Film Festivals History Theory

This survey-type seminar will examine the ways in which the politics, ideology, international relations, and nationalism have shaped the film festivals around the globe, and in what extent film festivals have influenced global film cultures throughout the past seven decades. As many film historians have argued, the beginning of the annual international film festival was the specific European political situation in the period preceding World War II and the immediate post-war era that brought together the necessary incentives to initiate their development, which would later expand to a global phenomenon. Throughout the course, each student will learn how international film festivals affected the cinematic aesthetics, movements, and history (and vice versa) through screenings, readings, and discussions of such vital film festivals as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Moscow, Sundance, Singapore, and Busan, focusing primarily on the politics of cultural market and industry, print journalism, alternative distributions, and global circulation of cinema in the age of digital media.