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The Catalan Film Festival was founded by Barbara Zecchi in 2006 and, since its inception, Zecchi has been its faculty sponsor and co-curator. She collaborated with Júlia Llompart for the2nd, and 3rd editions, with Jordi Dosaiguas, for the 4th, and 5th, and with Guillem Molla since the 6th edition. Elisabet Pallàs co-curated the 9th edition, Celia Sainz the 10th, and Irene Massana Cogul the 14th.
Many graduate students have served as members of the organizer committee, and as panelists and moderators: Celia Sainz, Elena Igartuburu, Nefeli Forni, Eva Álvarez Vázquez, Aitor Bouso Gavin, Maria Ceron, Elisabet Pallàs, Sandra Galván, Ifat Gazia, Simón Villegas, among many others.
Barbara Zecchi, PhD University of California Los Angeles, is Professor of Film and Iberian Studies and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She launched the UMass Catalan Film Festival in 2006, and cocurated its 14 editions. In addition to about hundred articles and numerous video-essays, she is the author, editor or co-editor of ten volumes, including The Gendered Screen (2014), Age/ing and Iberian Cinemas (2021), and Gender-Based Violence in Latin American and Iberian Cinemas (2020). In 2011 she launched the Gynocine Project on women in global cinema. In 2017 she was elected Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Spain.
Guillem Molla, PhD Universitat de Girona, is the Director of Catalan Studies Program at UMass. He has been co-curator and faculty sponsor since 2014. He received his PhD from the Universitat de Girona in 2010. After teaching at Cardiff University and the University of Bristol, he joined the University of Massachusetts in 2013 as the Catalan Studies Program director and advisor. He received honors for his promotion of Catalan language and culture in the US, winning the 2016 Josep Maria Batista i Roca Award from the IPECC. His teaching covers required and elective courses for the Spanish major and Catalan minor. His major research project was published in a book that addresses the introduction of academic comparatism in Catalonia and the adequacy of this discipline in the Iberian context. He is the editor of the correspondence between writer Josep Pla and historian Jaume Vicens Vives, and several works by other Catalan authors.
Celia Sainz is a doctorate student in the Hispanic and Linguistics program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, also perusing a Certificate in Film Studies. She received her BA from the Universidad Carlos III, Spain. Her research focuses on film and gender studies in the Iberian space. Her master’s thesis, a video-essay researching poetic cinema in the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, was published by [in]Transition and was listed mong the best video-essays of 2021 by the prestigious Sight and Sound journal. Currently she is working on her dissertation on Iberian cinemas, and she is the recipient of the NACS dissertation award of 2021. She has been a member of the organizing committee of the Catalan Film Festival since 2017.
Nefeli Forni (nforni@umass.edu) received an Associate’s Degree (University of ORT, Uruguay) and a BA in Audiovisual Communication (University of Vic, Spain) with a focus on film and gender studies and began a MA on Women, Gender and Citizenship Studies (Interuniversitary, Spain). She obtained the Francesca Bartrina Prize for best gender thesis of Catalonia for her work “The Plumber: Study on the socializing effect of pornography”. She has worked in translation and education, and has taught Culture, Gender and Environment to unaccompanied minor refugees in Barcelona. Her main interests are the representations of gender and sexuality, the effects of film on society and the interaction between literature and film.
Eva Álvarez Vázquez is a PhD student and Teaching Associate in the Spanish and Portuguese Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is also pursuing a Graduate certificate in Film Studies. She earned her B.A. in English Studies from the Universidad de Oviedo and her M.A. in European Literature and Second Language Teaching from the Universidad de Huelva. Her research focuses on Iberian cinemas and she is interested in cultural studies, horror cinema from a gender perspective, and videographic criticism. She has collaborated with the Catalan Film Festival since 2019.
Aitor
Eva
Elena
Carla
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