Festival Director Research Articles

Setting parameters: operational budget size and allocation of resources

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine how festivals allocated their funds among various expense categories.Design/methodology/approachFestival managers from across North and South Carolina were asked to specify the percentages of their expense budgets allocated to each of the following categories: marketing, administrative, entertainment and operations.FindingsIt was found that “smaller” festivals spend a significantly greater proportion of their budgets on marketing (23 percent) and a far smaller share on administrative expenditures (5 percent) than do their “larger” counterparts that spend only 15 percent on marketing and triple the “smaller” festival's administrative costs (15 percent). The differences related to their spending for entertainment (35 versus 28 percent) and operations (36 versus 41 percent) are not as dramatic in relation to their proportion of total spending. The data herein suggest that festival size plays an important role when it comes to such allocations.Originality/valueThe paper has provided benchmarks that hopefully will assist festival directors' budget‐decision‐making strategies as they allow a measure with which to evaluate those decisions. While the research needs to be interpreted with great care due to its relatively small sample size and broad budgetary categorizations, the findings provide a guide to assist festival organizers as they manage their events for the benefit of their stakeholders and the communities that support them. The paper also provides a starting point for future research in this area, much of which is needed.

Performing Self and Society Through Improvisation: The Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice Project

Performing Self and Society Through Improvisation: The Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice Project1 Rob Wallace (bio) The historical connections between improvisation and theatre, however we define either of those terms, are long and complex. And while actors, dramatists, and theatre scholars (most notably Keith Johnstone) have long theorized on the benefits and disadvantages of improvisation, the relevance or understanding of what might be involved in improvisation has remained relatively murky over the centuries. As in musical improvisation, improvisation in theatre has historically connoted an ambiguous talent: the ability to deceive and simultaneously reveal the potentially immoral and unethical character of an actor. Stephen Greenblatt unpacks such a view of improvisation in his provocative article entitled “Improvisation and Power,” wherein he defines “improvisation” as [t]he ability to both capitalize on the unforeseen and transform given materials into one’s own scenario. The “spur of the moment” quality of improvisation is not as critical here as the opportunistic grasp of that which seems fixed and established. Indeed, as Castiglione and others in the Renaissance well understood, the impromptu character of an improvisation is itself often a calculated mask, the product of careful preparation. (60) Yet such careful preparation here leads to control, manipulation, and subterfuge. Greenblatt’s improvisation becomes an essential mode of Early Modern domination, wherein characters like Shakespeare’s Iago exhibit “Europeans’ ability again and again to insinuate themselves into the preexisting political, religious, even psychic, structures...and to turn those structures to their advantage” (60). Improvisation has had many different and equally powerful trajectories in the course of the past five hundred–plus years of imperial machinations. It is the potential for improvisation to build new forms of community, to create new forms of social change that can operate in opposition to or beyond such Iago-like manipulation—on or off-stage—that the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) initiative seeks to study. ICASP is a research project directed by Dr. Ajay Heble (professor at the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph), and is a multi-campus research initiative funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Bringing together scholars and community partners across North America, Europe, and Australia, “the project’s core hypothesis is that musical improvisation is a crucial model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action” (ICASP). While the ICASP initiative stems from Dr. Heble’s own involvement in improvised music scholarship and promotion (through his work as Artistic Director of the Guelph Jazz Festival) in addition to other project members’ music-based work, the research team is committed to engaging improvisation from a broad range of perspectives. Participants therefore include scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including literature, drama, ethnomusicology, law, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and social policy. Theatre Studies scholars involved in the project include Dr. Ric Knowles and Dr. Daniel Fischlin (School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph), [End Page 89] Dr. Keith Sawyer (Department of Education, Washington University), and the 2009–10 ICASP postdoctoral researcher based at the University of Guelph, Dr. Rebecca Caines. As the project’s website describes, “In addition to public discourse and scholarly publication, [ICASP] highlights collaboration with arts presenters, educators, and policy makers to ensure the broadest possible impact on Canadian society.” ICASP was formally launched in 2007, creating a rush of scholarly activity, community partnership, and artistic energy that continues to grow. Each year the project hosts academic colloquia located in Guelph, Montreal, and Vancouver, along with periodic symposia, lectures, and reading groups connected to the University of Guelph, McGill, the University of British Columbia, and Université de Montréal; work from these events has subsequently been featured in the peer-reviewed online journal connected to the project, Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critique en improvisation. Topics considered range from improvisation in sports, improvisation and gender, and the relationship between legal discourse and improvisation. Another unique ICASP focus is the biennial Summer Institute for graduate students, which enables students to interact with pre-eminent scholars in a two-week session of seminars, lectures, informal meetings, and workshops on critical improvisation studies. The project has also worked with community organizations such as Montreal...

