Precarious cultural work: about the organization of (queer) film festivals

Abstract

Film festivals exist to showcase new films, and their role in doing this has been increasingly well documented and studied.1 Serious study of how festivals actually operate, however, and the impact of these operations upon the final product, is relatively unexplored within the interdisciplinary field of film festival studies. Analyses of the organizational context of film festivals remain very rare, even in organization and management studies.2 While Kai Reichel-Heldt speaks about festival organization in his book Filmfestivals in Deutschland,3 Volker Kufahl, director of the Braunschweig International Film Festival, demanded in his review of the book that festival research should also pay attention to the precarious working conditions of festival organizers (as well as cultural workers in general).4 I shall answer this call by looking at the festival workers and organizations behind a particular type of film event, the queer film festival, paying close attention to the ways in which the festivals are influenced by local funding politics.