LGBTQ Film Festivals

Curating Queerness

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by Antoine Damiens

Type

Studies

Subject

Festivals

Keywords

queer, festival

Publishing date

2020

Publisher

Amsterdam University Press

Collection

Film Culture in Transition

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 294 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-94-6372-840-9

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Book Presentation:
While scholars have theorized major film festivals, they have ignored smaller, ephemeral, events. In taking seriously minor European and North-American LGBTQ festivals which often only exist as traces within archival collections, this book revisits festival studies' methodological and theoretical apparatuses. As the first 'critique' of festival studies from within, LGBTQ Film Festivals argues that both festivals and queer film cultures are by definition ephemeral. The book is organized around two concepts: First, 'critical festival studies' examines the political project and disciplinary assumptions that structure festival research. Second, 'the festival as a method' pays attention to festivals' role as producers of knowledge: it argues that festivals are not mere objects of research but also actors already shaping academic, industrial, and popular cinematic knowledge. Drawing on the author's experience on the festival circuit, this book pays homage to the labour of queer organizers, critics, and scholars and opens up new avenues for festival research.

About the Author:
Antoine Damiens is a FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow within the Department of English and the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University (Montreal).

Press Reviews:
LGBTQ Film Festivals lays bare the extent to which film festival studies’ theories and methods frequently reduce queer film festivals to being "merely" about identity instead of perceiving these festivals as central to our understanding of how knowledge is produced."
- Jonathan Petrychyn (University of Waterloo), Media Industries 8, 1 (2021)

"Mit seiner brillanten Arbeit, deren hoher theoretischer Anspruch absolut eingelöst wird, katapultiert sich Damiens in die Riege der internationalen Queerfilmfestivalforschung, von der so wichtige Impulse für die Festivalforschung insgesamt ausgehen. Seine Argumentation ist schlüssig und nachvollziehbar, das Buch sehr gut lesbar. Mit seiner hervorragenden Arbeit demonstriert Damiens, dass wir von diesem exzellenten Forscher noch einiges zu erwarten haben."
- Dagmar Brunow, Växjö, MEDIENwissenschaft, issue 01/2021

"With his exhaustive research and intricate attention to detail, Damiens has chronicled a vital history of LGBTQ film fests, adeptly capturing a doubly marginalized culture, ghosts and all. In this moment of pause, reflection and reinvention for film festivals, it’s a book we needed."
- Matthew Hays, Cineaste, Vol. XLVI, No. 1 (2020)

"An engaging and original history of queer film festivals and an insider critique of festival studies at large. Damiens has excavated our archives and offered a colourful tapestry of LGBTQ+ struggles over half a century, probing both the friendship and the activism at their core."
- Thomas Waugh, Concordia University, Canada

See the publisher website: Amsterdam University Press