R E V IE W– E S S AY • ESSAI COM P TE REN D U

GER ZIE L I NSKI

FILM FESTIVAL FEVER: RECENT TESTIMONIALS

SUNDANCE TO SARAJEVO: FILM FESTIVALS AND THE WORLD THEY MADE

Kenneth Turan
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002, 180 pp.

FILM FESTIVAL CONFIDENTIAL

William Marshall
Toronto: McArthur and Company, 2006, 115 pp.

QUEER FILM AND VI DEO FESTIVAL FORUM, TAKE ONE: CURATORS SPEAK
OUT, Moving Image Review
Edited by Chris Straayer and Tom Waugh
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 11:4 (2005): 579-603.

In the past decade the academic gaze in film studies has extended to cover insti-
tutions of cinema, particularly exhibition, as part of the cultural analysis of the
medium. A mounting number of publications are dedicated to the culture of film
festivals, in the light of trends in cultural globalization and the advent of post-
national world cinemas. The three texts that I survey here speak to overlapping
and sometimes different aspects of this phenomenon and in varying modes, from
investigative journalism to insider memoir, but always engaging the first-person
experience. This survey anticipates more such work to come.1
Sundance to Sarajevo is a splendid work of journalism by the well-known
film critic Kenneth Turan at the L.A. Times. He weaves together autobiographical
accounts and anecdotes, often supplemented with interviews. It is certainly not
an ethnographic study and lacks a bibliography, notes and index. Turan begins
with the curious claim that “[n]o one wants to speak against the Bible, but the
sentiment in Ecclesiastes famously insisting ‘to every thing there is a season, and a
time to every purpose under heaven’ in no way applies to the universe of film
festivals.” While film festivals generally may not indeed have any one “season,”
successful individual festivals find their appropriate time and place in the global
calendar, a fact Turan establishes, against the grain of his claim above, through

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his journey to a dozen international film festivals.
Turan writes a survey of select film festivals with which he has become
acquainted to varying degrees since he began his career as a film critic in 1971
at Cannes. He observes the prolific extent of film festivals worldwide today with,
for instance, over one hundred and fifty in Europe and thirty in New York City
alone. Their numbers mirror their diversity, exemplified by festivals with spe-
cialized themes of spoof films, comedies, mental illness, sexuality, films refused
by other festivals, and so on. In his discussion of how the culture industry uses
film festivals, Turan refers to Piers Handling’s insight that festivals serve as an
alternative distribution network. SONY, for example, makes use of festivals as
alternative opportunities for advertising and public relations, as they are often
far less expensive than more conventional means of promotion.
Turan starts with a description of Cannes’ urban context, thirty-five thou-
sand guests, the streets, parties, restaurants, the banality of glamour, its notorious
hierarchy of press passes, with gossip providing an important social glue next to
extreme publicity for those producers that can afford the display. Back in the
U.S.A., Turan rightly names the Sundance Festival the “flagship of the burgeoning
American independent film movement” while recounting its history and current
setting of Park City, the mountain resort village of six thousand inhabitants that
welcomes twenty thousand festival-goers annually. At Sundance cultural capital
is formidable, and directors can become famous immediately. Alternatively, Las
Vegas’s Sho West is the film trade show festival extraordinaire at which Jack
Valenti gives his annual state-of-the-industry address, and where audience taste
trends are anticipated and marketing strategies honed. Its primary aim, according
to Turan, is to bring together exhibitors and distributors in one event.
Turan also outlines the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the
Havana festival. He sketches out a hopeful post-civil-war Sarajevo and its film
festival, reminding us also of the highly ambivalent reception given to Emir
Kusturica in his home city. On a brighter note, Turan describes the wondrous
Arctic Midnight Sun festival in Finland that runs all day and all night with end-
less sunshine and vodka. Turan’s excellent writing skills vividly bring to life the
festivals that he has visited. For the academic, his text provides well-considered,
first-person accounts, introductions to particular festivals and their social con-
texts, but lacks theoretical and methodological rigor. The promise of Sarajevo to
Sundance’s subtitle “film festivals and the world they made” is intimated fleet-
ingly, but not in the end fully realized.
William Marshall’s Film Festival Confidential (2006) is a breathless memoir
that mainly concerns the history and future of the Toronto International Film
Festival (TIFF). He executes this with the authority of a co-founder and freely
acknowledges his partiality. In the end, Confidential is a first-person narrative by
a crucial festival insider, a veritable maverick who states his vision for TIFF and
offers his opinions on various other festivals.2

