Film Festival Studies Redux

Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul enjoys some festival fun as he receives the 2010 Palme D'Or for his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives at the Cannes Film Festival

Film Studies For Free has been catching up with some great resources lately. One set which should really not pass its readers by is In Media Res's recent collection of work on 'Diversity of Film Festivals in East Asia' curated by Dina Iordanova and Ruby Cheung. All items are linked to directly below.

Here's a little excerpt from Iordanova and Cheung's curators' note:

Like their counterparts in the West, film festivals in East Asia have proliferated [...]. While the oldest festival in the region, the Asia-Pacific Film Festival, has been running since 1954, many younger ones have come into being in the 1990s and 2000s; at least four new festivals came into being in 2010, and a new festival in China’s capital will have its inaugural edition later in 2011. Are these festivals just mimicking the West? Red carpet glamour is not solely confined to the most important A-list film festivals in the West, its symbolism has been taken up by high profile festivals like those in Pusan and Shanghai [...]. Their booming film markets that take place in parallel here bring together filmmakers, buyers and sellers from around the world to establish networks and carry out intra-Asia transactions that successfully bracket out Hollywood. The West is only just beginning to wake up to the importance of these film festivals to global film distribution.

Not only are there some fascinating considerations of these issues in prose but, as is In Media Res's wont,  there are some fantastic video resources, too - valuable work, indeed.

For more on festivals, do please check out an earlier FSFF post on Film Festival Studies and have a read of the following assorted, high quality studies:

• SooJeong Ahn, The Pusan International Film Festival 1996-2005: South Korean cinema in local, regional, and global context, PhD Thesis,  University of Nottingham, 2008

• Chris Berry, 'My Queer Korea: Identity, Space, and the 1998 Seoul Queer Film & Video festival', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 2, May 1999

• Jamie June, 'Is it Queer Enough?: An Analysis of the Criteria and Selection Process for Programming Films within Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Film Festivals in the United States' (e-Thesis)

• S. Loist, M. de Valck, 'Film festivals/Film festival research: thematic, annotated bibliography', 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, Institut für Germanistik II, 2010)

• Renee Penney, Desperately Seeking Redundancy? Queer Romantic Comedy and the Festival Audience, PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2010

And for some more inspiring viewing watch

• Researchers' Tales: Richard Dyer (8 Mar 2010): The writer and academic discusses his instrumental role in the creation of the BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, one of the world's most prestigious celebrations of queer cinema.

In Media Res: 'Diversity of Film Festivals in East Asia'

• Dina Iordanova (University of St. Andrews) and Ruby Cheung (University of St. Andrews) presents: Diversity of Film Festivals in East Asia: Red Carpets and Parades (Monday January 24, 2011)

• Abé Mark Nornes (University of Michigan) presents: When Strangers Meet (Tuesday January 25, 2011)

• Ragan Rhyne (New York University) presents: Queer Comrades (Wednesday January 26, 2011)

• Jean-Michel Frodon (Institute of Political Studies, Paris) presents: The Cinema World, made of what? or made of who?  (Thursday January 27, 2011)

• Chris Fujiwara (Editor, Undercurrent) presents: Rewriting Japanese Film History: Shibuya Minoru in Retrospect (Friday January 28, 2011)

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Zombie Week at In Media Res

Image from Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)

Film Studies For Free today recommends an event at one of its favourite, and one of the most original, film and media studies websites -- In Media Res -- which is just concluding a special theme week devoted to Zombies! Below are the direct links to all the fun stuff, and below those you can find more information about the ethos and practicalities of the marvellous In Media Res site.

• Eric Hamako (University of Massachusetts) presents: '“The Yellow Peril rises from the grave…to get your White women!" Orientalist themes in zombie stories', Monday, September 28, 2009

• Cathy Schlund-Vials (Univ. of Connecticut), 'Racism, Postcolonialism, and Neocolonial Zombies: Resident Evil 5', Tuesday, September 29, 2009

• Kim Paffenroth (Iona College), 'Dawn of the Dead (1978): Zombies and Human Nature', Wednesday, September 30, 2009

• Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan Univ.), '“Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Secular Messiahs"', Thursday, October 1, 2009

ABOUT IN MEDIA RES

In Media Res is dedicated to experimenting with collaborative, multi-modal forms of online scholarship.

Each day, a different scholar will curate a 30-second to 3-minute video clip/visual image slideshow accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response.

We use the title "curator" because, like a curator in a museum, you are repurposing a media object that already exists and providing context through your commentary, which frames the object in a particular way.

The clip/comment combination are intended to both introduce the curator's work to the larger community of scholars (as well as non-academics who frequent the site) and, hopefully, encourage feedback/discussion from that community.

Theme weeks are designed to generate a networked conversation between curators. All the posts for that week will thematically overlap and the participating curators each agree to comment on one another's work.

Our goal is to promote an online dialogue amongst scholars and the public about contemporary approaches to studying media.

In Media Res provides a forum for more immediate critical engagement with media at a pace closer to how we typically experience media

In Media Res is a publication of MediaCommons. MediaCommons is a strong advocate for the right of media scholars to quote from the materials they analyze, as protected by the principle of "fair use." If such quotation is necessary to a scholar's argument, if the quotation serves to support a scholar's original analysis or pedagogical purpose, and if the quotation does not harm the market value of the original text -- but rather, and on the contrary, enhances it -- we must defend the scholar's right to quote from the media texts under study.

For more information, please contact In Media Res’ coordinating editor, Avi Santo at asanto@odu.edu

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