is now the Chairwoman of AEC, the Spanish Association of Directors of Photography.

She was selected by Cineuropa among eight most interesting up-and-coming European female directors in 2016. She directed two – awarded and critically acclaimed- feature films; The Tree (2014) and History of Love (2018), both film were also Slovenian OSCAR candidates for Best International feature film. Her second feature “History of Love” is a co-production between Slovenia, Italy and Norway, supported by Eurimages. After receiving several development awards, it premiered in Karlovy Vary IFF 2018 in main competition where it was awarded with Grand Jury Special Mention for Exceptional Artistic Achievement. The film received further national and international awards and was selected as the national OSCAR candidate 2020. Her short film Paradise, released in 2019, received a National Best Short Film Award.

Nuria Cubas (Madrid, 1984) studied cinema and literature. In 2013 she launched the ‘Pasajes de Cine’ Project, a traveling space for thought and dissemination of films, where many figures of international cinema participated. She founded FILMADRID International Film Festival in 2015, and has directed it since the beginning. She is part of the selection committee of the Official Competition ‘Punto de Vista’ in Navarra International Documentary Film Festival, and has scheduled other cycles in venues such as La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Museo C.A.V. La Neomudéjar (Madrid) or the Cineclub Revolución at the Carrillo Gil Art Museum (Mexico City). Among her teaching roles, we highlight here her regular participation in the Course ‘(R)evolutions’ of LAV AudioVisual Laboratory of Contemporary Creation and Practices.

Belli Ramírez is a reference point in production management of animation in Spain. Her experience spans 25 years managing films and series. She had the opportunity to expand her experience in a large number of production companies. Among them, we must mention Animal Logic, winner of an Oscar; Ilion Animation, where she was Head of Production in the movie Planet 51 and Production Manager in the first and fourth seasons of Pocoyó, one of the best known children series on an global scale. Today, Belli is a founding member and a consultant in Mr. Cohl, where she contributes by developing several animation projects.

First, Paz Soldán studied in Bolivia to become a technician in audiovisual production. Later, she studied Audiovisual Technology and Introduction to Radio Broadcasting in the United States of America. Then, she joined the Bergen University in Norway, and continued her university studies in Cuba, at the International Film and Television School (EICTV) where she obtained a Master in Cinematography Scriptwriting.                      

As a photographer, she has worked in more than 15 feature films as a Gaffer, in still photography and also as Photography Director. 

She worked with international and prestigious media companies, like the Discovery Channel, the Travel Channel, ABC and the BBC, no name just a few.  

The Tune of the Wind (La tonada del viento) is her first motion picture as a film Director. She is also the Scriptwriter and the Cinematography Director.

Rita Noriega graduated as Director of Photography at Madrid official Film School ECAM in 2001. As a photography director, she has shot feature films, fiction series, music video clips, feature documentary films and many advertising spots. In her career, she has worked in more than 25 countries.

She has worked with directors such as Kike Maíllo, Eduardo Chapero Jackson, Gracia Querejeta, Jorge Dorado, Paula Ortiz, Álvaro Pastor and Esteban Crespo, among many others. From her most recent work, we highlight the feature films A perfect Enemy, Unknown Origins (Orígenes Secretos) and El inconveniente, the fiction series The Pier (El embarcadero), El Continental and The Ministry of Time (El Ministerio del tiempo), many advertising spots for clients such as Audi, Ikea, Joma, Maybelline, Vodafone, Orbit, Ford, Ecoembes, Generali and LG. She has also worked in several documentary feature films released in movie theaters, winning national and international awards.

Born in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, in 1982, she started her career as a Development Assistant and she then went on to produce series first, and then feature films.  She worked in countries such as Mexico, the United Kingdom and Spain, and supervised teams from India, the United States and South Korea.

During her career, she has been involved in 15 feature films, 6 television series and 3 short films, in production, screenwriting and development roles, for important companies such as Aardman Animations, BRB and Ánima.

In 2018, with other colleagues, she founded MIA, the Spanish “Association of Women in the Animation Industry” and she is its Chairwoman since September 2019. She is now the Director of the Film Development Department at Ánima.

Sofía Quirós Úbeda studied Image and Sound Design at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. In 2011, she directed the short documentary entitled The other side of the Mountain (Al otro lado). This film went to several festivals and received public recognition. In 2015, she concluded the short film Entretierra (Entre la tierra), a project developed at the Talents Buenos Aires (Berlinale), the Talents Guadalajara (Berlinale and FICG) and also in BAFICI. Entre la tierra was in the official selection of the following Festivals: Clermont Ferrand, Viña del Mar, São Paulo and Cartagena de Indias. In 2016 she shot Selva, premiered during the Critics’ Week at the Festival de Cannes, where it received great national and international recognition. Since her first short films, Sofía Quirós chose to work with natural actresses and actors, creating movies where intimate worlds are explored with a poetic vision, thus highlighting the atmosphere and the importance of the senses. Land of Ashes (Ceniza negra) is her first feature film of fiction. Its world-wide premiere happened during the Critics’ Week, at the Festival de Cannes, in France, in 2019. It is now going through a wide circuit of international festivals around the world.

