Unmissable events for journalists and enthusiasts, since their foundation film festivals have included and promoted the work of critics within their spaces and programmes. This process has led not only to the creation of special press areas and dedicated spaces for dialogue (conferences, interviews, conventions, round tables and discussion sessions between directors and reviewers), but also to the establishment of a series of awards and sections dedicated to the specialised press (the Cannes Film Festival’s ‘Semaine de la critique’ for example, or the ‘Settimana Internazionale della Critica’ within the framework of the Venice Biennale’s ‘Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica’), as well as the promotion and dissemination of workshops and seminar activities aimed at young people or aspiring critics. Similarly, in a relationship of fruitful interchange and mutual definition of their identities, film critics devote great attention to festivals, with daily reports and reviews of competing films, but above all by initiating debates on the festivals themselves, recoding authorial roles, institutional functions and cultural instances. Critics thus not only acquire these events as elements of their own tradition, but often become an integral part of the life of festivals and their organisation, actively participating as selectors or jurors, holding managerial or curatorial roles and independently establishing new initiatives, reviews, collateral or complementary events.
The main objective of the Festival and criticism: yesterday, today and tomorrow study day is to investigate the multifaceted forms of this relationship, stimulating reflections on the past, present and future of this virtuous connection, and so deepen the interdisciplinary encounter of different perspectives, focusing the analyses on single case studies, unpublished sources and original research methodologies.
Free entrance
