Next Issue Announcement - The Agency of Film Festivals. Geopolitics, Economies and Networks

Throughout the last ten years, Cinergie. Il cinema e le alter arti has represented an important platform of discussion and study for the interdisciplinary field of film festival studies in Italy, accommodating several special issues and a variety of articles which have explored the position of festivals within cinephilia, film industry and circulation. Rowing in this direction, the next issue draws from academic research which was presented at the Reframing Film Festivals conference, (Venice, February 2020) and hinges on three key concepts in studies of film festivals – geopolitics, economies and networks. The articles included in the next issue make use of different methodological approach (historical research, economical and institutional analysis, ideological critique) to unravel a variety of institutions, sub-circuits, exchanges and relationships in the domain of film festivals, adopting), spanning across a variety of research topics. These topics include the genealogy of the concept of festival in 1930s Europe, the mediating role and activities of festivals like Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Pula and Venice in the context of the Trieste Crisis, the establishment of the Locarno and its founding relationships with (touristic, industrial, cultural) stakeholders, and the proposal of a systematic mode of engaging with film festival’s public utterance and modus operandi from the lens of ideology critique. Therefore, although fragmented in different localities and historical formations, this issue demonstrates the branching-out and multidisciplinary nature of research on festivals and indicates viable ways to make  the study of festivals relevant to the understanding of geopolitical relations, local economies and transnational histories.