José Antonio Sistiaga Mosso (4 May 1932 – 25 June 2023) was a Spanish Basque artist and experimental filmmaker best known for his feature-length hand-painted "direct" film, "Era erera baleibu izik subua aruaren" (1968–70).
During the Spanish Civil War, as a son of a republican Basque, José Antonio Sistiaga had to escape from Bilbao with part of his family to Bordeaux after the bombing of Guernica in April 1937.
In 1963, he created a workshop for free expression dedicated to children, influenced by alternative pedagogic method of Celestin Freynet; he collaborated in that direction with artist Esther Ferrer for a project based in Elorrio.
[4] Sistiaga would create similar workshops when he was back in Spain (San Sebastian) with the help of artist Esther Ferrer: La Academia de los jueves, which was active from 1963 to 1968.
Titled 'Era erera baleibu izik subua aruaren' (a nonsense phrase coined by Sistiaga's friend Rafa Ruiz Balerdi), it won a prize for best experimental film.
Era erera baleibu izik subua aruaren is the first feature-length example of "direct" cameraless filmmaking, a painstaking technique dating back to the early 1900s.
Other well-known artists in the genre include Len Lye, Harry Smith, Norman McLaren (whose work Sistiaga cites as a direct influence) and Stan Brakhage.
[8] In 1988–1989, Sistiaga painted a new direct film Impresiones en la alta atmósfera ("Impressions from the Upper Atmosphere") in 70mm 15-perf horizontal format, intended for exhibition in giant-screen IMAX and Omnimax theaters.
His films are part of permanent collections of eminent museums in the world: Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne (Paris) and Museo de arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.