06/15/2021
The film curator has joined the festival team after presenting what was considered the best candidacy in the call for applications that NICDO issued after closing the 2021 edition.
With a BA in Audiovisual Communication and Spanish Language, Manuel Asín (Zaragoza, 1978) is a film curator, publications editor, teacher and writer. Since 2016, he has been the head of Film in Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid and he curated film seasons for the University of Navarra Museum from 2015 to 2021: he has also directed the distributing and publishing company Intermedio, curated film seasons for film libraries, festivals and art and film institutions such as Filmoteca Española, Museo Reina Sofía, Xcèntric-CCCB, Instituto Moreira Salles and Tabakalera, and sat on the juries of numerous film festivals, such as Documenta Madrid, Filmadrid, Curtocircuito and Novos Cinemas. He is a tenured teacher at Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola and Master LAV, and tutors the DocLisboa and Márgenes RAW Film Criticism and Research residential courses.
Manuel Asín will work on the design of the next edition alongside Teresa Morales de Álava, executive manager of the festival since 2018; convene the Selection Committee, which will assess the projects submitted as candidates for the Official Selection; and engineer the contents of the 16th edition, to be held from 14 to 19 March 2022. The Punto de Vista festival was created by the Government of Navarra in 2005 and is one of the artistic programmes with the highest international profile that the Directorate General of Culture runs.
According to the application assessment committee, Manuel Asín’s application stood out due to “the suitability of the candidate’s profile, his great background and experience, and his multiple collaborations with institutions to date. His analysis of the Punto de Vista project is complete, accurate and thorough, and his proposal for the future is lucid, with a markedly curatorial outlook and great interest in social matters, inclusion and equality. All this leads us to believe that his contribution to the development of the festival will be highly enriching and have a highly positive impact on the evolution and further consolidation of the personality and international outreach of Punto de Vista over the next four years.”
In Manuel Asín’s own words, his project aims to "explore the alliance between the avant-garde and reality which lies at the historical origin of the festival" through "a project which is not only international but also internationalist", advocating "non-fiction cinema as an observatory of large-scale and long-term processes, whose perception is essential to creating new forms of commitment to strengthen human networks of cohesion and cooperation in the face of the aesthetic, social and ecological challenges of the coming decades.”
Since its inception, the Punto de Vista festival, promoted by the Government of Navarra and organised entirely by NICDO, has opted for a dual managerial structure, separating executive management and artistic direction. It has maintained a strategy of renewing the festival’s artistic director every four years.
Over its 15 editions, the four people who have held the position have been, in chronological order: Carlos Muguiro, current director of Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola; Josetxo Cerdán, director of the Filmoteca Española; Oskar Alegria, a Navarrese filmmaker who last year premiered the film ‘Zumiriki’ worldwide; and Garbiñe Ortega, who brought her time with the festival to a close in 2021.
Each artistic director, whose ranks Manuel Asín now joins, has left their mark on the personality of Punto de Vista, making it a benchmark of quality and one of the essential dates on the international non-fiction film agenda.
