FFRN Bibliography updated

The Film Festival Research: Thematic, Annotated Bibliography has been updated.  Because we now host the bibliography on our own space, we are more flexible with additions and updates.  The new edition, now available here on the website, presents all previously listed as well as ca. 80 new entries in a new format.  The linear (print) format has been replaced by a hyperlink structure, thus, breaking down the long bibliography into subpages according to categories and hopefully allowing for more search comfort and direct access.  Entries that appeared only in one category so far in the print edition, can now be listed in multiple relevant categories (subpages) as space limitations are not applicable anymore in the same way.  We hope to be able to do more justice to the entries this way.

Since the last edition (Jan. 2010), we have added and expanded categories of the bibliography.  Under “1.1 c) Book Reviews” we now include reviews of film festival books.  This way, we want to highlight that the work in film festivals research has been acknowledged and encourage engagement with raised criticism. With the new subcategory “5.5 Festivals as Organizations” we want to highlight work that deals with the organizational aspect of film festivals.

With regard to existing categories, we felt compelled to change our classification system for entries in category “6. Trans/National Cinemas”.  The focus had been on the distribution, circulation and negotiation of an idea of national cinema on the festival circuit, including the impact global power structures play here.  Following Dina Iordanova and Ruby Cheung’s discussion of imagined communities and the various ways in which film festivals are linked to diasporas (Iordanova/Cheung 2010), we want to broaden the idea of trans/national festivals to include those festivals that are not necessarily based in the regions we distinguish but have links to or circulate films from that region.  Thus, we include here pieces on diasporic festivals.

Another change has been made for the already multifaceted category “8. Reception: Audiences, Communities and Cinephiles”.  This category collected articles circling around several different aspects of reception: text-based reception studies, discussions on aspects of reception and cinephilia, reception environments and their link to communities, etc.  Now this rubric will also include relevant contributions from the area of Tourism Management and Business Studies.  Among the new entries we want to highlight two pieces that present quantitative audience research on festival audiences.  These articles currently listed (Lee/Lee/Wicks 2004; Lee et al. 2008) are likely to be only the tip of a new iceberg.

We hope that you will find the bibliography useful.  We welcome any recommendations, comments and additions.  Please be in contact through info@filmfestivalresearch.org!