We are very excited to announce that Rethinking Film Festivals in the Pandemic Era and After, the book A/CA Project Manager Antoine Damiens recently co-edited with Marijke de Valck on the impact of Covid-19 on international film festivals, has just been published in open access with Palgrave Macmillan.
Three chapters may be of particular interest to A/CA members because of their Canadian/archival focus: Ylenia Olibet and Alanna Thain’s contribution zeroes in on GIV’s Vidéos de femmes dans le parc series, Jon Petrychyn analyzes the strategies implemented by the Toronto Queer Film Festival and the Toronto Outdoors Picture Show, and Antoine's Damien's contribution examines some of the difficulties associated with the archiving of film festivals in pandemic times.
The book is fully available in open access (i.e. free) here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-14171-3.
Printed books are also available for purchase.
About the Book:
This edited collection aims to document the effects of Covid-19 on film festivals and to theorize film festivals in the age of social distancing. To some extent, this crisis begs us to consider what happens when festivals can’t happen; while films have found new (temporary) channels of distribution (most often in the forms of digital releases), the festival format appears particularly vulnerable in pandemic times. 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.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: What Happens When Festivals Can’t Happen?
Antoine Damiens and Marijke de Valck
Part I: Contaminated Circuits: Covid-19 and the Festival Ecosystem
Chapter 2: Stopping the Flow: Film Circulation in the Festival Ecosystem at a Moment of Disruption
Skadi Loist
Chapter 3: Scarcity, Ubiquity, and the Film Festival after Covid
Brendan Kredell
Chapter 4: Locating Buzz and Liveness: The Role of Geoblocking and Co-Presence in Virtual Film Festivals
Diane Burgess and Kirsten Stevens
Chapter 5: Film Festivals on the Small Screen: Audiences, Domestic Space, and Everyday Media
James Vail, Theresa Heath, Lesley-Ann Dickson and Rebecca Finkel.
Chapter 6: Finding Allies in Pandemic Times: Documentary Film Festivals and Streaming Platforms
Aida Vallejo and Christel Taillibert
Chapter 7: Chilean Film Festivals and Local Audiences: Going Online?
María Paz Peirano and Gonzalo Ramírez
Part II: Experimenting on the Frontlines: Innovative Responses to the Crisis
Chapter 8: Vidéo de Femmes dans le Parc: Feminist Rhythms and Festival Times under Covid
Ylenia Olibet and Alanna Thain
Chapter 9: Curating our Own Space: A Conversation on Online Queer Film Exhibition and Adult Queer Cinema
Jenni Olson and Jiz Lee
Chapter 10: Cinephilia, Publics, Cinegoraphilia: Surveying the Short-Term Effects of Covid-19 on Community-Based Festivals in Toronto
Jonathan Petrychyn
Chapter 11: Film Festivals in Taiwan: Lurking on the Periphery
Beth Tsai
Chapter 12: Precarity, Innovation and Survival in the Indian Film Festival Sector
Tilottama Karlekar
Chapter 13: Curating as care at Cannes Critics Week and Marrakech
Clémentine Dramani-Issifou
Part III: Never Waste a Good Crisis: (Re)imagining Festivals after the Pandemic
Chapter 14: Towards Decolonized Film Festival Worlds
Lindiwe Dovey and Estrella Sendra
Chapter 15: Festivals, Covid-19, and the Crisis of Archiving
Antoine Damiens
Chapter 16: Greening Film Festivals
Marijke de Valck and Ger Zielinski