The Great Gathering of Latin-American Theater People: A Report on the 24th Iberian-American Theater Festival in Cadiz

SPRING 2010 169 The Great Gathering of Latin-American Theater People: A Report on the 24th Iberian-American Theater Festival in Cadiz Hedda Kage AHerculean effort yields only a meager profit for festival organizers. This could be the final assessment of those eleven days at the end of October, including 27 invited productions fromArgentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Uruguay. As a constant observer over the years could verify, this is hardly a surprising balance if one knows the requirements and conditions of artistic decisions. With all due respect to the commendable largess of this atmospherically unrivalled festival of meetings, there were quality snags from time to time. Diplomatic obligations, respect, friendships, a limited budget for travel expenses, and the yearly rhythm neutralize artistic rigor. The festival founded in 1985 in order to connect Latin America’s worlds of theater to the linguistic mother countries Spain and Portugal, and soon to celebrate its twenty-five years of existence in 2010, has most of all succeeded in building and stabilizing bridges over which hundreds of Latin American theater artists have made their way to Europe every year. Cadiz not only offers them the time and space in which to present their own productions , but also the chance to see and learn about the productions of others and, in the accompanying forums and workshops, to engage in exchanges focused on aesthetic positions in the theater and cultural realities. Together, these artists enjoy great hospitality in the common festival hotel, make guest appearances in additional cities of the Iberian Peninsula, and travel from here to other European countries.Ayear after the return of democracy toArgentina, consolidating Latin America’s theater worlds was first achieved in 1984 by Carlos Jiménez, who, born in Cordoba, fled to Venezuela to escape the military junta. The ex-Cordoban, who Venezuela thanks for the theater wonder “Rajatabla” and the Caracas Festival, invited theater people from practically 170 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW every Latin American brother nation to Cordoba to the first Latin-American Theater Festival. In 1985 the same idea was to be adopted in Cadiz by Juan Margolla, and, since twenty-four years, continued by Pepe Bablé: Every year in Cadiz, for a period of eleven days, a portion of the dream of a United States of Latin America, over which independence strategists have probably pondered for 200 years already, is expressed theatrically.” Not without reason was Cadiz declared the 2012 Iberian-American Capital of Culture, and so now it prepares in every area — complete with more architectural visibility — for this honorary year. The over 3000-year-old white city is cleaning up its last tumble-down areas to tourist standards. The city’s valued and popular mayor, slyly nicknamed ‘the secret Queen Teófila I’ by her friends, intends to do everything in her power to make the festival the representative showpiece of the upcoming festivities. On this occasion too, she insisted on personally celebrating the award ceremony in the city hall’s palatial room. The festival prize for the life’s work of an artist was awarded Patricia Ariza Flores, the Columbian writer, director, actress, cofounder of the famous troupe “La Candelaria” (Bogotá), and many times threatened human rights activist. Awarded for the tenth time, this year’s “Atahualpa del Cioppo” prize went to the actor and director Mario Ernesto, also the founder and festival director of the International Hispanic Theater Festival in Miami, Florida. The Cuban-born Ernesto was praised for his tireless, twenty-five years of commitment to nurturing a theatrical Hispanic-American presence in the culture of the United States. Thanks to Teófila’s sponsorship, the Iberian-American Meeting for Women in Theater — an outstanding forum for reflection, with its symposiums, workshops and publications, organized every year by Margarita Borja and Diana Raznovich — has meanwhile become an indispensable part of the festival. Among the most convincing productions of this highly multifaceted program (20 productions with 32 performances in three theaters and seven open-air as well as street-theater productions with 12 performances) were two productions from Spain. FromAndalusia came the sensational, solo piece “El Testigo” (The Witness) by Fernando Quiniones. Narrating and performing alone...

