Liverpool Screen School Research Seminar: Dr Ger Zielinski

Abstract:

Toronto’s Buffer Festival is almost exclusively known and cherished by young local YouTubers. The festival organisers took the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as their model, including categories, celebrities, awards and even a red carpet, arguably guided by the city’s noted cinephilic culture. Sponsored by YouTube and Adobe, among other industry giants, the festival affords with ease some of the prime venues of the city to host its screenings.

In this talk I survey my current research findings while exploring the subtle variations on festivality produced at this new type of film festival that has arrived long after the hype of the late-1990s and the advent of online festivals. While the earlier enthusiasm around the creation of online mobile film festivals has receded, a new type of festival appears to be succeeding at finding large publics, namely the popular festivals that utilize YouTube as their primary distribution and exhibition platform, combined with associated off-line events. A range of hybrid events, either following the structure of the trade fair or festival, has emerged that combines online streaming platforms with off-line in-situ screenings.

My research seeks to account for this apparent return to the in-situ mode of festivality along with a renewals of sorts of online digital film festivals that embrace a wider demographic of digital filmmakers and approaches to mediamakings (new ‘microgenres’ and formats).