Music Festivals and the Politics of Participation


Book Description

The spread of UK music festivals has exploded since 2000. In this major contribution to cultural studies, the lid is lifted on the contemporary festival scene. Gone are the days of a handful of formulaic, large events dominating the market place. Across the country, hundreds of ’boutique’ gatherings have popped up, drawing hundreds of thousands of festival-goers into the fields. Why has this happened? What has led to this change? In her richly detailed study, industry insider Dr Roxy Robinson uncovers the dynamics that have led to the formation and evolution of the modern festival scene. Tracing the history of the culture as far back as the fifties, this book examines the tensions between authenticity and commerce as festivals grew into a widespread, professionalized industry. Setting the scene as a fragmented, yet highly competitive market, Music Festivals and the Politics of Participation examines the emergence of key trends with a focus on surrealist production and popular theatricality. For the first time, the transatlantic relationship between British promoters and the social experiment-come-festival Burning Man is documented, uncovering its role in promoting a politics of participation that has dramatically altered the festival experience. Taking an in-depth approach to examining key events, including the fastest growing independent music festival in recent years (Hampshire’s BoomTown Fair) the UK market is shown to have produced a scene that champions co-production and the democratization of festival space. This is a vital text for anyone interested in British culture.




Asian American Film Festivals


Book Description

Responding to a lack of studies on the film festival’s role in the production of cultural memory, this book explores different parameters through which film festivals shape our reception and memories of films. By focusing on two Asian American film festivals, this book analyzes the frames of memory that festivals create for their films, constructed through and circulated by the various festival media. It further establishes that festival locations—both cities and screening venues—play a significant role in shaping our experience of films. Finally, it shows that festivals produce performances which help guide audiences towards certain readings and direct the film’s role as a memory object. Bringing together film festival studies and memory studies, 'Asian American Film Festivals' offers a mixed-methods approach with which to explore the film festival phenomenon, thus shedding light on the complex dynamics of frames, locations, and performances shaping the festival’s memory practices. It also draws attention to the understudied genre of Asian American film festivals, showing how these festivals actively engage in constructing and performing a minority group’s collective identity and memory.




Festival and Event Management in Nordic Countries


Book Description

This book on events-related research marks a watershed in the development of a "Nordic School" of festival and event research. Each of the chapters presents a new and interesting approach to the study of events, in terms of methods, perspectives or content. It is mostly rooted in management theory but also incorporating other perspectives that enhance our understanding of the phenomena. Implications for real-world applications in tourism, hospitality, and community development are also at the fore. The scholarship is comprehensive, not focused on only tourism or economic aspects. Management theory, including stakeholder management, social networks, and institutionalization processes is being applied. Attention is being given to the multiple roles festivals and events play in society, and to evaluation of their worth and impacts. Innovative methods are being developed to examine event experiences, innovation processes, and success factors. There is now a critical mass of scholars in the Nordic countries that share a strong interest in event studies, and they are engaged in collaborative research, making it an appealing and innovative region for other event students and researchers to visit. It can be expected that the Nordic school will take an increasingly important place in the development of event studies, which is now truly global in terms of scholarship and university degree programs. This book was originally published as a special issue of Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism.




Festival, Comedy and Tragedy


Book Description




Chris Gore's Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide, 4th edition


Book Description

The guerrilla guide to marketing and selling an indie film. Some people are just there for the loot bags. But most of the people at a film festival are trying to market and sell an independent film. Don’t be just one of the horde. Use Chris Gore’s Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide to help your indie film stand out! Entertainment Weekly loves Gore’s book, calling it a “treatise on schmoozing, bullying, and otherwise weaseling one's way into the cinematic madness known as film festivals.” The newly revised and updated fourth edition includes full listings for more than 1,000 film festivals, with complete tips and contact information, plus in-depth analysis of the Big Ten festivals. With detailed, fresh how-tos for marketing, distributing, and selling a film and using websites to build buzz, plus interviews with top festival filmmakers, step-by-steps on what to do after your film gets accepted, and explanations of how to distribute a film, Chris Gore’s guide tells filmmakers exactly how to become a player in the indie world. Chris Gore’s Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide includes complete listings for more than 1,000 festivals—find the best for indie, documentary, short, student, digital, and animation, and a CD-ROM!




Tonic to the Nation: Making English Music in the Festival of Britain


Book Description

Long remembered chiefly for its modernist exhibitions on the South Bank in London, the 1951 Festival of Britain also showcased British artistic creativity in all its forms. In Tonic to the Nation, Nathaniel G. Lew tells the story of the English classical music and opera composed and revived for the Festival, and explores how these long-overlooked components of the Festival helped define English music in the post-war period. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Lew looks closely at the work of the newly chartered Arts Council of Great Britain, for whom the Festival of Britain provided the first chance to assert its authority over British culture. The Arts Council devised many musical programs for the Festival, including commissions of new concert works, a vast London Season of almost 200 concerts highlighting seven centuries of English musical creativity, and several schemes to commission and perform new operas. These projects were not merely directed at bringing audiences to hear new and old national music, but to share broader goals of framing the national repertory, negotiating between the conflicting demands of conservative and progressive tastes, and using music to forge new national definitions in a changed post-war world.




The Edinburgh Festival


Book Description

True, the city's many summer festivals each maintain their own identities. And yet 'The Festival' has stuck as a shorthand which captures the truly eclectic experience of 'doing Edinburgh' which has made the city's very name synonymous with world-leading culture and performance. This book is the first to tell the complete history of the Edinburgh Festival. Arts writer David Pollock paints an extraordinary portrait of the growth, glory years and struggles of this global cultural phenomenon. He introduces a wide cast of key individuals and shows, including Fleabag, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Joseph Beuys, The Fall and Six The Musical. The Edinburgh Festival: A Biography provides a unique perspective on the social and cultural history of Scotland and its capital in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It will delight and intrigue all who have experience of the greatest festival in the world.




Festival Culture in the World of the Spanish Habsburgs


Book Description

Festivals and ceremonials played a major role in the Spanish world; through them local identities as well as a common Spanish culture made their presence manifest within and beyond the peninsula through ephemeral displays, music and print. This book explores Habsburg Visual culture at court and its connection with the creation of a language of triumph, the relationship between religion and the empire, and examines cultural, artistic and musical exchange in Naples and Rome. Taken together these essays contribute further to our growing appreciation of the importance of early-modern festival culture in general, and their significance in the world of the Spanish Habsburgs in particular.




Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls


Book Description

All the evidence for daily, sabbath, and festival prayers in the Qumran scrolls is analysed in detail, document by document. On the basis of formal features and social-liturgical setting, these prayers are compared with each other to uncover divergent prayer traditions. Comparative material beyond the scrolls is used to reassess their place in the development of Jewish prayer. Evidence for prayers of different origin found at Qumran is important for reconsidering the nature of the scrolls, the community(s) which used them, and the history of Jewish liturgy. For several texts significant new reconstructions are offered.