Progressing socio‐cultural impact evaluation for festivals

The research project reported in this paper set out to advance the knowledge base of socio‐cultural festival evaluation and, through industry and academic liaison, produce a robust, comprehensive set of indicators. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to offer a summary of the synthesis of literature relating to methodologies for evaluating the socio‐cultural effects of festivals; second, to identify the emerging themes resulting from the existing literature; and third, as part of an evaluation of stakeholder perception, to present a comparative rating of a UK‐wide cross‐section of festival leaders (n = 60) of core impacts and their significance. The methods adopted were based on a comprehensive review of secondary literature in relation to the evaluation of socio‐cultural impacts of festivals, followed by telephone interviews with a sample of UK festival directors. Keywords: festivals and events; socio‐cultural benefits and disbenefits; indicators; festival directors; aggregative synthesis El proyecto de investigación se propone avanzar en el conocimiento base de la evaluación socio‐cultural de un festival que, a través de la conexión entre el entorno académico y la industria, produzca un conjunto de indicadores robustos y exhaustivo. El objetivo de este trabajo como componente significativo del proyecto es triple: primero, ofrecer una síntesis de la literatura relacionada con las metodologías para evaluar los efectos socio‐culturales de los festivales; segundo, identificar los temas emergentes en la literatura existente; y tercero, como parte de la evaluación de la percepción de las partes interesadas, presentar una clasificación de una sección cruzada de los líderes en festivales en el Reino Unido (n = 60), de los principales impactos y su significación. Los métodos escogidos están basados en una revisión exhaustiva de la literatura secundaria sobre la evaluación de los impactos socio‐culturales de los festivales, junto con entrevistas telefónicas a una muestra de directores de festival en el Reino Unido. Keywords: festivales y eventos; beneficios y perjuicios socio‐;culturales; indicadores; directores de festival; sí;ntesis global Résumé Ce projet de recherche envisage d’approfondir la base de connaissances de l’évaluation socioculturelle des festivals et, par l’intermédiaire de liens avec des universités et des industries, de produire une série complète et solide d’indicateurs. L’objectif de cet papier, en tant qu’élément significatif du projet est triple: premièrement, proposer un résumé des synthèses de la bibliographie relative aux méthodologies de l’évaluation des effets socioculturels des festivals; deuxièmement, identifier les thèmes émergents résultant de la bibliographie existante; troisièmement, dans le cadre d’une évaluation de la perception des parties prenantes, de présenter une évaluation comparative des directeurs de festivals (n = 60), des impacts fondamentaux et de leur signification, à l’échelle de la Grande Bretagne. Les méthodes adoptées étaient fondées sur une revue complète de la bibliographie secondaire relative à l’évaluation des conséquences socioculturelles des festivals, suivie d’entretiens téléphoniques auprès d’un échantillon de directeurs de festivals britanniques.

Istanbul 2008

27th ISTANBUL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Ask festival director Azize Tan why she was using every opportunity available to celebrate the current revival of Turkish cinema at the 27th Istanbul International Film Festival (5-20 April 2008), and she would tick off any number of reasons. Last year, for instance, Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, served on the international jury at Cannes. Further, the Palm for Best Screenplay was awarded to Turkey-born, Germany-based Fatih Akin's Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven), a German-Turkish co-production. Also, before this year's IIFF even began, the city was alive with the rumour that Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Uç maymun (Three Monkeys) was likely headed for the Cannes competition - as, indeed, it was. Finally, at the close of the Istanbul festival, the international jury headed by German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus awarded the Golden Tulip to Semih Kaplanolu's Yumurta (Egg), a Turkish-Greek...

Where Puppets Collide: Tradition and Innovation in ManiganSes, Festival international des arts de la marionnette

ManiganSes, a biennial, week-long puppet festival in Saguenay, Quebec, seeks to foster an appreciation for puppet arts — a broad theatrical tradition. With ten editions to its credit, it balances the passionate commitment to the art apparent in its mandate with the realities of sustaining a festival in Canada. It is overseen by a board of directors, though programming is entirely in the hands of the festival director. Denise Lavoie, general director for the past seven years, imagines a festival that encourages puppet arts but is also interested in what ManiganSes has to offer to the local community; festivals have enormous potential as educational centres, and ManiganSes is no exception. “This great festival is about the living art of the marionette,” says Lavoie. “It is fertile soil for traditions and ancient craft, for imagination and creativity, for assertions and reinventions” (ManiganSes 5).

