The Gothenburg International Exile Film Festival in Context

2019 ◽  
pp. 94-102
Author(s):  
Boel Ulfsdotter ◽  
Mats Björkin
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Large Range ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Iranian Immigrants ◽  
Western Films ◽  
Commercial Art ◽  
Immigrant And Refugee

This chapter explores how in 1993 two Iranian immigrants to Sweden, Hossein Mahini and Hassan Mahini, launched a film festival in Sweden’s second largest city Gothenburg for films related to exile and refugee experiences, the Exile Film Festival. The programming of the festival represents the large range of exilic, diasporic, ethnic, immigrant, and refugee communities that are part of the contemporary public sphere. The festival also constitutes an overlooked elsewhere of cinematic programming outside of the main commercial, art house, or mainstream film festivals. It is also part of local, national, and international “ecology” of exhibition of non-Western films in general, and exile or diaspora film festivals in particular, including through the festival’s intervention into Gothenburg suburbs that rarely otherwise see this kind of cinematic programming. The chapter also discusses exilic cinephilia cultures in Sweden and the kinds of films that are screened at the festival. By so doing, it introduces a range of cinematic elsewhere.

scholarly journals Who Debarred "you‟?

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Vineetha Krishnan
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Select Group ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Festival

The paper examines the idea of „unqualified public‟ in International Film Festival of Kerala, IFFK.  The general notions about the public in IFFK will be described by narrating incidents and tales of hindrances people faced while entering into the above-mentioned space. The criticisms leveled against cinema in the discussions, outside the space, always contributed to number of censures of the Film Festival too, spurring debates centering around who should watch a movie or who should participate in IFFK. A paper that aims to understand the notion of public, in an international festival on films in Kerala, cannot possibly neglect the typical perspectives and publicnotions about movies, especially among a select group of people in Kerala. While unpacking the notions of who these public individuals are and what their opinions on films are, the paper will also raise questions such as: Do films really imagine a homogeneous public, an idea of public without differences? What is the film‟s conception of public sphere? Do films create a new kind of public sphere? Then, what about cinema kottakas and film festivals? The paper takes note of one of the burning controversies in 2014 in the history of IFFK, that each delegate should submit a note on his/her ideas about cinema. Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Malayalam film director had suggested that only those who know English can enjoy all the movies as the Festival includes movies in other languages with subtitles (Ramnath 2014). So I here look at how specifically, language becomes a key factor to determine a „qualified public‟ in IFFK, among other factors that aid in the manufacturing of the „qualified public‟. For this study on IFFK the aim would be to focus on  the description and analysis of (unqualified) public in IFFK in relation to the recent controversies, to reveal the multi-layered construction of the „qualified public‟. 

Elsewhere: The Last Circus

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-87
Author(s):  
Bilal Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Collective Experience ◽  
Regional Location ◽  
True False ◽  
Falling In Love

FQ columnist Bilal Qureshi reports from his first visit to the documentary film festival True/False in Columbia, Missouri. Overcoming his initial trepidation—both at the prospect of traveling just as the coronavirus was gathering steam and at the festival's regional location—Qureshi finds himself falling in love with film festivals all over again. Yet the contact high of the collective experience provided by the festival, with its freedom to collide with films and audiences through impromptu gatherings and celebrations, takes on a heightened poignancy in this moment of COVID-19. While noting the uncertainties of the new cinematic and social order that will emerge post-COVID, Qureshi hopes that the opportunity to press reset might result in more small-scale, community-focused festivals like True/False.

Absence, Ambiguity, and Deviating Pleasure Activism: The Tokyo Rainbow Film Festival

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-36
Author(s):  
Qin QIN
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Studies ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Diachronic Study ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
A Site ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Whereas several Japanese popular magazines have published reports and interviews on LGBT film festival curators, little scholarship has shed light on Japanese LGBT film festivals. This article serves as a case study of how the festival enables the festival community—cinephiles, LGBT audiences, organized groups of activists, and indie filmmakers—to share ideas and coordinate within and outside the metropolis. I conduct a synchronic and diachronic study to sketch the historical trajectory of the festivalgoers, material spaces, festival formation, curation, and programming. In utilizing a methodological framework which includes geopolitics, gender, film, and organizational studies, this article proposes an approach that juxtaposes the classic concept of ‘counterpublics’ with the theoretical reading of affective politics and pleasure activism. The findings suggest that the Tokyo Rainbow Reel Film Festival functions as a site of discursive political stances and affective disposition. The ambiguity of the film festival space correlates closely with two factors: Japanese homophobia, or ‘the absence of LGBT’, and an unorthodox pleasure activism that does not include suffering and oppression.

The rise of experimental film festivals in India

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Gauri Nori
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Cultural Organizations ◽  
Medium Section

Abstract This article will examine the emergence of independent platforms to screen radical and alternative cinema in India by tracing two case-studies: Experimenta, a biannual festival curated by Shai Heredia, and The New Medium section curated by Shaina Anand. While Experimenta has remained largely independent, relying on the support of established artists and cultural organizations, The New Medium section has managed to secure its place within the programme of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (MFF). Although their approach may differ, both curators are committed to promoting a culture of moving image experimentation in the country. Drawing on first-hand observations, interviews and scrutinizing festival ephemera, this article aims to identify the curatorial practices and strategies that have established these alternative film festivals both within the international film festival network and the larger film community in the country.

scholarly journals 1st Transylvanian International Film Festival in Cluj, Romania

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Bram Stoker ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The City ◽  
Musical Accompaniment

Other first film festivals should have it so good. Every guest arriving from abroad to attend the First Transylvanian International Film Festival (3-9 June 2002) in the Romanian city of Cluj (formerly Klausenburg) asked the same question: "Where's Dracula's castle, and how can I get there?" To which Tudor Giurgiu, the festival's founder-director, responded with an same amused grin: "Stay around until closing night: we're screening Murnau's Nosferatu to musical accompaniment!" Just another way of saying that no less than four castles lay claim to Dracula's hideout. "Probably Bram Stoker meant the castle in Sighisoara (formerly Schässburg)," said one informed source. "Schässburg is a 13th-century museum town, only an hour's drive away."Forget Dracula's castle on your first visit to Cluj-Napoca, inhabited by the Dacians in ancient times and founded by the Romans in the 2nd century. The city with the most moviegoers in Romania, Cluj (formerly part of Austria-Hungary) has academies...

scholarly journals Film festivals as cosmopolitan assemblages

2018 ◽  
pp. 111-125
Author(s):  
Monia Acciari
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Competency ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Associate Director

In this article, I seek to explore the use and development of the notion of cosmopolitanism within the context of film festivals. I will examine the specific case study of the Leicester Asian Film Festival from the perspective of an insider—as a Film Programmer and Associate Director of the event. The questions that I intend to answer are: what happens to our understanding of film festivals when we frame it through discourses of cosmopolitanism and borders and, conversely, what happens to our understanding of cosmopolitanism when we frame it through film festival studies? Accordingly, I will place cosmopolitanism in conversation with the developing literature on film festival studies. The aim is to offer an idea of film festivals as “cosmopolitan assemblage”, within a frame of fluidity, exchangeability and multiple functionalities (Deleuze and Guattari). In developing this concept, I will draw on Ulf Hannerz’s use of the term cosmopolitanism that includes being open to and involved with otherness. The aim is to theorise the idea of festivals as borders, and inspire new forms of consciousness and cultural competency applied to film festival programming.

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