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Film Festival Yearbook 1: the festivalcircuitIngrid Stigsdotter aa Linnaeus UniversityPublished online: 23 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Ingrid Stigsdotter (2011) Film Festival Yearbook 1: the festival circuit,Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 31:4, 606-609, DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2011.625794

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Film Festival Yearbook 1: the festival circuitDINA IORDONOVA and RAGAN RHYNE (Eds)St Andrews, St Andrews Film Studies, 2009viþ225 pp., £16.99 (paper)

Film Festival Yearbook 2: film festivals and imagined communitiesDINA IORDANOVA and RUBY CHEUNG (Eds)St Andrews, St Andrews Film Studies, 2010xixþ286 pp., appendices, £17.99 (paper)

In their contribution to Film Festival Yearbook 1: the festival circuit, Skadi Loist andMarijke de Valck provide a useful overview of the field of ‘Film Festival Studies’,placing it as an interdisciplinary area in between the subjects of film and media studies(pp. 179–188). The authors show that the field tends to make use of approachesassociated with cultural studies and can include both humanities and social sciencesresearch, with contributions from business, organisational, urban and tourism studiesas well as disciplines perhaps more commonly associated with film and mediaresearch, such as gender studies, history and anthropology. Although it remains to beseen if the proliferation of festivals in the past decades will continue—the questionof whether the market for film festivals is oversaturated is highlighted in much currentresearch—there is no doubt that their function as cultural events and their role withinthe film industry are significant topics, worthy of the interest paid by academics inrecent years.

Scholars with a background in film or media necessarily approach the topicdifferently compared with those studying festivals from the perspectives of forexample anthropology or business studies. However, as long as the number of filmfestivals worldwide continues to rise, the subject is likely to gain further attentionfrom academics across different disciplines. Even at a time when arts and humanitieseducation in many parts of the world is struggling to fund its study programmes it ispossible to imagine course modules on film festivals being developed in differentsubject areas. Including contributions from various academic perspectives as well asjournalists and industry professionals, the Film Festival Yearbook series will no doubt beused on many such courses.

The fragmented, interdisciplinary aspect of the subject means that it is difficult toagree on any founding texts for this field of study, but the frequent citing of thechapter on film festival networks in Thomas Elsaesser’s European Cinema: face to facewith Hollywood (2005) is significant. Through his research project ‘Cinema Europe/Media Europe’ at the University of Amsterdam, Elsaesser has supported Marijke deValck’s work. Her book Film Festivals: from European geopolitics to global cinephilia (2007)is now a recurrent reference in texts that attempt to deal with theoretical issuessurrounding film festival research. Indeed, the subtitle of de Valck’s book may be seenas a guideline for the direction in which the Film Festival Yearbooks appear to be heading.The first film festivals were European and it is therefore hardly surprising thatinfluential academic texts on festivals have come from scholars associated withEuropean film culture. However, the explosion of new film festivals in recent yearsis a global phenomenon, and the first Yearbook includes pieces on both Asian and

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African festivals. Case studies by Ma Ran and J. David Slocum in The Festival Circuitindirectly foregrounds the problem of transposing models for understanding filmfestivals relevant in a European (or North-American) context to the economic andpolitical situation in China, or in African countries.

While several contributions in the first volume deal with the origins of festivals asa European phenomenon, Yearbook 2: film festivals and imagined communities dealsspecifically with events that can be connected to the notion of ‘imagined communities’as theorised by Benedict Anderson in relation to cultural identity. The festivalsinvestigated in this volume are, in the words of the editors, ‘not primarily associatedwith the glamour of Western European or North American events’ (p. 2). The thirdYearbook—published in 2011 but not yet available at the time of writing this review—continues this international outlook by concentrating on East Asia.