A picture of the contemporary combined arts festival landscape

The last 10–15 years has seen the rapid growth of festivals in Britain and overseas. This article examines the current situation of combined arts festivals in the UK in an effort to understand what the British festival environment looks like in the early years of the new millennium. A number of questions present themselves regarding the history and development of the current festival structure, the number of festivals, their size, distribution, audiences, geographical locations, programming content, duration, seasonality, influences, objectives, future plans and so forth. Combined arts festivals are defined as those containing more than one genre of arts, e.g., Edinburgh International Festival. Research methods include a survey questionnaire sent to 117 UK combined arts festivals (56 per cent response rate) to discern audience demographics, programming history, funding and future plans. In-depth interviews were also conducted with festival organizers. Based on survey data, it is argued that a homogeneous combined arts festival “type” is developing and replicating across the country. This argument is supported by the similarity in programming choices and festival format of a majority of the festivals surveyed. One of the main reasons for the increasing formulaic approach to festival programming and design is the increasing competition for funding as public and private funding sources expect combined arts festivals to achieve socio-economic targets and become more sustainable from one year to the next. This can be seen to be contributing to the increasing professionalism of combined arts festival organization, which has resulted in the majority of combined arts festival directors favouring “safe” content options that emulate the successes of several large, long-established festivals. Such an approach has had detrimental effects on the creativity of the arts festival landscape on the whole and may also be altering the symbolic meanings of festivals for communities and places.

For an Insubordinate (or Rebellious) History of Cinema

To start off, I disagree entirely with the premise: not only was 1968 filmed, considerably and well, but the period unleashed some of the most magnificent initiatives in the history of cinema in relation both to form and practical organization. For ten years at the Cinematheque Francaise I have devoted one part of my programs to the exploration of filming by Collectives, of engaged films, and all of 2008 has been dedicated to a series May 68 International (Mexico, Argentina, Japan, USA, UK, Italy . . . ), rich in discovery. period 1965-1974 is probably the most fertile and most exciting in the history of forms and cinematic propositions, a veritable aesthetic volcano. This does not make the questions you pose for the present any less pertinent, since what the most interesting contemporary cinephilia picks up in part are the critical gestures that led the revolutionary explosions of the 1960s everywhere in the world: collective work, critical examination, emergence of alternative and autonomous cultures. sites of exchange, of pirating, the blogs, in the work of some, extend the values defended by what Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino had theorized under the term third essentially for what concerns counterinformation: think of the work of Indymedia. But it is necessary also to develop a cinephilic counter-information. principal battle concerns the present: the production of valuable images is such that no critic, even the indefatigable Jonathan Rosenbaum, no historian, no director of festival can take account of the cinematic production of a given time. Everywhere in the real and virtual worlds leap out propositions about the cinema, even as the history of past cinema remains largely to establish. I believe that there has never been as much work for cinephiles as today: work on the corpus of the past and present, work on the methods of observation, of collecting, of conservation, of analysis, and so on and on. We can cite several examples. In terms of corpus, an important initiative has been that of Alexis Tioseco in 2005 with the site www.criticine.com, which charts day after day the contours of cinemas of southeast Asia, beginning with the Philippines. In terms of analytic methods, one can only salute still and forever the magnificent site directed by Adrian Martin, Helen Bandis, and Grant McDonald, www.rouge.com.au, which maintains a permanent concern for the internationalization of critical paths/approaches. In terms of conservation/patrimony, the site www.ubu.com/film, specializing in the avant-gardes, represents a cinephile's dream. And then there are all the blogs, the sites of artists or individual cinephiles. I will cite only two, both exciting: that of the very independent and solitary Marcel Hanoun, who, in a unique move, has placed all his films online: www.marcel-hanoun.com; and that of the great stylist Peter Whitehead, www.nohzone.net, which is an art object in itself and presents the electronic material from which will come his next film, Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts. The phenomenal pimping of cinema by capitalism since its birth has formed four to six generations of spectators and we find ourselves before a Himalaya of images which constitutes without doubt the greatest modern collection of banalities.1 A generation later, no visible improvement: a certain number of poorly informed spectators believe still that Titanic (US, 1997) by James Cameron is a more important film than A Luta Continua (MZ, 1976), an amazing short film shot by Asdrubal Rebelo and Bruno Muel with the Angolan people in struggle, which amounts more or less to believing that some samples of wallpaper are more important that the writings of Arthur Rimbaud. Since the books and accounts of Guy Hennebelle, the history of cinema of armed struggles, guerrillas, and revolutionary combats is no more than just isolated initiatives, like those for example of Alain Weber2 or yours on the films of fighters in the Spanish Civil War or the Sandinistas. …

Festivals, Cooperative Stakeholders and the Role of the Media: A Case Analysis of Newspaper Media

Image, brand narrative and stakeholder collaboration each represent pivotal paradigms in the analysis, evaluation and formation of good management practice for festivals. The role of the media as significant intermediary offers a core measurement instrument linking these paradigms. This exploratory work applies a two‐stage empirical study to investigate and posit a methodological procedure for this instrument. A principal component analysis of data relating to the scales of significance given by festival visitors and festival directors, respectively, to the socio‐cultural effects of festivals indicates that both the local media and national media are strong elements in the emerging factors. A further media framing methodology is provided to assess variations in the role of newspapers (a medium identified as particularly significant in the decision making process of festival goers) in converging agendas which may influence and vary the public perception of the socio‐cultural influences of festivals. The authors conclude that these agendas are affiliated and can be measured with reference to the factors that emerged in the principal component analysis.

