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Film Festival Research Workshops: Debates on Methodology

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Documentary Film Festivals Vol. 1

Part of the book series: Framing Film Festivals ((FFF))

Abstract

This chapter traces discussions about methodology in Film Festival Studies across several years of conference workshops and develops a schema of positionality and involvement in film festival research. The key issue is the positioning of “academy” and “industry” to each another. Three different relations have emerged, which vary in degree of distance and involvement and which predetermine challenges and proposed methods of film festival research: (1) festivals and research are seen as distinct realms where communication across the divide brings mutual benefits; (2) the researcher moves closer to the object and becomes (temporarily) involved in its processes; and (3) the distance between researcher and festival activity is diminishing further, for example, when the researcher occupies an insider position or when a former festival organizer acts as researcher.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An extensive overview of writings on film festivals can be found on the regularly updated online bibliography of the Film Festival Research Network. Online. Available at: http://www.filmfestivalresearch.org/index.php/ffrn-bibliography/ (accessed 17 November 2019).

  2. 2.

    Workshop participants included: Irene Bignardi (Filmitalia), Ruby Cheung (University of St. Andrews), Stuart Cunningham (Queensland University of Technology), Lindiwe Dovey (SOAS, University of London), Michael Gubbins (Screen International), Janet Harbord (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Dina Iordanova (University of St. Andrews), Skadi Loist (University of Hamburg), Lucy Mazdon (University of Southampton), Richard Porton (Cineaste Magazine), David Slocum (The Berlin School of Creative Leadership), Núria Triana-Toribio (University of Manchester) and Marijke de Valck (University of Amsterdam).

  3. 3.

    Participants of the workshop included along with Ragan Rhyne (St. Andrews), Su-Anne Yeo (Goldsmiths), Roya Rastegar (UCSC), Brendan Kredell (Northwestern) and myself.

  4. 4.

    For the French context, archivists Iris Berbain and Lenka Bokova provide detailed information on the catalogues, minutes and flyers and so on that are available to festival researchers at the Bibliotèque nationale de France (Berbain and Bokova 2013).

  5. 5.

    See Zielinski (2016).

  6. 6.

    Along with Aida Vallejo (researcher on European Documentary Film Festivals), participants included Andrea Slovaková (director of AMU Press, publishing house of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague), Katarina Holubcová (executive director of Jihlava International Documentary Festival, Czech Republic), Hana Kulhánková (director of One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival ), Diana Tabakov (acquisitions in Doc Alliance Films), Zdeněk Blaha (project coordinator of East Silver Video Library), Hanka Rezková (project coordinator of Institute of Documentary Film, Czech Republic), Rada Šešić (IDFA Bertha Fund and Sarajevo Film Festival), Boris Mitić (Serbian filmmaker and producer) and myself as representative of the Film Festival Research Network.

  7. 7.

    I have discussed the issue of precarious conditions and volunteer labor with a focus on LGBT/Q film festivals (Loist 2011), but the problem holds true for most festivals in the vast festival network.

  8. 8.

    For a discussion of the benefits of ethnographic methods and participant observation for film festival research, see Vallejo (2014, 2017) and Lee (2016).

  9. 9.

    See Lesley-Ann Dickson’s chapter on issues of insider/outsider positioning based on her experiences with industry-partnered ethnographic research at Glasgow Film Festival for her PhD research (University of Glasgow 2014), Dickson (2017).

  10. 10.

    Convened by Eric Pierson and Roger Pace (University of San Diego), the workshop participants included Ger Zielinski (Trent University), Dorota Ostrowska (Birkbeck, University of London), Lindiwe Dovey (SOAS), Logan Walker (University of California, Santa Cruz) and myself. The workshop resulted in a published dossier of the same title (Zielinski 2014).

  11. 11.

    The workshop brought together Brendan Kredell (Oakland University), Diane Burgess (University of British Columbia), Marijke de Valck (Utrecht University), Dorota Ostrowska (Birkbeck College, University of London), Ger Zielinski (Trent University) and myself.

  12. 12.

    Workshop participants included B. Ruby Rich (UCSC), Kay Armatage (Toronto), Liz Czach (Alberta) and Diane Burgess (Simon Fraser).

  13. 13.

    Greg de Cuir, Jr. (Selector/Programmer, Alternative Film/Video Belgrade; Managing Editor, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies ), Gavin Wilson (York St John University, UK, former cameraman, writer, sector manager Screen Yorkshire) and myself in capacity as member of the Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg | International Queer Film Festival.

  14. 14.

    The double position of festival worker and researcher is also evident in much recent published research: either they were or they still are active festival organizers (Ahn 2011; Fischer 2013) or have a background in programming (e.g. Czach 2004; Rastegar 2009).

  15. 15.

    Workshop participants included Diane Burgess (UBC), Christian Jungen (Zurich) and myself. Two further participants, who have been instrumental in these ongoing discussions in the field—Roya Rastegar (UCLA) and Liz Czach (Alberta)—were kept away by snow storms and accidents.

  16. 16.

    Out of this discussion evolved the dialog about approaches to film festival research by Diane Burgess and Brendan Kredell (2016).

  17. 17.

    See, for example, the Kinomatics project led by Deb Verhoeven or my research project “Film Circulation on the International Film Festival Network and the Impact on Global Film Culture” (2017–2021), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. See www.filmcirculation.net.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Potsdam, Germany

    Skadi Loist

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  1. Skadi Loist
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Correspondence to Skadi Loist .

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  1. University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Leioa, Spain

    Aida Vallejo

  2. ReImagining Value Action Lab Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada

    Ezra Winton

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Loist, S. (2020). Film Festival Research Workshops: Debates on Methodology. In: Vallejo, A., Winton, E. (eds) Documentary Film Festivals Vol. 1. Framing Film Festivals. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17320-3_4

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