The two first volumes in the series contain much of interest. In particular,I appreciate the publication of texts on non-Western events that tend to be overlookedin Anglophone Film and Media Studies because such research requires linguistic skillsthat most British and American researchers lack. There are, however, some problemswith the overall coherence of each volume. The Festival Circuit begins with a theoreticalsection where the notion of the film festival as a ‘circuit’ is debated. The expressionrefers to the idea that festivals function as a distinct form of distribution and/orexhibition within (or perhaps separate from) the larger global film industry. In theirrespective chapters dealing with this notion, the editors Dina Iordanova and RaganRhyne challenge the image of a circuit, with its connotations of connected networksand fluid circulation. Rhyne proposes that we ‘abandon the structural idea of thefestival circuit as a single entity altogether and instead understand it as an internationalcultural sector linked by a common economy of public and private subsidy’ (p. 9),whereas Iordanova describes the landscape of contemporary film festivals as a systemof ‘parallel circuits’ (p. 28), where individual festivals copy models presented bypredecessors, but with little interaction between events. In fact, Iordanova argues thatwhile festivals historically may have surfaced in Europe as a response to the falteringsystem of film distribution in Europe, festivals are concerned with exhibition,not distribution. Although filmmakers hope that exposure at one festival will leadto further festival screenings and eventually to a distribution deal, according toIordanova, festivals act as a network mainly for festival-hopping freelancers, not forthe business of film distribution. These interrelated articles are followed by a briefcontribution from Janet Harbord on the temporal nature of festivals (pp. 40–46).Harbord’s ideas about the festival as ‘time-event’ are suggestive (even though herreflections on written festival journalism as a ‘delayed experience’ may need to berevised to accommodate the age of Twitter) but her chapter sits uncomfortably in thissection, as she appears to accept that festival act as ‘turnstiles’ in a distribution circuit,and does not engage with the problem of the circuit metaphor. This slightly uneventheoretical introduction is followed by six case festival case studies and a useful sectioncontaining contributions from journalistic and industrial sources, such as editedcolumns on film festival matters from Nick Roddick’s Mr Busy-columns published inSight & Sound between 2005 and 2009. The volume ends with a contextualising sectionincluding De Valck’s and Lost’s article on the field of film festival studies and a reportfrom a workshop on film festival research. De Valck’s and Lost’s chapter introduces

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the annotated bibliography that follows it, and they succeed very well in explaining the‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of film festival research (pp. 179–215).

De Valck’s and Loist’s bibliography has been updated for Film Festivals and ImaginedCommunities (pp. 220–258). The bibliography is indispensable reading for anyoneventuring into the field of film festival research but it is also available to downloadonline. In fact, the whole ‘Resources’ section at the end of the second Yearbook mightbe more useful as an online tool. This section also contains a series of tables withdetails on transnational film festivals, and seen as the information given here is by theeditors’ own admission incomplete, and the listed festivals are liable to change,expand or disappear completely, an amendable online database would seem a betterplace for this information. Film Festivals and Imagined Communities works better as anedited collection than the first volume in the Yearbook series, because of its specificfocus on transnational festivals and politics of identity. Nevertheless, the theoreticalframing does not quite hold together. The editors’ approach to ‘imaginedcommunities’ in relation to transnational film festivals is explained mostcomprehensively in Iordanova’s chapter ‘Mediating Diaspora: Film Festivals and‘Imagined Communities’’ (pp. 12–44). The research collected in Film Festivals andImagined Communities concerns transnational film festivals linked to migratory groups,diaspora, political struggle and postcolonialism. However, Iordanova’s discussion alsoencompasses festivals of French or Italian national cinema staged abroad. Of course,supranational African film festivals, Palestinian film festivals and French film festivalsoutside of France are examples of transnational film festivals, and may very well helpto promote ‘imagined communities’, but to divide all of these festivals into categoriespromoting either ‘cultural diplomacy’, ‘identity agendas’ or ‘diaspora-linked business’creates an unnecessary confusion between transnational developments in general andissues related to diaspora, exile and postcolonialism in particular. Iordanova ends thechapter by stating that the transnational festivals create ‘a momentary site for mutualempowerment at-the-margin that all fragmented groups of the ‘vertical’ mosaicbenefit from’ (p. 38). But in what way do the French film festivals that Iordanovarefers to provide ‘mutual empowerment at-the-margin’? The argument is furtherhampered by a clumsy layout with highlighted boxes whose relationship to the runningtext is ambiguous. The subsequent two chapters in the ‘Contexts’ section of the bookare less theoretically underpinned, and the reader therefore arrives at the case studysection with a somewhat hazy sense of the red thread running through this collection.This is a pity, because there are many interesting interconnections between thefestivals studied in the book.

