Film Festivals and Ideology Critique

Abstract

This chapter outlines the book’s theoretical framework and methodology. I reframe ideas of quality, taste and aesthetics through ideology—a term long present, yet under-theorised in film festival studies. I argue that rehabilitating the study of ideology is necessary for the development of rigorous, left-wing analyses of contemporary art institutions such as festivals, intervening in both the discursive and economic realities they (re)produce. This chapter adapts theories rooted in Lacanian psychoanalysis, and particularly the work of Slavoj Žižek, to examine the workings of festival apparatuses, paratexts, and cinematic excess. The methodology follows a three-tier critical procedure, bringing into dialogue festivals’ operational and material contexts, their representation of themselves and the films they exhibit, and the excessive qualities of such films.