THE WALPURGIS
Javier Parra (Reus, 1985). He grew up watching horror films. He graduated in History at the Universitat de Barcelona and completed a Master’s degree in Cinema and Contemporary Audiovisual Studies at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Cinema critic with experience in international film festivals as a programmer and jury member, he’s the author of Terror en serie (Héroes de Papel, 2019), La madre terrible en el cine de terror (Hermenaute, 2020) and Scream Queer. La representación LGTBIQ+ en el cine de terror (Dos Bigotes, 2021), a work that led him to teaching and to organizing the Screem Queer retrospective in the 2022 edition of the NIFFF – Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival. In 2023 he coordinated ¡Larga vida al trash! El cine de John Waters como nunca te lo habían contado (Dos Bigotes, 2023) and a year later he published Scream Queer 2: La venganza (Dos Bigotes, 2024). He lives in Barcelona, is part of the podcast ¡Estamos Vivas! and works in the publications department at Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival.
Noemí Navarra (Barcelona, 1982). Horror cinema has always been part of her life. In her teens, she created a small fanzine called GORE’97, where she commented the films she watched in the cinema, investigating around videoclubs or in her own father’s film collection. When Fotolog arrived, she found the way to make GORE’97 reach a wider audience, transforming it into a horror-dedicated account under the name “Noemita Del Averno”. Then she moved through different social media platforms until @lanoetelocuenta (2019), her Instagram, which consolidated her use of video as a way to share her film reviews and reflections more closely. She was a collaborator in the Underbrain Show with the weekly section La Noe Te Lo Cuenta (2021-2022). She’s a curator of the online cinema forum VideoClub de La Señora Voorhees of @LaMonstruaCinefaga (Argentina), where she takes the cinema from the 2000s as reference. She worked for two seasons on her weekly section on Betevé’s Habitació 910 where she recommended films related to current topics. She currently shares the Baby & Jane podcast with Marina Hurtado @velvethmarina in which they both talk about women-created cinema.
Mara Causarás (Avilés, 1987). Daughter of a painter, she cannot help having creativity guiding almost everything she does. Passionate about reading since she was told her first fairy tale before bedtime, curiosity for fictional worlds led to her love of cinema, a love that’s still strong today. In her teens, wanting to understand her favorite songs, she got herself an English-Spanish dictionary and started translating Blur, Nirvana, and Robbie Williams, among other bands millennials also adore. That led her to co-create the now disappeared Ramen Fansub, where she translated and subtitled Japanese idol videos very well regarded among the Salón del Manga fans in the early 2010s. The fansub gave her the opportunity to start working as a professional subtitler and to collaborate with film festivals, many of them fantasy or horror-specific. Among other creative stuff, she does improv to unsquare her brain, teaches herself to play bass guitar and piano, designs and creates geek cross stitch pieces and, sometimes, she refurbishes furniture.
JuanMa Ramírez (Rosario, Argentina, 1985). He arrived in Barcelona at the age of 4, where he still lives. He graduated in Graphic Design, and although his professional career has developed in fleet management, he continues designing in his free time for personal projects and collaborations, and also does video editing and 3D modeling. His passion for cinema started when he watched films he was not supposed to watch when he was a kid. In his childhood, Saturdays were the traditional day to go to the video store, a habit he kept until streaming platforms appeared. He’s the co-creator of the failed podcast Que no me grites.
