2025-01

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Handwritten thank you note from René Clair

January 2025

A week before the opening of the 7th San Sebastian Festival, held between 11 and 20 July 1959, the French filmmaker René Clair sent this handwritten note to the then director of the event, Antonio de Zulueta y Besson, in gratitude for the tribute that the Festival had paid him during those first days together with what was to become the first retrospective cycle in the history of the event.

That edition, which had previously been publicised at the Cannes and Venice Festivals through two special issues of its official magazine, was presented as one of the most opening events of the festival, announcing, in addition to the scheduled tribute to René Clair, the programming of another cycle dedicated to ‘The best films according to Brussels’, alluding to the selection that 117 experts had made on the occasion of the 1958 Universal Exhibition. This cycle was later mutilated by Franco’s censorship.

In that seventh edition, the Festival also published for the first time, in addition to the general catalogue and the daily magazine, two publications related to the cycles that it would offer during its celebration, a tradition that has been maintained until today: a book dedicated to René Clair and the analysis of his work and extensive documentation in the form of booklets grouped with a study of each of the twelve Brussels films, written and compiled by Carlos Fernandez Cuenca (director of the then called National Film Library) in collaboration with the Cine Club San Sebastián.

It was precisely the work of the film club that introduced, in a pioneering way, one of the hallmarks of the Festival as we know it today (which two decades later would raise a section such as Neighbourhoods and Villages to its maximum potential): the idea of accompanying the films with a debate afterwards, in the form of a discussion. Members of the Cine Club San Sebastián, headed by José María Aycart, as well as young Javier Aguirre, Antxon Eceiza and Elías Querejeta, were in charge of accompanying and moderating the debates that were held every afternoon at the Club Guipúzcoa after the morning screenings of René Clair’s programmed films in the Salón Novedades, meetings that were not only attended by the French filmmaker, but also by personalities such as Luis García Berlanga, José Luis Borau, Miguel Picazo and Santiago San Miguel, as part of the 3rd Film Studies Course.

Document

Handwritten thank you note from René Clair

Identity statement area

ID: 35960

Catalogue number: AO1959.COR

Location: M01.B01.C03

Classification scheme: 4.1.4. International directors

Title: Handwritten thank you note from René Clair

Date of creation: 1959-07-17

Level of description: Simple documentary unit

Extent and medium of the unit of description: 1 document

Context area