Everyone I Know Is Stayin' Home: The New Cinephilia

I don't get out to concerts any more . . . but, oh, the recordings! Konrad Visconti's Conversation Piece At the recent Il Cinema Ritrovato Bologna, the festival's directors (and cinephiles of the first water) Peter von Bagh and GianLuca Farinelli organized a series of lunches at which film historians, critics, and archivists, lubricated by salumi and Lambrusco, discussed cinephilia terms of personal history: the first film they ever saw, what movies made a mark on them, how they developed a passion for certain kinds of cinema. Widely variant as the accounts were at the lunch I attended-most participants recalled a Disney or nature film as their baptismal experience; mine was Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, US, 1960) and the concomitant memory, hardly Proustian, of my mother's mouton coat pressed to my face throughout the screening-the lineaments of cinephilic formation remained surprisingly similar. We were mostly Anglophones, all white, and of an older generation, which part explained this commonality of experience, a cultural past that would seem not only antique but profoundly alien to today's emergent cinephile, who, through DVDs and downloads, on every manner of media from in-home cinemas to iPhones, can access films we waited years to see, often traveling great distances to do so. An autodidact and hopeless movie lover from a village northern Saskatchewan with no television (so no late night movies, the provenance of many nascent cinephiles), and long before video recorders, much less DVD players, I took my holidays New York to see the Mizoguchi retrospective at the Japan Society, or Toronto to see Angelopoulos or Godard. Today, many of the same films I traveled hundreds of miles to see can be easily had, often instantly, the hinterland, even as the formats and systems by which they are delivered grievously diminish the experience. For instance, it required endless negotiation and great expense to get a print of Quatre nuits d'un reveur (FR, 1971), made for the Bresson retrospective ten years ago, which has since vanished into Holy Graildom, but recently all it took to secure a DVD of the film for private study was one beseeching email. Was the Quatre nuits that stunned audiences at our cinematheque a decade ago the same film that, swimmy and stippled with video effects, was nevertheless legible (that is, consumable) on my computer screen? (And can one legitimately analyze a film seen that way? The disorienting strangeness of Bresson's editing, which one experiences physiologically the cinema, all but vanishes on video, no matter the quality, the inky nights of the film's title reduced to ashen moire.) Movie love may still be possible, but what if its object of desire is literally obscure-endlessly transferable (an acceleration of Benjamin's reproducibility) but inferior, a phantom of the original? Is the new cinephilia, this Netflix, YouTube grande bouffe of images which Costa, Straub, and Baillie can be seen Nunavut or Cappadocia and immediately discussed online with philes from afar, a miracle of open museum cultural democracy or a spurious celebration of the omnivorous and inauthentic? When Susan Sontag wrote her famous essay the New York Times Magazine on the death of cinephilia-for that was her subject, and not, as was often claimed, the death of cinema-this digital proliferation had barely begun to transform film culture. One wonders what Sontag, with her enduring concern with taste and connoisseurship, would make of the vaunted community of film discussion on the Internet, which frustrates or traduces traditional claims of expertise among critics, scholars, and curators. (It's little wonder that film programmers joke about our imperiled profession and our future as door-to-door consultants for home cinema owners-at least those who don't consult theauteurs.com!) The phrase in cinema experience has recently entered the discourse of film curation-to differentiate traditional filmgoing from gallery and installation presentation of moving image works, videotheques, etc. …

Gardens of Light and Movement

Throughout her long career, Elaine Summers has worked in a variety of forms, including dance, film, and intermedia. After graduating from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1947, Summers came to New York and studied at the Martha Graham School and then at Juilliard. She soon was diagnosed with osteo-arthritis and had to leave the conservatory. It was at this time that she discovered Kinetic Awareness, a body therapy and system for understanding connections between mind and body. Kinetic Awareness aided Summers’s recovery and continuation of dancing. She then studied with Merce Cunningham, Jean Erdman, Mary Anthony, Carola Speads, among others. Summers also took workshops with Robert and Judith Dunn in connection with her work at the Judson Dance Theatre, of which she was one of the original members. During the Judson years, she was a pioneer of intermedia with works such as Overture and Fantastic Gardens. In 1968 Summers founded the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. She was Artistic Director of the First Intermedia Art Festival at the Guggenheim Museum in 1984 and the Second Intermedia Art Festival at the University of Iowa in 1987. Summers founded the Kinetic Awareness Center in 1985. She has worked as a choreographer since 1953 and has had her own dance company for more than four decades. Her work has been shown worldwide. Skytime, an ongoing Web-based piece, is one of her most recent projects and can be visited at www.skytime.org.

A Guide to Complete Works Festival Directors and Companies

A Guide to Complete Works Festival Directors and Companies

Leipzig 2007

49th LEIPZIG INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL FOR DOCUMENTARY AND ANIMATION FILMS Under visionary Claas Danielson, now in his third year as festival director and aided by an equally energetic team, the 49th Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animation Films (30 October- 05 November 2006), aka Dok Festival & Dok Industry for visiting professionals, broke its previous statistical record once more. From 2,400 submissions, the festival booked just over 400 films from 50 countries, the total evenly divided between documentary and animation entries. Altogether, that amounts to 19,230 minutes viewing time, or 13 days, 8 hours, and 30 minutes in one sitting. This year's attendance climbed to 22,500, up from 20,000 in 2005. A total of Euro 53,500 was handed out to award winners in various categories. Among the 259 events (including social events, reruns, and industry specials) was one key day that signalled a new direction for the festival. On...

Karlovy Vary 2006

41st KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL "This year we have reason to celebrate two anniversaries," reflected Eva Zaoralová, artistic director of the 41st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (20 June-8 July 2006). "It was exactly 110 years ago, on 15 July 1896, that this famous spa town first set eyes on the Lumière brothers' invention and, fifty years later, the first postwar summer of 1946 saw the launch of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), back then also held in the neighbouring town of Mariánské Lázně (aka Marienbad)." Indeed, had not Karlovy Vary been forced by FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations) rules to alternate with Moscow for the A-Competition summer festival slot during the socialist era, then Eva Zaoralová and KVIFF president Jiří Bartoška might well be celebrating the spa festival's 60th anniversary. And that would make Karlovy Vary-Mariánské Lázně one year older than Cannes! Karlovy...

Tirana 2005

TIRANA INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2005 After two strong outings, abetted by the breaking news that Tirana was chosen "World City 2005," it was a sure bet that the Third Tirana International Short Film Festival (5-11 December 2005) would go big time on the world festival stage too. With more than 20,000 Euros in purse prizes as bait, this year's TIFF received over 700 applications from 65 countries for entry in its five sections: 370 in the fiction category, 185 in animation, 85 in documentary, 60 in experimental, and 30 more in the cross-country Albanian-language shorts section. In addition, festival director Ilir Butka and programmer Genc Permeti programmed 27 feature films in free-fall evening programs that ran deep into the night. Most important of all for a festival's continued existence, TIFF 2005 could count on the support of 35 sponsors, plus the city's foreign ambassadors and cultural centres, for...

Bitola 2005

INTERNATIONAL FILM CAMERA FESTIVAL "MANAKI BROTHERS" IN BITOLA When you see packed houses for all the screenings at a film festival, you know that this will be an event to be remembered. So it was at the 26th International Film Camera Festival "Manaki Brothers" in Bitola (20-25 September 2005) under festival director Tomi Salkovski and selector-programmer Blagoja "Dore" Kunevski. Indeed, this specialized festival honouring the cinematographer had every reason to celebrate. For, as every film historian worth his salt knows, the first film shot in the Balkans was by the Manaki Brothers. Back in 1905, shortly after Yanaki Manaki returned home to Bitola in Macedonia from London with a Film Camera 300 in the Bioscope series bought from the Charles Urban Trading Company, he teamed with his photographer brother Milton Manaki to film in nearby Audela (today Greece) their 114-year-old grandmother at her spinning-wheel. Of course, a Manaki heir was...

Wunscherfüllungen. Erzählstrategien im Prosawerk Alexander Lernet-Holenias by Franziska Mayer