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 In twenty-one short chapters, Marshall describes and explains the practical
workings of international film festivals, particularly concentrating on how
Toronto became an A-list festival. He begins his history with the brave 1975 pitch
for the first edition of the Toronto festival, the meager state of public funding,
and the lack of encouragement from the local media and potential funding agen-
cies. TIFF began as the Festival of Festivals (FoF) as non-competitive, without a
formal trade market, and with the operating credo of “egalitarian, democratic,
accessible.” In stark contrast was FoF’s notorious rival, the Montréal World Film
Festival (MWFF), founded in 1977 by Serge Losique (Srdjan Losic). For strategic
reasons, Losique rescheduled his MWFF to take place shortly before the FoF and
negotiated matching federal and more provincial funding than what FoF
obtained. TIFF is a registered charitable corporation without a royalty fee, while
MWFF has its jury and a formal market, and continues to be Losique’s own per-
sonal foundation, infamously shunning Québécois filmmakers and the Festival
du nouveau cinéma.3 What shines through Marshall’s remarkable anecdotes is
the necessity of charm and chutzpah, without which it is doubtful whether any
funder, public or private, could have been won over. The story also speaks to pes-
simistic English-Canadian attitudes towards the possibility of Toronto ever
becoming an international city worthy of such a festival.
Marshall attributes the successful vibe of the festival to the special balance
of hippy ethic and entrepreneurial capitalism that made TIFF so festive, while
recounting some of the crucial debauched moments. For instance, he tells how
the festival was able to be festive despite Ontario’s strict liquor laws, with its
popular open bar in the VIP hotel suite, and he describes the fragile second edition
of the festival and battle with the infamous Ontario Censor Board, which the fes-
tival cunningly used for its own promotion.
Confidential explicates the rationales for festivals and how their timing, par-
ticularly in relation to the A-list international film festival network, yields them
greater or lesser success, e.g. Cannes slid back in the calendar from September
to June, The Berlinale moved from July to February, and Sundance moved from
Salt Lake City to resort town Park City. Marshall, as festival connoisseur, lists his
favorite festivals and describes their merits, but only touches the surface of the
thousands of festivals available in the world. Towards the end of the book Marshall
offers advice on how to improve the box office for English-Canadian films and
predicts the future of cinema if it were to remain an inexpensive, populist and
collective experience. Regarding the future of TIFF Marshall is admittedly unsure,
for so much depends on how well the festival’s new tower building, serving as
headquarters and centralized screening venue, will suit the festival and its
vibrant culture. He is cautiously optimistic.
Marshall writes graciously of those whom he admires. These memoirs were
clearly written on the run by a busy film industry insider. The value of this text
to the student of film festivals is that it provides a glimpse into the institution

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and its culture, however partial. It is a necessary read for anyone researching
international film festivals or institutions of Canadian cinema, as it brings to life
the names that circulate in the history of Canadian film, and its scenes. The gossip
is great, but he admittedly holds back. It paints a lively picture of a cherished
festival. We need more such documents, academic and popular.
Another sort of international film festival is the lesbian and gay film festi-
val, which owes its humble beginnings to queer artists and activists in the late
1970s in North America and has truly gone global within the last decade. Current
queer film festivals have a distinct global network that, in a sense, parallels the
A-list international film festivals, but clearly have a more specialized public. In a
special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Chris Straayer and
Tom Waugh selected nine film festival programmers to address the concerns of
lesbian and gay film festivals and their future directions.4 This project echoes
and builds upon Patricia White’s impressive dossier on queer film festivals.5 The
structure of Straayer and Waugh’s “forum” is polyphonic, with responses from
the nine participants interwoven and then “retrofitted via e-mail.” It offers a brief
survey of the state of such festivals and possible contacts for further in-depth
interviews and ethnographic fieldwork.
The participants begin by giving a historical account of their respective fes-
tivals. London’s Brian Robinson, for example, acknowledges the importance of
Richard Dyer’s 1977 series Images of Homosexuality at the B.F.I. in spawning an
annual festival that started in 1986. Stephen Gutwillig describes how the Los
Angeles festival arose out of the work of graduate students at UCLA starting in
1982. Nanna Heidenreich in Berlin speaks of the complexity of the German situ-
ation, namely the differences in the LGBT movements in the former East and
West Germanies, lesbian separatism in the West, and the homophobic stereo-
types attributed to the significant population of Turks in Germany today. New
York’s MIX festival is a rare venue for queer experimental media, and festival
director Liza Johnson acknowledges the powerful accessibility of low-tech pro-
duction and postproduction resources to artists. An extension of Johnson’s festi-
val since 1993 is MIX Brasil co-founded by Suzy Capo. The São Paulo-based
festival tours a selection of its films and videos throughout Brasil and even to
other continents. Funding also seems to be a constant concern for all festivals
with the public-to-private ratio of support varying widely from city to city. All
are feeling the shrinking funding base and the rising competition from other
community groups.
Most of these programmers notice a “democratization of technology”
through the unprecedented production levels enabled specifically by digital pro-
duction and postproduction techniques. The resultant increase in titles, however,
has not yet corresponded to a surge in quality of the work. Heidenreich astutely
notes that these new videos “still come from Europe and North America,” while
Capo is more optimistic for Brazilian production.

