Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism

Film festivals not only build markets and audiences, they also provide platforms for those advocating change. 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. 'Film Festivals and Activism provides an excellent overview of the field of human rights and other activist film festivals. It combines field-level synthesis by academics with expertise in both film festivals and human rights activism and employs a range of perspectives from key protagonists working in both established and new festival settings.' (Sam Gregory, Programme Director, Witness, New York, USA) 'Film Festivals and Activism constitutes a profound acknowledgement of the work carried out by film festivals and contains a wealth of useful information about the ideas behind them. It manages to convey the great diversity of the international film circuit, featuring contributions that range from the traditionally academic to the engagingly essayistic. Film Festivals and Activism clearly demonstrates the need for this kind of publication in academic film studies and, most importantly, provides a valuable resource for anyone planning or working with international film festivals.' (Bjorn Sorenssen, Professor of Film and Media, Trondheim, Norway) 'The Film Festival Yearbook project represents a unique opportunity to study the multi-faceted phenomenon of film festivals. It focuses on both global networks and local practices and sheds new light on the artistic, economic and political issues that are currently reshaping the global cultural field. Bringing together academics and practitioners from an impressively wide range of professional and national origins, it embraces both empirical and theoretical analysis. In so doing it provides striking new insights into a hugely significant cultural phenomenon.' (Jean-Michel Frodon, film critic, Paris, France)