Curation & Cinephilia: The Adelaide Film Festival

This course charts the development of international film festival cultures and their historical and contemporary role in art house and national cinemas. In the first part of the course, we will examine in detail the history of selected film festivals (such as Cannes, Venice, Sundance and Toronto) and demonstrate how the year-round festival circuit facilitates global flows of films across the world. Moving from the old to the new, from the national to the transnational, from the state-funded and controlled to the independent and the grass-roots, we shall explore how film festivals involve a number of timely concerns: cultural exchange, political economy, the communal experience of film screenings, and the construction of national identities. What happens at a film festival? What role does it play? Who chooses what a festival shows? Does it allow audiences to hear new voices in global cinema? Does it offer filmmakers a platform to share their stories? Or is it something akin to 'soft power'; a form of cultural diplomacy that can be expertly used to leverage one nation's agenda over another? In the second half of the course, we will go behind the scenes at Adelaide's celebrated biennial Adelaide Film Festival to investigate the processes behind the curation, exhibition and distribution of the films selected to appear at the Festival, and the logistical challenges at play during the planning phase. Spending time with Festival staff, students will gain first-hand real-world experience of arts curation and work- integrated learning. In collaboration with the Festival, students will also be given discounted tickets to films of their choice, and then research the origins of their selected films and investigate why they have been selected to appear in the Festival. With input from Festival staff, we will go on to consider the role of the Festival itself, and highlight how such an event can enrich the community in a local and international perspective.