Full Description
Film Festivals, Ideology and Italian Art Cinema is the first systematic study of the role ideology plays in film festivals' construction of dominant ideas about art cinema. Film festivals are considered the driving force of the film industry outside Hollywood, disseminating ideals of cinematic art and humanist politics. However, the question of what drives them remains highly contentious. In a rare consideration of the European competitive film festival circuit as a whole, this book analyses the shared economic, geopolitical and cultural histories that characterise 'European A festivals'. It offers, too, the first extensive analysis of such festivals' role in the canonisation of select Italian films, from Rome, Open City to The Great Beauty and Gomorrah. The book proposes a new approach to ideology critique, one that enables detailed examination of how film festivals construct ideas about not only contemporary art cinema, but assumptions about gender, race, colonialism and capitalism.
Contents
Introduction, 1: Film Festivals and Ideology Critique, SECTION I: ARTISTIC UNIVERSALITY, 2: Enjoy Your Auteurism! The Son's Room at Cannes, 3: Gendering Art: The Great Beauty at Cannes and Tallinn, SECTION II: POLITICAL UNIVERSALITY, 4: There is No Sexual Relationship: Facing Window at Karlovy Vary, 5: Brutal Humanism: Fire at Sea at the Berlinale, SECTION III: CAPITAL, 6: Capitalism and Orientalism: Gomorrah at Cannes, Conclusion: Da capo senza fine, Appendix 1: A-List Film Festivals, Appendix 2: Italian Best Picture Winners, 1946-2020, Appendix 3: Synopses of Secondary Case Studies, Bibliography, Filmography, Index.
