To browse Academia. This chapter is in part a manifesto and in part an engagement with the thinking and practice already re-shaping film festivals in this era of decolonization and Covid We take as a starting point and analyze the provocative docu-fiction film titled Film Festival Film dir. Perivi Katjavivi and Mpumelelo Mcata, , South Africa which raises myriad, difficult, and enduring questions about film festivals and contemporary film culture.
Reading the provocations of this film alongside our own respective research into and work with film festivals and film curation mostly in relation to African filmmaking , we then put ourselves into conversation with 22 film festival curators and filmmakers around the world who have shared their experiences with us, as well as with recent decolonial theorizing by, e.
The chapter grapples with questions such as what does decolonization mean in relation to contemporary film culture? What would decolonized film festival worlds look like? And what have film practitioners learned from their work during the Covid pandemic that might help us to collectively realize those worlds? In this way, we try to chart the significant work being done by many people to build more inclusive, sustainable, decolonized film cultures.
This is an open access book. This edited collection aims to document the effects of Covid on film festivals and to theorize film festivals in the age of social distancing. Imperfect measures, such as the move to a digital format, cannot recapture the communal experience at the very core of festivals. Given the global nature of the pandemic and the diversity of the festival phenomenon, this book features a wide range of case studies and analytical frameworks.
With contributors including established scholars and frontline festival workers, the book is conceived as both a theoretical endeavour and a practical exploration of festival organizing in pandemic times. This chapter describes the role that the anthropological film festival plays in the production and reproduction of anthropological knowledge. I will show how the anthropological film festival has been the site where the network, practises, and discourses associated with anthropological cinema are produced and reproduced.
