Dynamics of World Cinema

Film Festival Yearbook 2: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities

Edited by Dina Iordanova with Ruby Cheung 

Film Festivals and Imagined Communities, the second volume in the Film Festival Yearbook series, brings together essays about festivals that use international cinema to mediate the creation of transnational 'imagined communities'. There are texts about the cultural policies and funding models linked to these festivals, as well as analysis of programming practices linked to these often highly politicised events. The case studies discuss diaspora-linked festivals that take place in Vienna, San Francisco, San Sebastian, Havana, Bradford, Sahara, South Korea, and London and that feature cinema from places as diverse as Nepal and Kurdistan, Africa and Latin America. Authors include Lindiwe Dovey, Ruby Cheung, Michael Guillén, Jérôme Segal, Miriam Ross, Roy Stafford, Yun Mi Hwang, Isabel Santaolalla and Stefan Simanowitz, Mustafa Gündoğdu, and Dina Iordanova. The Resources section features an up-to-date bibliography on film festival scholarship (by Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck) and an extensive thematically-organised listing of a variety of transnational festivals.

CONTENTS

Introduction (Dina Iordanova and Ruby Cheung)

PART I: Contexts

PART II: Case Studies

PART III: Resources

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Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit

Edited by Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne

The first in an annual series, the Film Festival Yearbook features articles related to the global proliferation of film festivals. This issue is focused on the dynamics of the film festival circuit, including the roles of individual festivals as nodes on this complex network and the cultural policies that shape its channels of film exhibition and distribution.  

This inaugural volume includes essays by Dina Iordanova, Ragan Rhyne, Janet Harbord, Charles-Clemens Rüling, Rahul Hamid, Kay Armatage, Ruby Cheung, Ma Ran, J. David Slocum, Mark Cousins, Nick Roddick, Dimitris Kerkinos, Marijke de Valck & Skadi Loist, and William Brown.

CONTENTS

Introduction (Dina Iordanova and Ragan Rhyne) 

PART I: The Festival Circuit

PART II: Festival Case Studies

PART III: Dispatches from the Festival World

Part IV: The Field of Festival Studies

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International Film Festival Workshop

Presented by Centre for Film Studies at the University of St Andrews

4 April 2009, 10:00-17:00, University of St Andrews 

This one-day, intensive workshop of Dynamics of World Cinema, to be hosted by the Centre for Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews, will bring together select scholars researching film festivals and related topics.  The workshop will be focused around broadly defined methodological and theoretical concerns related to the study of film festivals and will provide a rare opportunity for productive conversation about the state of the field and current research agendas.  Sessions will include both moderated roundtable discussions as well as prepared presentations, allowing participants to present research at various stages of completion.  Topics will include festival programming, distribution, funding, digitization/new media, cultural policy, and case studies of specific festivals.

Workshop participants include: 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), Nick Roddick (Split Screen), David Slocum (The Berlin School of Creative Leadership), Núria Triana Toribio (University of Manchester), and Marijke de Valck (University of Amsterdam).

The workshop is being organized as part of 'Dynamics of World Cinema: Transnational Channels of Global Film Distribution', a Leverhulme-sponsored two-and-a-half-year project on global networks of film distribution. Directed by Professor Dina Iordanova of the University of St Andrews, the project examines four main networks of international film circulation: mainstream distribution of international blockbusters from around the world, the film festival circuit, film circulation amongst diasporic communities, and Internet-enabled transnational film dissemination.

The Workshop will be held at the Byre Theatre, Abbey Street, St. Andrews, Fife.  The workshop is free of charge, but space is limited and an RSVP is required.  For more information, please contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .