Queer Film Festivals and Urban Space
Reclaiming the City
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:3rd Mar '25
£135.00
This title is due to be published on 3rd March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This timely and innovative book argues that queer film festivals reclaim urban space for queer women and other marginalised queer subjects through the mobilisation of both material and diegetic space.
It is a response to the loss of queer urban venues and community spaces across across many parts of the Global North, and claim for the political potential of queer film festivals in the context of late-stage capitalism. Drawing from critical events studies, film and film festival scholarship, archival research, cultural geography, and research in the creative industries, the book deploys an interdisciplinary arsenal of tools in order to understand the complexity of festival space. Covering the period 1980 to the present, the volume posits original case studies of two long running festivals, as well as analysis of ephemeral, grassroots events. This thorough and critical exploration offers significant insight into the strategies deployed by queer film festivals to carve out queer geographies in the city, and the potential of event-driven place-making to construct alternative morphologies and more equitable approaches to urban space.
This volume will be of pivotal interest to students, scholars and academics of critical event and festival studies, film and film festival studies, cultural, creative and media industries, cultural geography, sociology and urban studies, as well as those with an interest in these areas more generally.
"Queer Film Festivals and Urban Space: Reclaiming the City offers an exhilarating account of the queer film festival’s transformative potential. Writing across film studies, cultural geography, disability studies, and queer and feminist theory, Theresa Heath beautifully synthesises aesthetic, institutional, and activist approaches to queer film festivals and their precarious urban communities. This much-needed book animates a history of struggle to create film culture by and for marginalised people."
Rosalind Galt, Professor of Film Studies, King’s College London, UK
"This book lucidly explores how queer film festivals have the unique power to connect the way films represent ideas on screen with the physical or digital space of the festival itself. Queer film festivals are treated, here, as activist events that boldly claim a space in the city. The connection between different forms of queer worldmaking creates a dynamic space where the relationship between queer people and the city can be rethought, helping to push queer politics forward and imagine more inclusive and fair spaces. Dr Heath’s own lived experiences inspire her to push boundaries, as a producer and as a scholar. She looks into the ways hybrid spaces can produce more accessible, queer, counterpublic events."
Stefanie Van de Peer, Reader in Film and Media, Queen Margaret University, UK
"In this book, Theresa Heath beautifully weaves together a historical trajectory of queer film festivals as regionally specific sites of queer cinema. Informed by her first-hand experience as festival organizer, she connects discussions of programming, activist labor in the face of pressures of neoliberal gentrification and pandemic responses between AIDS and COVID-19 with the struggle to create space for community."
Skadi Loist, Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Germany
ISBN: 9781032572291
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
174 pages