Film Festival. Communications & Media Research Paper

Film Festival: A Medium to Discover the Unfamiliar
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Film Festival
Background
The magic of a film is its ability to transport the spectators to new places where they discover the unfamiliar. At this time somewhere in the world, there is a high probability that an audience waits in anticipation as a film festival commences. The film festival offers the audience with the opportunity to participate in an “imagined community” and engage the film in a critical and creative environment (Hemert, 2013). It facilitates the flow of films around the world. Festivals offer viewers with the chance to learn new trends in the global cinema. The filmmakers get an opportunity to share their experiences with a diverse audience worldwide. Both the mass media and the delegates from the film industry elevate the selected movies to international acclamation via their approval. Hence, the festivals offer a chance for filmmakers to have their works in front of a live audience and have the movies appraised by professional critics. The filmmakers who get a chance to have their movies into a festival also receive media attention and publicity to both prospective buyers and agents.
One of the emerging trends in contemporary film festivals is funding. It has become common at the end of a movie for the audience to see multiple logos indicating different film funds that the filmmakers received to develop, produce, or post-produce the movies (Falicov, 2016). Filmmakers have found funds essential stamps of approval. A significant number of funding bodies are likely to award funds to a film project if they notice that the filmmaker received grants from the funds associated with film festivals. The film funds are critical because they assist directors from emerging film cultures who may not access funding from the state or private investors. Again, listing the funds at the end of the movie can facilitate access to exhibition venues as well as distribution channels associated with the film festivals. Additionally, film festivals are becoming cultural intermediaries where they shape the type of films which are promising and demonstrate a particular story. Hence, it is imperative to examine the role of film festival funding in the production of films and its impact in the films produced.
Introduction
The past two decades have been characterized by the explosion of the film festival (Papadimitriou & Ruoff, 2016). Film festivals have gone beyond mere exhibition of films. They now play an active role in the development of new projects by participating in the adjudication of film pitches, assisting in funding them and premiering the launching of the given films. A majority of the film festivals create numerous avenues for supporting promising films through the different cycle of filmmaking. Filmmakers receive funding for scriptwriting, production, post-production, and distribution of the final product.
Festivals have been instrumental in the promotion of films from the developing world (Pedersen & Mazza, 2011). When the film festivals assist in the production of the films in the underserved parts of the world, they offer an opportunity for the film festival curators to screen the new works....