ENCUENTROS 72, PAMPLONA

At the beginning of the summer 1972, the “Encuentros de Pamplona” (The Pamplona Meetings) were held, the broadest and most significant international avant-garde festival held in Spain. Imbued with the idea to dissolve art in life, these meetings assumed their ephemeral nature and were an opportunity to subvert the established order towards the end of the dictatorship. They were sponsored by Juan Huarte, constructor, patron and founder of X Fil- ms experimental cinema production company. The artist, José Antonio Sistiaga, filmed them with a 16 mm camera.

José Antonio Sistiaga (San Sebastian, 1932) is one of the leading names in Basque contemporary art. In 1965, along with artists like Jorge Oteiza, Eduardo Chillida and Néstor Basterretxea, he founded the avant-garde group, GAUR. Sis- tiaga’s film painting work began in 1968 with the short film, De la luna a Euskadi (From the Moon to the Basque Country), and continued two years later making the experi- mental feature film, Ere erera balei- bu izik subua aruaren, the world’s first feature film using the direct cinema technique and without any sound accompaniment.