Abstract
This chapter addresses the influence of film festival funding on the making of world cinema, specifically in a context in which the cinematic portrayal of authentic cultures is a relevant feature “inherent to festivals’ formula for success” (De Valck, Screening World Cinema at Film Festivals: Festivalisation and (Stages) Authenticity. In R. Stone, P. Cook, S. Dennison, & A. Marlow-Mann (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to World Cinema (p. 394). London: Routledge, 2018). For analytical purposes, particular attention is given to a recent production set in Brazil: Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull (Boi Neon 2015), which was a recipient of the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF). The HBF, a scheme set up by the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), offers emergent and independent filmmakers from countries of the global South help to develop, produce and post-produce their projects. Evoking theories related to mode of address, authenticity and academic debates on film festival funding, the chapter investigates to what extent the expectations placed on Neon Bull’s filmmaker by the HBF influenced the conception of the film. The first part analyses the terms and conditions that guide the HBF and how these are structured to prioritize works that address Western festival audiences interested in the allure of cultural difference. The second part, through a film analysis, reconstructs how creative choices were mobilized in Neon Bull to both dialogue and deconstruct narratively and aesthetically ideas related to authenticity and cultural uniqueness. The argument developed suggests that, while the rhetoric of authenticity has a central role to play in the regimes of representation welcomed by international film festivals, Neon Bull’s filmmaker negotiated such claims by addressing representations of otherness as a space in which to rearticulate and update ideas of cultural difference.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, the general assumptions related to international film festivals, especially those located in the West, take into consideration events with significant relevance in the film festival circuit, which are either part of the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) (i.e. Berlin, Cannes, Venice) or operate outside the set of rules established by the FIAPF (i.e. Rotterdam, Sundance).
- 2.
It is also necessary to highlight that there are a series of non-Western festival funding bodies, such as the Asian Cinema Fund, which has links to the Busan International Film Festival, that play a relevant role in the development of films from the global South and in the development of regional and local cinematic industries and contexts.
- 3.
I tried to verify how much the film received from each funding body with the film’s agencyproducer. Unfortunately, my query was not addressed. From what is available online, I could discover that Neon Bull was awarded 50,000 EUR from the HBF Plus (El brasileño 2012); 509,517.22 BRL from Funcultura (Funcultura 2012); 150,000 USD from a joint scheme between the Brazilian and the Uruguay governments (Divulgados vencedores 2011); and 14,000 USD from Ibermedia (Observatório Brasileiro do Cinema e do Audiovisual).
- 4.
For a comprehensive overview of Brazilian film cultural policies see Dennison and Meleiro (2016).
References
Bazin, A. (2004). What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. Berkeley: California University Press.
Berghahn, D. (2017). Encounters with Cultural Difference: Cosmopolitanism and Exoticism in Tanna (Martin Butler and Bentley Dean, 2015) and Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015). Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 14, 16–40.
Bhabha, H. K. (2012). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Campos, M. (2012). Reconfiguración de flujos en el circuito internacional de festivales: El programa Cine en Construcción. Secuencias: Revista de Historia del Cine, 35, 84–102.
De Valck, M. (2014). Film Festivals, Bourdieu, and the Economization of Culture. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 23(1), 74–89. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjfs.23.1.74.
De Valck, M. (2018). Screening World Cinema at Film Festivals: Festivalisation and (Stages) Authenticity. In R. Stone, P. Cook, S. Dennison, & A. Marlow-Mann (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to World Cinema (pp. 393–403). London: Routledge.
Dennison, S., & Meleiro, A. (2016). Brazil, Soft Power and Film Culture. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 14(1), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.1386/ncin.14.1.17_1.
Divulgados vencedores de concurso para coprodução Brasil-Uruguai. (2011, November 21). Cultura e Mercado, viewed 29, Oct 2018. http://www.culturaemercado.com.br/site/noticias/divulgados-vencedores-de-concurso-parafomento-a-coproducao-brasil-uruguai/
El brasileño Gabriel Mascaro recibe apoyo de Hubert Bals Fund Plus. (2012, December 13). Latam Cinema, viewed 29, Oct 1998. http://www.latamcinema.com/el-brasileno-gabrielmascaro-recibe-apoyo-de-hubert-bals-fund-plus/
Falicov, T. L. (2010). Migration from South to North: The Role of the Film Festival in Funding and Shaping Global South Film and Video. In G. Elmer, C. Davis, J. Marchessault, & J. McCullough (Eds.), Locating Migrant Media (pp. 3–22). Lanham: Lexington Books.
Falicov, T. L. (2016). The ‘Festival Film’: Film Festival Funds as Cultural Intermediaries. In M. De Valck, B. Kredell, & S. Loist (Eds.), Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice (pp. 209–229). London: Routledge.
Freeman, M. (2018). Introduction: Practice and/as Media Industry Research. Media Practice and Education, 19(2), 117–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741136.2018.1467671.
Funcultura divulga lista de aprovados no Edital do Audiovisual. (2012, May 31). Jornal do Comercio, viewed 29, Oct 2018. https://jconline.ne10.uol.com.br/canal/cultura/cinema/noticia/2012/05/31/funculturadivulga-lista-de-aprovados-no-edital-do-audiovisual-43942.php
hooks, b. (2015). Black Looks: Race and Representation. London: Routledge.
Hubert Bals Fund of International Film Festival Rotterdam. (2017). Hubert Bals Fund Annual Report 2016–2017, viewed 29, Oct 2018. https://iffr.com/sites/default/files/content/hbf_annual_report_2016-2017.pdf
International Film Festival Rotterdam. (2018). About HBF, viewed 2, Nov 2018. https://iffr.com/en/about-hbf
Little, J., & Panelli, R. (2003). Gender Research in Rural Geography. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 10(3), 281–289.
MacCannell, D. (1973). Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings. American Journal of Sociology, 79(3), 589–603.
Nichols, B. (1994). Discovering form, Inferring Meaning: New Cinemas and the Film Festival Circuit. Film Quarterly, 47(3), 16–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/1212956.
Observatório Brasileiro do Cinema e do Audiovisual (2018). Ibermedia 2004 a 2017, viewed 29, Oct 2018. https://oca.ancine.gov.br/sites/default/files/repositorio/pdf/2809_0.pdf
Ostrowska, D. (2010). International Film Festivals as Producers of World Cinema. Cinéma & Cie, 10(14–15), 145–150.
Rascaroli, L. (2017). How the Essay Film Thinks. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ross, M. (2011). The Film Festival as Producer: Latin American Films and Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund. Screen, 52(2), 261–267. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjr014.
Sharf, Z. (2015, September 1). Neon Bull Poster Gives TIFF and Venice an Exotic Splash of Color. Indiewire, viewed 29, Oct 1998. https://www.indiewire.com/2015/09/exclusive-neonbull-poster-gives-tiff-and-venice-an-exotic-splash-of-color-58699
Theodossopoulos, D. (2016). Exoticisation Undressed: Ethnographic Nostalgia and Authenticity in Emberá Clothes. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Tierney, D. (2018). New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Willemen, P. (2006). The National Revisited. In V. Vitali & P. Willemen (Eds.), Theorising National Cinema(pp. 29–43). London: Bloomsbury.
Wong, C. H. Y. (2011). Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Acknowledgements
The research reported in this chapter has been funded by the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme (Irish Research Council).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Saldanha, H. (2019). Producing the Other in International Film Festivals: Festival Fund, Address and the Making of Authenticity in Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull. In: Batty, C., Berry, M., Dooley, K., Frankham, B., Kerrigan, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21744-0_25
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21744-0_25
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21743-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21744-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)