The Kimuak 2019 Basque short film catalogue will travel again this year to the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. The competition will be held from January 31 to February 8 and will again feature the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market from February 3 to 6, where the Basque short films will also be present.

The Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences held the Goya Awards ceremony in Malaga last Saturday, January 25. While the Basque film industry was represented with over 30 nominations, the number of awards announced at the event was far from that figure.

This year marks the 12th edition of the Independent Music Awards and the public vote is open until 10 February. The names of the artists registered this year have recently been announced, and among them, 11 Basque artists will compete for the Best Album in Basque.

IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, has just announced this year’s nominees for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards. Six artists have been shortlisted in the illustrator section, including Basque illustrator Elena Odriozola. 

The Goya Awards given every year by the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences are around the corner and once again a wide range of Basque films and cinema professionals have been nominated in different categories. This year’s Awards ceremony will take place for the first time ever in Málaga on January 25.

Iñaki Zabaleta, lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), will offer a series of talks at the University of Leipzig from January 13 to 17, based on the work by linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt on Basque studies.

Over the course of 2019, Basque writer Iban Zaldua and Scottish writer James Robertson took part in Chejov vs Shakespeare, a project promoted by the Etxepare Basque Institute as part of the Scotland Goes Basque programme. The two authors had a months-long epistolary conversation, their letters eventually gathered in a book now available either in paper or on our website in PDF.

The end of the year is approaching and, as always, it is time to take stock of the past 12 months. 2019 has been a year full of progress and special initiatives that have led to many changes in the day-to-day of the Etxepare Basque Institute (EBI). We spoke with the Institute’s director, Irene Larraza, about the work carried out and the results obtained.

The Etxepare Basque Institute received the BIKAIN gold certificate yesterday at an event held at the Kursaal in San Sebastián. This certificate accredits a certain level of standardization in the presence, use and management of Basque language by an entity in the socio-economic field.

The EUNIC network Board of Directors will meet on December 11 at the Basque Government delegation in Brussels. It will be the second time in history for the Basque delegation to host this regular meeting of representatives of the National Institutes for Culture of the European Union.