HR4RS stamp
Daria Efimova
The Faculty of Communication Sciences (FCCOM) of the URJC, together with the internal production company Aula FCCOM, the Veguellina de Órbigo Neighborhood Council and the “Luna de Cortos” Short Film Festival, has organized the exhibition “The Cinema of Before”. From March 29 to April 7, attendees have been able to visit the exhibition, located in the Management building on the Fuenlabrada campus, as well as participate in various workshops and activities.
Camera history, in one place
The central axis of the event is the collection of Miguel Pérez ´Trébol´, awarded in his day with the “Lumière del Cine” Medal for his dedication and contribution to the “seventh art”. His passion for cinema began at the age of 14; Since then, he has performed numerous tasks, as a camera operator and electrician, on numerous projects. Over the years, he developed a fondness for film equipment and began collecting them. "I started buying them little by little. Some were damaged and I had to repair them, sometimes I even made the pieces myself," says Miguel Pérez. There is no economic motivation behind this collection: he has always treated it as a personal project.
Today, it has more than 100 sets of cameras and projectors, all carefully preserved and functional. 30 of them, corresponding to the different cinematographic eras (from the 20s to the 60s-70s), have been present at the exhibition. They showed, in this way, the historical path of the evolution of these mechanisms. According to Vicente Sanz de León, coordinator of the FCCOM Classroom and one of the organizers of the event, "they are a testimony to the evolution of cinema in the world."
Meeting with industry professionals
Throughout the exhibition, there have also been talks and meetings on different issues. Among the presentations, the conference “Analog and Digital Cinema. Advertising, Fiction and Special Effects”, which took place on April 6. It featured the visit of film director Eduardo Grojo, nominated for the Goya Award for best short film for his film "La Gotera" in 1996. During the event, one of Grojo's projects, "Conversations with a Monkey", starring Nacho, was viewed. New.
An opportunity for the entire university community
The exhibition ended this Thursday, April 7, with a workshop by Miguel Pérez, in which he demonstrated the functioning of the exhibited devices. On the other hand, "The cinema from before" has launched a photography contest "The portrayed portrait machine". During this last day, the prizes were awarded to the winners in the three categories: "Best color digital photography", "Best black and white digital photography" and "Best digital composition".
The dean of the FCCOM of the URJC, Rafael Gómez, closed the event, congratulating the organizers for their initiative and highlighting their "contribution to the faculty and the entire university community". The closing of the day was also attended by Javier Ramos, Rector of the Rey Juan Carlos University. “It is an opportunity for today's and tomorrow's students of the audiovisual media to see how this sector worked 100 years ago”, remarks Javier Ramos.
For his part, Miguel Pérez expresses enormous gratitude and pride at the reception his work has received. “These machines and mechanisms are not something we see in our day to day. Many know the digital cinema of today, but not its analog history, and it is a completely different experience and necessary to understand how we have got here”, concludes Miguel.
