The two Tarragona projects will compete against European university centres with the aim of capturing the interest of different audiovisual producers at the Audiovisual Talent Week

The University-Industry Audiovisual Pitching is the central activity of the Audiovisual Talent Week. The initiative, promoted by the Audiovisual Cluster of Catalonia to bring the talent emerging from universities into contact with the industry, has opted for an international format for its eighth edition, and is held at the CaixaForum in Barcelona from 14-18 November. This year, the URV presents two docuseries: Fet a Cat and Nosotres.

These two docuseries will compete with the productions of 80 young professionals from countries such as Estonia, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, Romania or the United Kingdom. A total of 50 audiovisual projects will be presented this year in pitch format – a short presentation format which provides an overview of the product – to 170 companies and audiovisual producers in an attempt to capture their interest and help them to put them into practice. In total, 36 universities have taken part in this edition, almost twice as many as in the previous edition. Particularly noteworthy is the participation of nine European university centres such as the London Film School (United Kingdom) or the FAMU International (Czech Republic).

Fet a Cat and Nosotres, URV audiovisual projects selected for the Pitching

The two audiovisual projects from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili will compete in the non-fiction category. The projects involve ten students from the University although only two representatives from each team will be able to attend the Pitching: Clàudia Armesto and Anna Lladó will be the representatives for Fet a Cat and Elvira Chertó and Andrea Navarro for Nosotres.

Fet a Cat, by the students Clàudia Armesto, Sílvia de la Cruz, Raquel Jiménez, Anna Lladó and Marina Rubio, is a docuseries about Catalan start-ups and the problems they have when developing and growing. The pilot episode is called “Behind the Box” and shows the inner workings and day-to-day life of a company that is developing The Blue Box, a biomedical device that detects early breast cancer from a sample of urine. “The aim of the docuseries is to show all the local talent we have, to show that you don’t have to go too far to find ingenuity and quality proposals that generate a positive impact on society,” says Marina Rubio.

Nosotres is an audiovisual project by the students Laia Barceló, Adriana Gheti, Victoria Pinto, Amanda Ramos, Andrea Navarro and Elvira Chertó that shows the stark reality of the effects of structural violence on the migrant transsexual community, the members of which are submitted to a double discrimination. It consists of three chapters, each of which has a protagonist who explains her experience with different types of structural violence. “The idea came to us when we realized that within the LGBTQ+ movement, migrant people were quite invisible. They were oppressed not only by LGBTQ phobia, but also by racism,” explains Elvira Chertó.

CAPTION: Frame from Lissa, the second episode of the docuseries Nosotres.

The members of both projects consider that Pitching is a great opportunity for them to introduce their projects to producers, to obtain funding and to be able to produce them. These, however, are not their only objectives. They also value the chance to come into contact with the audiovisual industry, make themselves known and discover how the industry really works.

Presence of international producers

As well as leading Catalan companies and producers such as Gestmusic, Diagonal TV, Minoria Absoluta, DeAPlaneta, Veranda, Brutal Media, Lavinia, YouPlanet, Broadcaster or Filmin, for the first time the Audiovisual Pitching will be attended by a dozen international companies that will listen to and assess the proposals made by the talent from universities. These international producers will be given the opportunity to co-produce with Catalan producers.

One of them is Blueprint Pictures, the British production company responsible for successful productions such as A Boy Called Christmas, Emma or The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The films and TV shows produced by Blueprint Pictures have been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, of which they have won two. They have also been nominated for17 BAFTA nominations, of which they have won six. Also attending the University-Industry Audiovisual Pitching will be the French company Aurora Films, which specializes in French and international co-productions and has produced more than 50 films.

The audiovisual industry in Catalonia

The audiovisual industry is experiencing exponential growth on a global scale and Catalonia has a very strong audiovisual ecosystem that is playing a key, strategic role in economic revitalization. The sector employs 31,000 people and has companies with a turnover of 6,700 million euros, according to 2021 data from the Department of Business and Work.