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 Styles of programming vary considerably between and within queer film
festivals.5 Berlin’s LesbenFilmFestival puts its emphasis on lesbian themes, and
aims to challenge any complacency regarding notions of “community,” “identity”
and “difference.” MIX NYC was founded as an experimental film festival and
guards that ethos still. The more experimental or artistic festivals consider formal
innovation and social engagement important to keeping their festivals relevant
in view of the striking increase in queer visibility on television. Programmers
seem keen to bring out themes of sexual fluidity and mixed gender screenings in
preference to the segregated curating style of the past, while also keeping an eye
on historical work. Capo in Brazil and Vancouver’s Michael Barrett are still
enthusiastic about investigating social change and building communities through
challenging programming. Others maintain that TV coverage of the festival
makes its promotion more intelligible to a wider public.
The festival programmers seem unanimous that major outreach is needed
to bring lesbians and visible and ethnic minorities to festivals. Marzi insists on
mixed programming irrespective of sexual identities, while Johnson argues that
those festivals too heavily invested in the politics of visibility may fast become
perceived as being out of step under current “post- queer” views on sexuality.
Johnson describes how MIX conceives itself as a social space outside of com-
munity organizations and bar culture that challenges and crosses “well-known
boundaries of identity and interest.” Gutwillig describes the development of
Fusion, a queer people of color festival in LA, as one such important outreach
initiative. Some of these programmers posit their strategies to win over new audi-
ences while sustaining old ones. In seeking “new ways to enhance the cinema
experience,” Brian Robinson introduced a popular and innovative sing-a-long
Sound of Music screening. As MIX’s Johnson notes, “What constitutes ‘queer’
work and what constitutes ‘experimental’ work cannot stay the same across two
decades of historical and cultural movement.” Festivals must keep with the times
and adapt to changing social realities. Barrett insists that “there will be a much
greater need for fluidity, for images that address human gender and sexuality.”
The aim is to save the festivals from utter redundancy in the context of a plethora
of media products catering to the queer niche and its “pink dollar.”
Unfortunately, we are left uncertain whether the “forum” edited by Straayer
and Waugh took place somewhere physical or was merely virtual. The poly-
phonic style of this text proves quite a challenge to sort out who said what on a
first reading. Nevertheless, the merits of the text are very strong. It presents a
sophisticated snapshot of the current state of queer film festivals, near and far,
complete with contradictory tensions.
Most recent publications on film festivals address the international or the
queer film festivals, and they concern issues of national and sexual identity, and
questions of genre and institutional change in relation to the powerful effects of
globalization. The first-person accounts provided by Turan, Marshall, and

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Straayer and Waugh bear witness to changes in various festivals according to
their sociocultural contexts; and there are good signs that film scholars are tak-
ing up the challenge.

NOTES
1. See, especially, on globalization, Julian Stringer, “Global Cities and the International Film
Festival Economy,” in Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context,
M. Shiel and T. Fitzmaurice, eds. (London: Blackwell, 2001), 134-144; and, more recently,
Thomas Elsaesser, “Film Festival Networks: The New Topographies of Cinema in Europe,”
in European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press, 2005), 82-107.
2. This is not Bill Marshall, the Québec cinema expert at the University of Glasgow, but rather
the well-known producer of Outrageous (Canada,1977, Richard Benner), among many
other films.
3. For more on this festival rivalry, see Dipti Gupta and Janine Marchessault “Film Festivals as
Urban Encounter and Cultural Traffic,” in City, Nation, World: Comparing Montreal and
Toronto, Johanne Sloan, ed. (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming
2006).
4. For more on film curating and programming, see Laura Marks, ed., “Special Issue on Film
Programming,” The Moving Image 4.1 (2004).
5. See Patricia White, ed., “Queer Publicity: A Dossier on Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals,” GLQ
5:1 (1999).

McGill University

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