The festival case studies published in The Festival Circuit and Film Festivals andImagined Communities are so numerous and varied that it is impossible to summarise thesubjects or perspectives or evaluate their scope, relevance or quality collectively in asingle review. Clearly, individual chapters will be of great use to readers interestedin particular events or types of festivals. When investigating individual festivals, it issometimes difficult to see the whole picture, and the authors of the case studies tendto stay clear of drawing conclusions about film festivals more generally. This makes thework of the Yearbook editors, selecting and contextualising the texts, even moreimportant. One challenge for researchers of film festivals is how to deal with theanecdotal nature of much information. Kay Armatage’s chapter on ‘Toronto Women& Film International 1973’ in Festival Circuits (pp. 82–98) brings this question to the

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fore because it deals with lost materials and tries to reconstruct festival history onthe basis of subjective memories, but it is something that many researchers workingin this area need to reflect upon. The contribution of international researchers tothese Yearbooks is something to be applauded, as their skills, insights and perspectivesare very much needed. However, when including work by writers who do not haveEnglish as their first language extra proofreading may be required. Most chaptersin these volumes are well written, but some of them become tiresome to read becauseof minor grammatical errors or typos. An index with keywords would also be awelcome addition to future volumes in the series.

Despite the reservations expressed above, I welcome this ambitious publicationinitiative. The two first Yearbooks have taught me a great deal about festivals,including events that I did not even know existed. I look forward to read forthcomingvolumes, where I hope to see the editors engage more directly with other recentpublications on the topic, such as the Wallflower publication Dekalog 3: on film festivals(ed. by Richard Porton, 2010).

INGRID STIGSDOTTER

Linnaeus University� 2011 Ingrid Stigsdotter

Medieval FilmANKE BERNAU and BETTINA BILDHAUER (Eds)Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 2009xþ224 pp., illus., £55.25 (hard)

Anke Bernau and Bettina Bilhauer’s collection of essays, Medieval Film, explores arange of topics and themes about the presentation of the Middle Ages on the bigscreen since the origins of the medium. Modern scholarship increasingly considerscinema’s complicated relationship to history as befitting of a truly interdisciplinaryapproach, and in this vein the book attempts to answer questions of the nature, roleand purpose of medieval film by drawing on a number of theoretical angles, includingfilm theory, postcolonial discourse and cultural studies. It explores a wide range oftopics from the historical veracity of mass entertainment, and the appropriation of thepast to fit present-day ideologies (for instance, the liberal political subtext of 2005’sKingdom of Heaven), to more abstract discussion on themes such as temporality, the‘authenticity’ of the medium, and the role of metaphor and genre. These discoursesare fortified by more in-depth studies on specific films across the past century: eitherthose literally ‘Medieval’ in their content, or those inspired by ‘Medievalism’ in theircomposition, themes and aesthetic. These vary from The Birth of a Nation (1915) toKingdom of Heaven (2005), and foreign films, predominantly German and Italian, suchas Nosferatu (1922) and Joan of Arc at the Stake (Giovanna d’Arco al rogo, 1954).

A core theme of this book is that, collectively, the diverse portraits of this periodwork to generate a common vision of the Middle Ages in popular culture. This isargued on several grounds. Medieval Film notes the existence of deep-rooted

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