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The Film Festival Academy will be making very many film festival-related publications available online. Below are downloadable PDFs of six texts that should be of direct interest to anyone working in the field: Marijke de Valck's groundbreaking history of the development of film festivals; NISI MASA's report from the industry training workship in Espinho, July 2012; Thomas Elsaesser's seminal chapter 'Film Festival Networks: The New Topographies of Cinema in Europe' from his excellent volume European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood; a new provocation from Mark Cousins, who challenges us to think afresh about film festival form; the entire International Film Guide 2012, with detailed surveys of the national cinema of over a hundred countries as well as director profiles and festival lisitings; and Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals, a fine collection of essays from festival programmers, academics and film critics.
The Film Festival Academy is in the process of sourcing and securing the online publication of a very large list of academic works of film festival studies and film criticism relating to film festivals; in addition to this industry reports and festival catalogues will be continuously added to the online archive, all freely accessible.
Those on a PREMIUM membership will be able to access additional works, whether specially commissioned by the Film Festival Academy or already published elsewhere but with exclusive online publishing rights secured. Again, all access is free with this level of membership.
Marijke de Valck
Focusing on the world's most famous festivals – Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Rotterdam – Film Festivals tells the story of a phenomenon that began in the midst of geopolitical disputes in war-torn Europe...
Thomas Elsaesser
A seminal chapter from European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (University of Amsterdam Press, 2005)
Mark Cousins
Filmmaker, festival programmer, film critic, and maverick provocateur Mark Cousins challenges us to think again about the increasingly uniform forms in which film festivals – are organised, arguing that festival organisers...
Edited by Ian Haydn Smith
The definitive annual review of world cinema, in print since 1963. Includes a ‘World Survey’ section offering concise summaries of the film industry and festival activities in over a hundred countries, five...
Edited by Richard Porton
The third edition of the Dekalog series, published by Wallflower Press, is a wide-ranging look at the film festival world, with contributions from leading programmers and critics, including André Bazin, Mark Peranson, Quintin,...
'The creation of the Film Festival Academy is a very important step in the ongoing process of consolidation and exchange on the European festival scene. I wish all possible success to this important initiative.'
'The role of the film festival in today's digital world is constantly being re-evaluated and debated, but it's clear that film festivals are still as relevant and important as they have ever been. The Film Festival Academy should provide an important focus for the rich and diverse amount of film festivals in the world while giving festival practitioners an important outlet for networking and collaboration.'
'The new Film Festival Academy initiative is to be very much welcomed by all film festival professionals and anyone interested and involved in the increasingly central role played by film festivals in the international cinema industry; this is definitely the right thing at the right time and promises to be an exciting and important development that will be of great service to all of us working in the film festival arena.'
'The Film Festival Academy has a great potential to become a truly valid platform for creative film festival professionals willing to share knowledge and experience on a collaborative basis. This initiative should be welcomed with enthusiasm and excitement.'
'Do Film Festivals need an Academy in this day and age? The answer is, resoundingly, yes! A complex mixture of the professional and the cultural, the economic and the cinephilic, film festivals today are increasingly complex beasts – and no festival is an island unto itself. Connected in a tight web of international exchanges, comparisons and manœuvres, festivals are all about giving value to particular films or particular types of films – and finding, or creating, the audiences for them. The new Film Festival Academy is ideally placed to integrate the already widely scattered field of researches, discussions, trainings and co-operative interrelationships occurring within and between the literally thousands of film festivals in the modern globe. It is a new world on every level – from the challenge of projection formats to the politics of curating – and the Film Festival Academy will open the doors to it.'
'The unswerving positive response from film festivals, professionals and academics regarding the launch of the Film Festival Academy comes as no surprise. Sharing between academia and industry is essential in developing highly-trained film professionals and we look forward to the collaboration between film schools, film institutes, festivals and other film industry partners through this unique platform.'
'To focus on film festivals, not in opposition to but in articulation with critical and scholarly thought, is what world cinema needs in order to be understood in all its complexity. The Film Festival Academy deserves our applause and support for providing, for the first time, a common platform for festival professionals, critics and passionate spectators.'
'The Film Festival Academy has my full support. It is amazing that in a market overflowing with all kinds of professional training it has taken until today to come up with a simple and great idea: high level opportunities for the exchange of ideas and programmes for learning more about the complex art and the technical skills of running a film festival. Anybody who has participated in any of the rather dubious endeavours that were made in this field before will appreciate the non-profit approach of the Film Festival Academy; anybody who knows its founders will trust their professional knowledge and personal integrity. I will support the Film Festival Academy in every possible way.'
'The inauguration of the Film Festival Academy brings important and long overdue attention to film festivals as cultural locations for the traffic in filmmaking, from glitterati events with red carpets, to those that shed light on human rights abuses, to the world-building projects of activist communities.'
'The enormous growth of film festivals – in number, location, diversity, and artistic influence – is accelerating by the day. But not until now has their importance to global culture been matched by an organization with the cinematic acumen, media savvy, networking skills, and expert leadership needed to provide top-level support, training, information, and connectivity for participants in all areas of festival activity, from programmers and publicists to filmmakers, academics, and critics. The arrival of the Film Festival Academy is the most exciting development in years for moving-image professionals everywhere.'
'The Film Festival Academy offers a much needed interchange of views between filmmakers, festival programmers and academics doing research on film festivals. That this interchange takes place not in the academy but at festivals themselves will be a huge boon to film festival scholarship and to an important sharing and deepening of the perspective of those interested in not only theorizing but also intervening in the continued growth of these events which play such a crucial part in the disseminating of a global cinema and in the breaking down of commerical barriers.'
To become a member, please read the descriptions of the two levels of membership to select which one better fits your needs, and then select one of the them. You will be redirected to a registration page where you will create your Film Festival Academy account, and will soon begin to benefit from the many advantages afforded by membership.
The two kinds of membership are:
BASIC (free)
PREMIUM (€90 per year, or €60 per year if taken out before 31 December 2012)
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