Attending GIEFF (German International Ethnographic Film Festival) at the Time of the Pandemic

Abstract

This paper draws on experiences and lessons from GIEFF 2020, an ethnographic film festival that took place during the Covid-19 pandemic. The GIEFF organizers decided to stream instead of screen films, and created an online streaming event that changed the nature of the lived experience of the festival. In this report, I follow the main characteristics of this transformation and reconsider some of the tenets of ethnographic inquiry into ethnographic film festivals that should reach outside of the cinema hall in order to understand film festivals as global events, often establishing their own virtual spaces.