Small Cinemas of the Andes by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031320187
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Contexts and Emergence of Community Film Festivals in Colombia

According to figures from the Dirección de Cinematografía del Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia (Directorate of Cinematography of the Ministry of Culture), as of 2020, according to what was registered in SIREC,3 there are eighty-three film festivals and exhibition spaces in Colombia, and these have a presence in fifty municipalities in the country (Dirección de Cinematografía 2021). The emergence of many of these festivals are specialized, characterized by a segmentation of the type of productions that are exhibited in these events, either by theme or genre, with categories such as “short films, social, gender, environmental, ethnic, community and regional production, and children’s audiences, among others” (Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia 2017). Fifty-one of these festivals are linked to the Asociación Nacional de Festivales, Muestras y Eventos Cinematográficos y Audiovisuales (National Association of Festivals, Screenings and Filmic and Audiovisual Events of Colombia, ANAFE). They use the following distribution categories: independent, commercial and community.

As the number of festivals around the world has proliferated, scholars have become increasingly interested in them as objects of research, especially in European contexts. Even though there are fewer studies in the Latin American context, research about festivals is on the rise. In the Colombian case, there are few such studies and as D’Abraccio (2015) suggests; very little critical analysis or assessment of festivals has been carried out. Circulation, audience reception and appropriation of community cinema are also areas that are still under-researched.

Despite the fact that in Latin America, studies that analyze community cinema has increased in the past few years; the scholarly work around this is surprisingly scarce in relation to the number of collective and organizational experiences linked to audiovisual culture. Most of the research carried out so far focuses on production, modes of collaboration within the field and the narratives that are constructed.

In Colombia, research by Aguilera and Polanco (2011a, b) has shown that in the Departments of Nariño, Cauca and Valle del Cauca, there are at least 131 collectives related to this method of making and conceptualizing the audiovisual. This led the authors to conclude that “this is a growing phenomenon both in terms of the number of people and collectives and in terms of forms of organization and visibility” (Aguilera and Polanco 2011b, 23). Their research also revealed that it is the organizations themselves that have been responsible for proposing and facilitating the circulation of community films.

Most film festivals in Colombia “respond to the needs of the industrial or artistic sectors: ‘In these festivals many films are left out because they do not meet the minimum technical requirements or because they do not meet certain commercial expectations, and they are discriminated against’” (Aguilera and Polanco 2011b, 279). On top of this, there are the expenses incurred by filmmakers such as shipping copies of their films and attending the events. Therefore, the creation of community film festivals provides an alternative that facilitates the exhibition of these works as well as creates spaces for encounters with communities and other grassroots projects.

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