Film Festivals

I have written a lot about film festivals, and have done even more work with festivals themselves, having been involved in programming, juries, board service at a number of international festivals in Europe and Asia. It has been a privilege to get to know many of the important figures on the festival circuit, which has reinforced my view of the importance to study the activities of second-tier festivals and the people who I call ‘sole traders’ on the global festival circuit. In recent years I have been particularly involved with festivals dedicated to the work of women filmmakers, as well as with festivals in Asia, such as Busan IFF, Fajr IFF, Yamagata IDFF, and others.

The work on festivals was done in the context of putting together collections on various topics related to the neglected area of film festival studies: A project for which we benefited from Leverhulme Trust funding. I conceived, commissioned and edited THE FILM FESTIVAL CIRCUIT (with Ragan Rhyne, 2009), FILM FESTIVALS AND IMAGINED COMMUNITIES (2010, with Ruby Cheung), FILM FESTIVALS AND EAST ASIA (2011, with Ruby Cheung), FILM FESTIVALS AND ACTIVISM (2012, with Leshu Torchin), and FILM FESTIVALS AND THE MIDDLE EAST (2015, with Stefanie Van de Pier). As the founder of the St Andrews Film Studies, I published work by colleagues such as Alex Fischer, Jeff Ruoff, Matt Lloyd and others. I organised a number of events and took part in a variety of research networks that fostered the exploration of festivals.

In awaiting permission to make more of this work publicly available, I am posting some of the writing on festivals here.

A lot of this work has been translated in a variety of languages: I have posted some of these in the Translations section. Various shorter pieces on festivals can be found in the Blog section of this site.

The material is copyrighted. Please make sure to reference appropriately if using it.

KARLOVY VARY FESTIVAL IN THE 1990s (2006)

PARIS FILM FESTIVAL (2009)

CINES DEL SUR, GRENADA (2010)

BALKAN SURVEY AT THE THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (2013)

THE COMMUNITY-BASED FILM FESTIVAL (2014)

FILM FESTIVAL AS AN INDUSTRY NODE (2015)

BUSAN IFF IN CRISIS (2015)

TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL BOOK BY RUOFF (2016)

FILM FESTIVAL JURY SERVICE (2017)

CURATING SHORT FILM FESTIVALS: AN INTERVIEW (2017)

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL (2018)

VENICE IFF AND WOMEN FILMMAKERS (2019)

GLAMOUR, STAKEHOLDERS, CORPORATES: BEYOND THE FILMS AT FESTIVALS (2021)