Featuring essays by and interviews with festival programmers, filmmakers, activists, and film scholars, "Film Festivals and Activism" explores the role of film festivals in social justice movements and campaigns.

Human rights film festivals have been steadily growing in number in recent years. They are all bound by a common thread, human rights, and yet show distinctly different films. What leads them to be so different, and how is the universalism of human rights made sense by each?

Film festivals are an ever-growing part of the film industry, but most considerations of them focus almost entirely on their role in the business of filmmaking. This book breaks new ground by bringing scholars from a range of disciplines together with industry professionals to explore the concept of festivals as spaces through an activist lens, as spaces where the sociopolitical identities of communities and individuals are confronted and shaped. Tracing the growth of activist and human rights-focused films from the 1970s to the present, and using case studies from San Francisco, Brazil, Bristol, and elsewhere, the book addresses such contentious topics as whether activist films can achieve humanitarian aims or simply offer "cinema of suffering." Ultimately, the contributors attack the question of just how effective festivals are at producing politically engaged spectators?

Film festivals are an ever-growing part of the film industry, but most considerations of them focus almost entirely on their role in the business of filmmaking. This book breaks new ground by bringing scholars from a range of disciplines together with industry professionals to explore the concept of festivals as spaces through an activist lens, as spaces where the sociopolitical identities of communities and individuals are confronted and shaped. Tracing the growth of activist and human rights-focused films from the 1970s to the present, and using case studies from San Francisco, Brazil, Bristol, and elsewhere, the book addresses such contentious topics as whether activist films can achieve humanitarian aims or simply offer "cinema of suffering." Ultimately, the contributors attack the question of just how effective festivals are at producing politically engaged spectators?

Comprising essays from some of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, this is the first book to investigate twenty-first century radical film practices across production, distribution and exhibition at a global level. This book explores global radical film culture in all its geographic, political and aesthetic diversity. It is inspired by the work of the Radical Film Network (RFN), an organisation established in 2013 to support the growth and sustainability of politically engaged film culture around the world. Since then, the RFN has grown rapidly, and now consists of almost 200 organisations across four continents, from artists’ studios and production collectives to archives, distributors and film festivals. With this foundation, the book engages with contemporary radical film cultures in Africa, Asia, China, Europe, the Middle East as well as North and South America, and connects key historical moments and traditions with the present day. Topics covered include artists’ film and video, curation, documentary, feminist and queer film cultures, film festivals and screening practices, network-building, policy interventions and video-activism. For students, researchers and practitioners, this fascinating and wide-ranging book sheds new light on the political potential of the moving image and represents the activists and organisations pushing radical film forward in new and exciting directions. For more information about the Radical Film Network, visit www.radicalfilmnetwork.com.

Responding to a lack of studies on the film festival’s role in the production of cultural memory, this book explores different parameters through which film festivals shape our reception and memories of films. By focusing on two Asian American film festivals, this book analyzes the frames of memory that festivals create for their films, constructed through and circulated by the various festival media. It further establishes that festival locations—both cities and screening venues—play a significant role in shaping our experience of films. Finally, it shows that festivals produce performances which help guide audiences towards certain readings and direct the film’s role as a memory object. Bringing together film festival studies and memory studies, 'Asian American Film Festivals' offers a mixed-methods approach with which to explore the film festival phenomenon, thus shedding light on the complex dynamics of frames, locations, and performances shaping the festival’s memory practices. It also draws attention to the understudied genre of Asian American film festivals, showing how these festivals actively engage in constructing and performing a minority group’s collective identity and memory.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the global landscape of documentary film festivals. Contributors from across the globe offer in-depth analysis of both internationally renowned and more alternative festivals, including Hot Docs (Canada), Nyon (Switcherland), Yamagata (Japan), DocChina, Full Frame (US), Belgrade (former Yugoslavia), Vikalp (India), and DocsBarcelona (Catalonia, Spain), among others. With a special focus on historical and political developments, this first volume draws a map of documentary festivals operating today, and then looks at their origins and evolution. This volume is organized in three sections: the first addresses methodological problems film historians and social scientists face when researching documentary film festivals, the second looks at the historical development of this circuit within the wider frame of history of world and national cinemas, and the third reflects on how politics find their way through festival programs and actions. Curatorial, organizational, industrial and political changes occurred in the festival realm addressed in this book help better understand how these affected documentary production, distribution, curation, exhibition and reception up to this day.