RIFF hinges around several research questions: what is the specificity of Italian film festivals? How can they be studied, recounted, and valorised? What’s their impact on the definition of film historiographical paradigms, on film production/distribution dynamics and on the promotion of cultures, networks and localities? How can we valorise their oral histories, ethnographic dimensions, cultural memories and, in general, immaterial heritage? Thus, RIFF is set to accomplish three specific tasks: the widening of the documentary source base related to the histories of Italian film festivals, by collecting and cataloguing primary and secondary historical sources (oral testimonies, institutional documents, digital documents, ephemera, etc.) on a single digital database; the creation and testing of a historiographical framework, used to approach three categories of film festival and related case-studies – Specialized Film Festival (Far East Film Festival – FEFF), Research-based Film Festival (Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero – MICL), Touristic Film Festival (Incontri Internazionali del Cinema di Sorrento – IICS); a significant expansion of knowledge related to Film Festival Studies, liaising Italian scholarship with the international community, and to the cultural histories of cinema.
In particular, RIFF’s main goal is the creation of a historiographic model suitable for three parallel lines of research: a “film historical” line, aimed at exploring the ways in which film festivals contribute to shape the writing of film (and media)histories, moulding the canon formation and informing aesthetic hierarchies; a “cultural historical” line, aimed at investigating how film festivals, by championing certain discourses of and on cinema and media, contribute to articulate and re-position specific national, cultural, social identities; and, an “economic historical” line, aimed at analysing the process by which film festivals add value within the film industry as much as to local touristic economies.
The three chosen festivals (FEFF, MICL, IICS) will be thoroughly examined, according to the three lines of research listed above (film history, cultural history, economic history). This examination has a twofold aim: on the one hand, it will lay the ground for a systematic reconstruction of the history of Italian film festivals, in view of a future extension of the scope of the research (that is, including the study of other festivals); on the other hand – and contextually, it will allow to test the effectiveness of its historiographic foundations through a check and balance system, in particular, by developing methodological tools and good practices with potential application in other scholarly and professional fields.