LGBTQ Film Festivals

LGBTQ Film Festivals

Curating Queerness

While scholars have theorized major film festivals, they have ignored smaller, ephemeral, events. In taking seriously minor European and North-American LGBT festivals which often only exist as traces within archival collections, this book revisits festival studies' methodological and theoretical apparatuses. As the first 'critique' of festival studies from within, LGBTQ Film Festivals argues that both festivals and queer film cultures are by definition ephemeral. The book is organized around two concepts: First, 'critical festival studies' examines the political project and disciplinary assumptions that structure festival research. Second, 'the festival as a method' pays attention to festivals' role as producers of knowledge: it argues that festivals are not mere objects of research but also actors already shaping academic, industrial, and popular cinematic knowledge. Drawing on my experience on the festival circuit, this book pays homage to the labour of queer organizers, critics, and scholars and opens up new avenues for festival research.
  • Cover
  • Table of Contents
  • Dedication
  • Acknowledgements
  • List of abbreviations
  • Introduction. Festivals, Uncut: Queering Film Festival Studies, Curating LGBTQ Film Festivals
  • 1. Festivals that (did not) Matter: Festivals’ Archival Practices and the Field Imaginary of Festival Studies
  • 2. The Queer Film Ecosystem: Symbolic Economy, Festivals, and Queer Cinema’s Legs
  • 3. Out of the Celluloid Closet, into the Theatres! Towards a Genealogy of Queer Film Festivals and Gay and Lesbian Film Studies
  • 4. Festivals as Archives: Collective Memory and LGBTQ Festivals’ Temporality
  • 5. Images+Translation: Imagining Queerness and its Homoscapes
  • Conclusion. The Impossibility of Festival Studies? On the Temporalities of Field Intervention and the Queering of Festival Studies
  • Appendix
  • Bibliography
  • Filmography
  • About the Author
  • Index