Ruth Somalo, Jorge Villacorta and Ainara Elgoibar make up the international jury for the Punto de Vista 2024 Official Selection.

Film maker and curator Ruth Somalo, independent art critic and curator Jorge Villacorta and artist Ainara Elgoibar will be the members of this year's international jury with the job of assessing the Official Selection at the Punto de Vista documentary film festival, to take place in Pamplona from 11th to 16th March. Somalo, Villacorta and Elgoibar will be selecting the winners of the three top prizes at the event: the Punto de Vista grand prize for best film, worth 10,000 euros, the Jean Vigo prize for best director, worth 5,000 euros, and the prize for best short film, worth 3,000 euros and under the auspices of EITB. They may also award up to two special commendations, with no prize money. Together with these awards, the Official Selection will also include other accolades: the special audience prize for best film, worth 1,650 euros, and the youth prize for best film, with the support of the Navarre Youth Institute and worth 1,500 euros. Ruth Somalo's presence was supported by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) through its Program for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE).

On Friday 23rd February tickets to the festival will be placed on sale to the general public through its website and at the Baluarte box office. The period for accreditations for professionals and audiovisual students will remain open until Thursday 29th February.

JURY

Ruth Somalo

Senior programmer for DOC NYC, Architecture and Design Film Festival and DocumentaMadrid, film curator, predoctoral researcher and Spanish film-maker living in New York. Her feature-length and short films have been shown in commercial cinemas and at many festivals. Ruth is also a mentor and teacher in the laboratories of the UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art in Brooklyn. She has been president of the Board of Directors for the International Flaherty Seminar and now leads its Programming Committee.

Jorge Villacorta Chávez

Art critic and independent curator. Co-curator of the cycle (IN)VISIBLE VIDEOGRAPHS: A selection of Latin American video-art 2000-2005 (Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid; Atlantic Centre of Modern Art, Canary Islands; and then a touring exhibition at AECID Centres in Latin America). He was co-curator of VIDEOTRANSLATIONS - 13 video-installations by Peruvian artists, at the Conde Duque Culture Centre, Madrid, in 2019, and co-curator of PEACE IS A CORROSIVE PROMISE 1985-1990, with critical art and agitprop by the artist Herbert Rodríguez, in the Pavilion of Peru at the 58th Venice Biennale (2022). He is currently the President of ATA (Alta Tecnología Andina), an organisation which promotes and broadcasts electronic arts. Recognised as a Culture Personality by the Ministry of Culture of Peru (2013). He was on the curating team for the permanent exhibition for the Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion-LUM in Lima. He lives in Lima.

Ainara Elgoibar

Ainara Elgoibar (Bizkaia, 1975) is an artist currently living in Bilbao. Having graduated in Business Studies from the University of Deusto, she started out working in multinational companies, firstly in Brussels and then in Barcelona, where she later took a degree in Fine Art (UB) with exchange programmes at the Cooper Union School of Art NYC and Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2018, she earned her PhD cum laude in Fine Art (UB). She mainly works in audiovisual format, with exhibitions at Artium, Fundació Tàpies, La Capella and Macba, among others. In 2013, she co-founded Tractora Koop. E., a cooperative for artists, based in Bizkaia, defined as an artistic production company for projects by the coop partners and other artists with whom they share interests and emotional ties. She has produced her own and others’ work as and from Tractora Koop E. As part of Tractora, she curated and produced the exhibition Landa lan. A Documentation of Darcy Lange (2018-2019) at Tabakalera Donostia. In 2019, alongside Usue Arrieta, she set up the Kinu Work group, a programming and self-training platform revolving around Bilbao-based artists.