37? Reviews The wartime fate of Schloss Leopoldskron certainly lacked the glamour of theReinhardt days. Concerts were held and various artistswere quartered there, including the Festival director, Clemens Krauss, but little happened to excite the imagination. Towards the end of the war there was some bomb damage but not enough to prevent theAmerican army from requisitioning it in 1945. In 1947 the 'Salzburg Seminar inAmerican Civilization' (later 'inAmerican Studies') was established there, founded by Clemens Heller, son of Freud's publisher. Helene Thimig (Reinhardt's wife) returned from the United States to claim her half-share of the property (the other half having been left to his two sons), and the situation was a complicated one with prolonged legal battles. This book iswell illustrated and well researched but will be of limited interest unless one's curiosity has been awakened by the sight of this beautiful house, reflected in its lake and looking across to themountains, and by what one has read about its heyday when archbishops, filmmagnates, authors, and world famous conductors and performers were entertained there. What happened after Reinhardt leftwas, until its rebirth, as sad a comedown as the fate of the Festival itselfduring those NS years. Oxford Brookes University John Warren Wunscherf?llungen. Erz?hlstrategien im Prosawerk Alexander Lernet-Holenias. By Franziska Mayer. B?hlau: Cologne, Weimar and Vienna. 2005. 322 pp. 39,90. isbn 3-412-16004-0. The centenary of Lernet-Holenia's birth in 1997 was followed by a series of publications devoted to this currently rather unfashionable Austrian romancier and dramatist, including a full-length biography, a collected volume of critical essays and the first substantial study in English. Franziska Mayer's Wunscherf?llungen builds upon thiswork by offering the first extensive academic analysis of Lernet-Holenia's prose. In itself, this is no mean feat, as Lernet Holenia published some thirteen novels and a number of other long prose works variously classified as Erz?hlungen and Novellen. Of these, around a half dozen are currently in print. For this reason alone, Mayer's scrupulous bibliographical listingwill prove a valuable reference point for future scholars, though, as she admits, the author's prolific output is in need of a full scholarly bibliography, despite the publication of a bibliography of secondary literature by Barri?re, Eicher and M?ller in 2001. Unusually for a work that began life as a German doctoral dissertation, Mayer's approach to her subject is uncluttered and admirably concise. She draws upon the Freudian paradigm of 'wish fulfilment', developing this in a special sense to refer to the notion that narrative, like dream or fantasy,may offer compensation for 'deficits' experienced in waking life. In a general introduction, Mayer discusses the instability of identity in Lernet-Holenia's principal fictional characters ? who typicallyhave multiple names, pseudonyms or concealed identities and exploit this instability as a survival strategy in an uncertain world. That world is in almost all of Lernet-Holenia's fiction the AUSTRIAN STUDIES, I4, 20 6 371 Austrian rump state emerging from the dissolution of theHabsburg Empire in November 1918. While clearly rooted in their author's experiences as a cavalry officer on the Eastern Front, Lernet-Holenia's heroes are not bound by simple biographical horizons. Their sense of 'deficit', the disappearance of the values and ideas that once structured their lives, ispart of a complex exploration of the failures of the inter-warAustrian Republic by a conservative writer whose utopia was all too clearly backward-looking. As Mayer puts it, the caesura of 1918 enjoys a privileged status in the author's uvre. The later ruptures inAustria's history appear a mere repetition of the same. And always the experience of individuals at the level of a regiment or military unit stands pars pro totofor the fate of nations, like the Ukrainian conscripts in Lernet-Holenia's best-known novel Die Standarte (1934), whose sullen refusal to cross the Danube results in a massacre that signals both the end of the war and the end of the Austrian German 'mission' within Central Europe. Readers familiar with Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch (1932) or Die Kapuzinergruft (1938) will recognize affinities, and it is perhaps a disappointment...

Boris at Boston

Near the beginning of the 2005 Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition programme book James S. Nicolson traces the genesis of the festival. This biennial gathering of musicians, instrument builders, vendors and music lovers began 'one evening in 1979', as Friedrich and Ingeborg von Heune, themselves musicians and instrument makers, brought together a group of about 20 people 'to hear their vision of a European style instrument exhibition with attendant concerts to be established ... in Boston'. With the first festival taking place in May 1981, the entire world of early music has come to know the Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition as the premier platform for performers and instrument builders across the globe. Fans of the festival have become spoiled, expectingand getting-a lavish operatic production as the centrepiece of the week-long celebration of early music. Since 1997 the festival's artistic directors, Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, have set out, beginning with Luigi Rossi's 1647 Orfeo, to bring the audience through the history of Baroque opera, one decade at a time. This year (13-19 June) we were treated to the fifth opera in the series, a work composed in 1710. The clincher was that this opera, Johann Mattheson's Boris Goudenow, had never previously been performed. Indeed, those attending the gala opening (14 June) were treated to a world premiere (but see forthcoming correspondence-Ed.). Stephen Stubbs has previously explained in Early music (xxxiii/2 (May 2005), pp.283-92) how Boris was among a group of Mattheson scores returned to Hamburg in 1998, having previously been presumed lost during the Second World War. George Buelow brought the opera to the attention of the festival directors, and the rest is history: Jurgen Neubacher of the Hamburg Staatsund Universititsbibliothek provided microfiche and access to the manuscript, and, because the score was only Mattheson's first draft, the opera was reconstructed for the festival performances. J6rg Jacobi then put together the performing edition of the opera, now published by Edition Baroque of Bremen. Boris presented a number of challenges for its producers. Most importantly, how does one recreate an opera that has never been performed? Furthermore, this particular opera has over 70 numbers, a macaronic libretto with three confusingly interwoven romantic couples, limited opportunity for dance and, one might say, a 'B-list'

