Chinese Film Festival Studies

The film festival has always been imagined as translation machine - a window on the world translating 'foreign' cultures into 'our' culture via the cinema, and vice versa. For example, film festival programmes usually include a 'panorama' presenting the best of the last year's output from the host country, with the rest of the programme divided up by country or region. However, until recently, that translation machine has mostly been Euro-American and shaped by the assumptions of Euro-American cultures. Now that East Asia and in particular the Chinese-speaking world has emerged as a major player, too, this network is focused on analysing the implications of the rise of festivals of Chinese cinema, especially in China and the Chinese-speaking world. The network includes senior and junior scholars from range of academic backgrounds, but we share an interest in various aspects of this phenomenon. We want to use this network to ask why the Chinese-speaking world has launched so many film festivals, what those film festivals are for, and what differences this makes to our understanding of film festivals in general.

To answer these questions, our intellectual focus will be two-fold. First, how does the Chinese film festival function as a site of cultural translation? What kinds of pictures of Chinese cultures and societies do these festivals present to the outside world, and to each other? Who are they directed to, and why? For example, when the British established the Hong Kong International Film Festival in the late 1970s, it was imagined as a way of bringing the best of world (read 'Western') culture to the citizens of the territory, and therefore improving them and their cultural lives. In contrast, the Shanghai International Film Festival seems little concerned with the films, and tickets are hard to get for local citizens. Is the purpose of the festival to say to the world and to its own citizens that Shanghai is a 'world city' simply by virtue of its existence? And what does the selection of international stars on the much more visible red carpet at the Shanghai opening ceremony say about China's relation to the outside world? Turning to the plethora of small and independent film festivals, do the various independent documentary film festivals that have sprung up in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere in the Chinese-speaking world relate to each other as much as they do to the outside world or the larger community? Do they form a network that cuts across political borders and cultural difference within the Chinese-speaking world, communicating and constructing an alternative culture of Chinese-speaking documentaries? These are some examples of the kinds of questions about the cultural translation activity of film-festivals in the Chinese-speaking world that the network will address.

Second, how are the concept and practice of the film festival translated and transformed as they make their way in the Chinese-speaking world? Film Festival Studies has emerged as a rapidly growing field, but it remains focused heavily on the West and tends to assume a model of neo-liberal economics and multi-party democracy. What happens in a place like the Chinese-speaking world, where neo-liberal multi-party democracy is only one of a number of competing models? How are film festivals re-shaped in an environment where there is no assumption of a public sphere? In some cases, it may be that the festival is being appropriated by those who wish to promote civil society or its equivalent. But in others the festival can become an exhibition (zhan), understood explicitly as a government or commercial display. And in yet others, the primary purpose is to create a meeting space for a business and political elite. Through investigating these and other directions, we hope to contribute towards an understanding of what the film festival is becoming in the twenty-first century.

In addition to academic beneficiaries, this research network will engage with key constituencies invested in Chinese film festivals, in Asia and abroad. This engagement will be facilitated both through external-facing activity, such as construction of the publicly-accessible website dedicated to the network, and through the three workshops (London, 2013 and 2014; Hong Kong, 2014), which will bring these groups together to debate the nature and role of contemporary Chinese film festivals. Potential impact therefore lies both in the dissemination of the network's findings to the wider public, and in the critical exchange of ideas during the workshops between these broader communities of interest and academic participants. Key external beneficiaries who may are therefore identified as:

Potential general audience for Chinese-language film: the external-facing website will present network news and updates, records of the events (e.g. conference materials), and the network's research findings through a medium that is accessible to members of the general public interested in Chinese-language cinema.This will allow both local and international audiences to access network research through a medium that is not exclusively academic, and the blog format will enable them to comment and engage with the network. It will also create a more permanent archive for the public events envisaged as part of the workshops in both the UK and Hong Kong, ensuring that those unable to attend these events will still have access to proceedings.

Critics and festival programming personnel: the role of critics and programmers in the 'translation' both of festival practices to Asia, and of Chinese-language film to the West, is crucial yet poorly understood. To date, self-reflexive panels and other events in which the function and nature of the film festival is debated are rare in film festivals themselves. All three of our meetings will coincide with film festivals and be connected to or included in them, encouraging more self-awareness and self-interrogation among film festival professionals. Including these stakeholders in the workshops will allow their voices to be heard, and facilitate academic understanding of their perspectives on the nature and role of the Chinese film festival. Impact will be generated both by critically engaging this community with regard to their practices, and furthering understanding of how academics can engage with them to establish longer-term collaborative working relationships around Chinese film festival programming and organization. This engagement can then be carried forward beyond the life of the research network, into the public sphere.

Political and industry stakeholders: while trade offices and embassies are increasingly involved in the promotion and 'translation' of Chinese-language films to foreign audiences, often through sponsoring festival events and exhibitions overseas, their understanding of the role of festivals as 'soft power' events has yet to be fully investigated. By engaging with this community as part of the workshops, particularly in the UK, we aim to further investigate how the promotion of these events fits within their policy agenda. At the same time, impact will be generated by critically engaging these figures with multiple models of what the Chinese film festival is and could be, initiating a dialogue around the role of government institutions in the 'framing' of Chinese-language cinema for a general audience. This can be carried forward beyond the formal period of the research network itself.