Film Festivals offers the first comprehensive overview of the history, people, films, and multiple functions of the festival world. From Sundance to Hong Kong, from the glitter of Cannes to edgier festivals that challenge boundaries or foster LGBTQ cultural production, film festivals celebrate art, promote business, bring cinema to diverse audiences, and raise key issues about how we see our world.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• History, Structure, and Practice in the Festival World
• Before Film Festivals
• Film Festivals Create Histories in Nations and Cities: 1930-1960
• Globalization and Controversy since the 1960s
• Festival Worlds Today
• Conclusion
• The Films of the Festivals
• Outside the Mainstream: What Festival Films Are Not
• Serious Film: Defining the Festival Film
• Discovering Romania
• Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days: Reading the Festival Film
• Conclusion
• Auteurs, Critics, and Canons: EXTRATEXTUAL ELEMENTS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF FESTIVAL FILMS
• Michelangelo Antonioni
• Abbas Kiarostami
• The Press, the Critics, and the Scholars
• The Film Festivals Present Themselves
• The Voice of the Auteur
• Conclusion
• Film Festivals and Film Industries
• The Early Days: Exhibition and Hollywood
• The Markets
• Distribution: Buyers and Sellers
• Film Festivals as Producers
• Funding and the Auteur: Jia Zhangke
• Conclusion: Rethinking Production and Power
• Festivals as Public Spheres
• Film Festivals and the Public Sphere
• Iranian Cinema, Cinematographers, and Debates in Global Public Spheres
• The Politics of Human Rights
• Lesbian and Gay (Queer) Film Festivals
• Conclusion
• The Hong Kong International Film Festival as Cultural Event
• Hong Kong, Colonial Culture, and Early Film
• The Festival and Hong Kong Film Culture, 1952-1980
• Showcasing and Creating Hong Kong Cinema in the 1980s
• Negotiating Chineseness: 1980s Onward
• HKIFF in the Twenty-first Century
• Conclusion
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Filmography