S’mores and the Silver Screen

Taos Picture Show Taos, New Mexico March 30-April 3, 2005 Like multi-headed phoenix rising from the ashes of the esteemed but ultimately financially doomed Taos Talking Pictures festival, which folded in 2003 after nine years, small handful of upstart film festivals sprang up in the small picturesque northern New Mexico town of Taos in the spring of 2004. This year, with the fate of at least one of the other two festivals still uncertain, the Taos Picture Show kicked off its second season March 30-April 3, 2005. A small-scale festival, the Taos Picture Show screened 16 features and two shorts programs at single venue over four days, the intent being to provide more intimate experience for attendees. As Festival Director Jonathan Slator (who also serves as the executive director of the Taos County Film Commission and the Director of the Taos Mountain Film Festival, which screens in the fall) wrote in the festival program, In presenting the second Taos Picture Show we intend to stay true to the spirit of the first: to bring some of the best films from around the world to 'family' of aficionados in one venue. It is indeed casual affair reflecting the low-key nature of the community, with festival-goers making s'mores around small fire outside the theater between screenings. With single screen and no extracurricular activities such as panels or master classes diverting attention from the films, attendees were not required to choose between competing shows. The vast majority of attendees were northern New Mexico residents and noticeably missing from this hometown festival was any discernible industry presence. While several filmmakers were in attendance and dialogued with appreciative audiences after screenings and during three special events for passholders, this was no meet-and-greet event and no one seemed to miss the elements (and effects) of the schmooze factor evident at so many A-list festivals. The festival's program lived up to its tagline, a celebration of cinema from around the world, with half of the features coming from outside the United States. Two in particular stood out from the (admittedly small) crowd. The Great Water (2004, by Ivo Trajkov), Macedonia's Academy Awards entry for Best Foreign Language Film, is fictionalized look at an obscure piece of history that manages to remain this side of sentimentality despite its subject matter. The film successfully conveys the confusion of young boy who is captured and incarcerated in postwar labor camp for orphans of political undesirables through strong script (adapted by Trajkov from novel), convincing child actors, stunning cinematography, subtle symbolism and an appropriately desolate and menacing set that serves as moody and intimidating character of its own (as well as surprising casting twist revealed by cinematographer Suki Medencevic during the Q & A following the screening). The young protagonist, acclimating to his confines, spends his days being indoctrinated into the righteousness of communism while endeavoring to avoid being mistreated by the overzealous, masochistic staff. He becomes mesmerized by mysterious new arrival who helps him explore the secrets behind the walls of the camp and whose serene presence has an unusual affect on the orphans and staff alike. French director Eduard Erne's Birdpeople, one of the festival's many strong documentaries, reveals the unusual and lengthy pre-production activities behind Winged Migration (Le Peuple migrateur, 2004, by Jacques Perrin), the popular and critically acclaimed documentary that follows several species of migratory birds on their journey south across the globe. A team of amateur ornithologists raised the avian subjects of the first film (searching out eggs from nests as far-flung as Iceland and Africa) on farm in the south of France, and trained them to be comfortable with humans, light aircraft and film equipment. …

Lifetime Achievement Awards: Miloš Forman and Saul Zaentz

THE FOLLOWING portraits of Miloš Forman and Saul Zaentz celebrate from a personal perspective the extraordinary film accomplishments by this masterful director-producer team on the occasion of Lifetime Achievement Awards given by Film By the Sea Festival in the Dutch seaside resort cities of Vlissingen and Scheveningen. Miloš Forman and Saul Zaentz, invited by festival director Leo Hannewijk and international co-director Steve Klain, were honoured as well by leading personalities of the Netherlands and the European Union. Indeed, this single event scored as one of the festival highlights of the year. Miloš Forman - Auditions and Adaptations My first meeting with Miloš Forman took place in April 1968 - a couple hours after I had been thrown out of the Variety office on 43rd Street for daring to "sign myself on" as a future correspondent. To get rid of me, Bob Landry, the benevolent desk editor, sent me over...