Cultural Diplomacy on International Film Festivals, during the unprecedented year of 2020.

Manuela Fetter Nicoletti,João Guilherme Barone Reis e Silva

doi:10.5212/rif.v.19.i43.0012

Abstract

Against the countless cancellations of cultural events around the globe, the dynamics of the film festival circuit and its representations took on new courses and different perspectives. About these symbolic power relations, the article dives into a brief data record, on the performance and possible adaptations upon the organization of film festivals, during the year 2020, and throughout the global pandemic, that exponentiated the digitization of some structuring processes on international cinematographic circulation. Ultimately, it adds notions of cultural diplomacy to international film festivals. In order to transpose theoretical concepts to contemporary practice and verify, in this way, the influences and consequences of virtualization to the subjectivities and significance of diplomacy and otherness upon interconnected identities in the current global community.

Highlights

Given the international context established in the first decades of the 21st century, hyperconnected and interdependent, it is possible to identify a multicultural and complex imaginary sphere, where the relationship between countries becomes increasingly symbolic and subjective
Much is at risk as, on the one hand, producers with unpublished works to be presented to the market and on the other, the consumer-spectator receiving an intense offer of online content. Faced with this pendulum between supply and demand, an opportunity for curated democratization is revealed and film festivals realize that their legitimizing role acquires a new meaning
If we observe the movement of film festivals, as a political space for decoding cultural messages to be assimilated by the popular layers of our society, we find elements of cultural democratization

Summary

Introduction

Given the international context established in the first decades of the 21st century, hyperconnected and interdependent, it is possible to identify a multicultural and complex imaginary sphere, where the relationship between countries becomes increasingly symbolic and subjective In this environment, an instituting movement resurfaces to organic notions and understandings about national identities, through core cultural policies and practices. Regarding cinema, which in Brazil represents an industry that reached a growth rate of 7% per year between 2013 and 2019, moving more than R$20 billion annually, equivalent to 1.67% 3 of the national GDP In this sense, even though the adaptations and new models of online consumption were already structured pre -pandemic on subscription platforms, audiovisual collections and for the flow of premieres and awards, no virtual path had been traced so far. With movie theaters closed and festivals suspended, the film value chain was at a standstill

Source

Findings