Núria Roldós was the first woman to sign a feature film as a director of photography in Spain in 1993. She has been behind the camera for more than 20 years framing and lighting films.

She began in the cinema within the camera department as an assistant until she became a director of photography. Her career and experience have been her best school.

She has lived in Ireland for 18 years and there among other things she began to work in the world of documentaries, mainly with Macdara Vallely where her projects took them from Ireland to New York, or El Gusto, a documentary that took her to Algeria, where the director Safinez Bousbia had managed to gather a group of musicians now in their eighties, achieving Best Director from the Arab World in Abu Dhabi film festival.

She has recently worked for Movistar on the Felix series and on Vivir Dos Veces, Maria Ripoll’s latest film.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Elysa Castro is a 2D artist with more than 10 years of experience working for children’s publishing and advertising campaigns. She was recently a member of the Art Direction with José Luis Ágreda in the renowned animated feature film Buñuel en el Laberinto de las Tortugas. She currently serves as Art Director for the feature film Dragon Keeper and in the short film La Primavera Siempre Vuelve.

Ms. Yáñez holds a five-year degree in Art History from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where she also completed her DEA studies. She has been working as a copy writer and critic in the magazine Caimán Cuadernos de Cine since this publication started, more than eleven years ago. She also teaches at ECAM, in the Caimán CdC Master program on Film Criticism. She is a programmer of events at the Film Festival of Alcalá de Henares. She published books on such topics as production, screening in the original version with subtitles, and the Spanish short films. Among her most recent books, Femenino plural was published with Andrea Morán, the Seminci Festival and Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, in 2017. She regularly writes articles in the online publication Rinconete, of the Instituto Cervantes. In addition, she curated two cycles of movies for children in the Museocinema Program of the Reina Sofía National Museum of Art. Besides, she also coordinated the course entitled ‘Fisuras de lo real’ (‘Cracks in Reality’, ECAM, 2014).

Member of the Governing Board at CIMA (Association of Women Filmmakers), member of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain and of the Audiovisual Academy of Galicia.

She has an extensive experience as a producer and executive producer in television series, short films, documentaries and feature films, mainly with international co-producers, winning countless awards and traveling to festivals around the world. Among the most renowned, let us mention the Goya Award for the film Decorado, by Alberto Vázquez, in addition to 6 nominations for different films. Breadcrumbs (Migas de pan) by Manane Rodríguez was selected in order to represent Uruguay in the Oscar Awards, as Best Foreign Language Film.

She is now producing her own feature film Valentina; the feature film Unicorn Wars by Alberto Vázquez; and she is also involved in the pre-production stage of two feature films: El sueño de la sultana by Isabel Herguera, and Melita by the sisters Sonia and Miriam Albert.

José María Cano started to participate in art as a child, with daily lessons of drawing and painting. He studied Architecture for two years, until it became impossible for him to attend classes at the university and pursue his period as a pop musician, at the same time. Later, he started to work in classical music with Montserrat Caballé, Renée Fleming and Ainhoa Arteta. His opera Luna was recently published by Deutsche Grammophon.

Since 1998 until today, he has focused in visual arts. He has shown his work in over 50 international exhibits in places such as Beijing, Naples, Prague, Japan and Krakow. His Apostles series (Apóstoles) is currently on display at the Toledo Cathedral in Spain, close to the paintings by El Greco. Prior to this location, the series traveled to the San Diego Museum of Art and the National Antiga Museum of Art, in Lisbon.

Chus Gutiérrez is one of the most popular film directors in Spain. She was born in Granada in 1962. She studied cinema at the City College of New York and was a member of the all-girls musical band Xoxonees. Founding Member of the Spanish Association of Female Filmmakers and Audiovisual Professionals (CIMA). She has directed feature films and documentaries.

She shot her first feature film, Sublet, in the U.S. of A. in 1991. This movie won the “Caracola de Oro” Award at the Atlantic Documentary Festival “Alcances”, in Cádiz, Spain. Back in Spain, she directed Sexo oral (1994) and Gypsy Soul (Alma gitana) (1995). The movie El calentito (2005) is set in the Spanish cultural movement called “La movida madrileña”, whereas Return to Hansala (Retorno a Hansala) (2008) deals with the problems of immigration from Africa to Spain. She also worked as an actress in Take my Eyes (Te doy mis ojos), a film by Icíar Bollaín. Her movies have been present at international festivals, such as the Mostra di Venezia (Italy) and the Guadalajara and Toronto festivals. 

http://www.chusgutierrez.es

Nerea Pérez de las Heras is a journalist, feminist and humorist. Throughout his career she has collaborated with media such as El País, Vogue, Esquire, Marie Claire y Glamour. As a humorist, her monologue Feminismo para torpes has reaped a great public success and also names a series of videos for newspaper El País where, using the humor, criticizes sexist roles and behaviors of our society. Nerea has recently published her first book Feminismo para torpes (Ediciones Martínez Roca) and collaborates at the Movistar+ TV show Las que faltaban.