The aim of this thesis was to analyze the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the film festivals’
formats. I shaped my inquiry around a case study of VOID International Animation Film Festival, taking place annually in Copenhagen. Film festivals are cultural organizations that have always been strictly framed into a specific time and territory: they take place in a pre-determined period of the year for a certain number of days, in a selected place. They bring together a diverse audience, composed of the general public but also manifold professionals of the field. When the pandemic hit, all these distinctive elements of film festivals were dramatically displaced. Festivals organizers worldwide had to follow the government guidelines, which most of the time meant finding an alternative to the traditional physical format. As in similar cultural industries, this unexpected event was a challenge for film festivals, which had to reinvent themselves for the first time in history.
These premises brought me to develop my research question:
How does an international film festival adapt its format in response to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic?
First of all, this study has shown how uncertainty was a significant challenge to face when setting up a festival during the pandemic. Several well-known film festivals reacted to this uncertainty by cancelling or postponing the event to a not specified future moment. However, the main response of festivals was to turn their formats into digital for the first time. Turning digital certainly affected various aspects of the festival organization. For instance, the festivals' programs had to be carefully chosen to suit the new viewing frames, which shifted from the cinema venue to the personal digital device. VOID's case showed how applying the Long Tail Strategy turned out a helpful tool for independent festivals to deal with digital programming.
Networking, which is another emblematic feature of festivals, became significantly complicated, and field professionals are still figuring out how to maintain this aspect alive. The relationship with the festival audiences changed indeed, too. If on the one hand the digital format allowed greater accessibility, it is also true that maintaining solid contact with the
attendees involved significant efforts. This aspect relates to what emerged to be one of the main challenges of the digital format: delivering a compelling experience without the possibility of social interaction. In this regard, digital festivals had to reinvent themselves to keep some
"festivality" aspect into their digital formats. As was the case for VOID, this process involved setting up activities such as time-framed screenings, live virtual events or physical material sent to the audiences.
VOID 2021 was carried out mainly digitally. However, the festival was lucky enough to turn its format into hybrid at the last minute, thanks to the restrictions’ easing in Denmark. By adopting a hybrid format, VOID managed to add physical screenings at Cinemateket in May to the digital festival on the Eventive platform carried out in the previous months. As illustrated in my research, festivals can launch a hybrid format in different ways. As in the case of VOID, they can separate the two moments of physical and digital; alternatively, they can keep the main screenings physical and build an all-year-round digital presence. Naturally, this choice is also dictated by the current evolution of the pandemic, which does not always allow to have physical screenings. This thesis has highlighted the manifold benefits of hybrid formats. In the case of VOID, the hybrid format allowed a wider portfolio in terms of programming, significant organizational flexibility and a chance to get new audiences. However, this configuration is naturally at its first stages, and probably many of its opportunities are still to discover.
To sum up, film festivals appear to be dealing with the pandemic challenges by adapting their traditional formats to digital ones, or hybrid where they can. This research has shown how the hybrid format indeed appears to be an effective way of adapting festivals’ format in the foreseeable future. This innovative format seems to take advantages of the strenghts of both physical and digital festivals, still managing to deliver a certain degree of experience to the spectator. What most surprised me, coming to the end of this research, was the shared positive perception of the hybrid format and the willingness to indeed keep it as a realistic future possibility. In fact, even if a shared nostalgia of the traditional formats emerged, surprisingly the industry seems to seriously take into consideration adopting some hybrid features not only for the current period, but eventually even when this pandemic will be over.
The cultural industries have always been described as risky businesses, whose riskiness is mainly caused by the fact that nobody knows the success exits of cultural products (Hesmondhalgh, 2019; Caves, 2000). I believe that this principle indeed sums up what the pandemic meant for film festivals and their formats. If their business was already risky before, now the constant uncertainty caused by the pandemic has exacerbated this feature. Therefore, in this precise historical moment, adopting a hybrid format can be the best way to both take advantage of the digital side and keep some traditional festivality elements, while dealing with the constant uncertainty that these strange times provide.
6.1. Limitations
In order to better understand this research, it is necessary to address its limitations, too. The first limit I encountered concerned the time available. I recognize this research is time-framed to this specific historical time, and this is why I described it as cross-sectional in my Introduction. I acknowledge that if I have had the opportunity to spend more time on this research, I could have developed it more extensively. For instance, I would have extended the time frame to entail a wider observation of the pre-Pandemic period. In that context, I would have probably included other festivals’ organizers in my research and integrated the data collection with traditional observation by participating in the more physical sides of these festivals.
However, the principal limit I encountered during this research concerns the Covid-19 pandemic. In a normal situation, I would have conducted most of my interviews physically;
instead, I founded it wiser to keep the interviews virtual, even for those interviewees who live in my same country. The pandemic also affected my work experience at VOID, in the sense that most of my participation in the festival’s organization was not conducted in the office, but from home. My interviews indeed turned out to be insightful, and the time I spent at VOID enriched me in many ways. However, I cannot help but wonder if the possibility of physically living both these experiences would have provided me with additional first-hand insights and reflections.
6.2. Further Research
My research integrated academic literature on experience economy, cultural industries and crisis management with the broad field of studies on film festivals. Undoubtedly, the features of festivals that I observed and analyzed are new indeed, because they derive from the unprecedented situation of the pandemic. Thus, there are some aspects of this research that could undoubtedly benefit from further investigation.
First of all, expanding the area of research could be of significant relevance for the whole film festivals industry. I focused my research on a single case study of a Danish festival; instead, analyzing multiple cases in a wider geographical area could bring diverse angles to the research. Moreover, it would be extremely insightful to prosecute the research by following the development of the film festival sector during and after the pandemic. This could be relevant to observe if these revolutionary digital and hybrid formats will become the normality for festivals even after this emergency. Indeed, the many positive aspects of these formats (e.g., wider accessibility, organizational accessibility) suggest that festivals organizers will incorporate some of these elements in their future editions. Further research on the phenomenon of film festivals during Covid-19 should also take into serious consideration the audiences’
perspective. I focused my research mainly on the organizational side of film festivals, where the decisions in terms of formats were taken. However, it could be very insightful to deeply observe the audiences’ reaction to what film festivals have meant for them and their preferences for potential next editions. I think that my research contributes to the film festivals literature in light of the experience economy, and I believe that adding the audiences’ perspective to this investigation could be helpful for better comprehending this phenomenon.