Curating the Cinematic Muse: The Role of Programming in the Film Festival Experience - The 40th Toronto International Film Festival
Bibliographic record
Abstract
International film festivals are clearly about something beyond the appreciation of cinema; they are forums for the collective exploration and celebration of films, showcasing the newest films, the exotic and forgotten cinematic productions. Within a contemporary context, they represent the ultimate celebration of cinema and films as a collection of creative texts. They engage participants in a celebratory environment that pays homage to film as an artform. \n \nThe research examines an international film festival with a focus on the role of programming, through the exploration of the understated elements of this multidimensional phenomenon that impacts the festival event. The significance and original contribution of the research is found in its methodological intervention into the burgeoning field of film festival research through a specific investigation of a non-competitive international film festival. The research explores how programming impacts the festival event and the emergent experience. Furthermore, the research is approached from a supply-side perspective with summative insights that provided pathways to conceptualize an international film festival as a field-configuring event, with discourse on the less encompassing areas of organizing, programming and curating the festival event. \n \nThe conceptual framework positions the research within an interdisciplinary context with theoretical perspectives from institutional theory, field configuring events and film festival studies to offer a broader lens to nuance the gleanings from film festival professionals. The research utilizes the qualitative research strategy of the case study augmented by research methods such as in-depth interviews with participants, textual analysis and secondary research to collect and analyze data to situate this investigation within a contemporary and historical context. The interview gives a distinct focus to the film festival programmers to share perspectives to understand the contexts and settings; how they navigate the programming and the elements that impact the festival event. Textual analysis is used as a corollary to understand and provide meanings from the setting, the related activities, voices and the film festival context. \n \nThe research is on the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), its diverse programming practices and discursive positioning of films in an inclusive and influential event. The researcher problematizes festival programming to examine the film festival and uncover from festival professionals, their perspectives from an immersive and participatory lens in relation to organizing, programming and curating the festival event that embolden its raison d’etre. \n \nThe research findings revealed that there are multiple elements to programming an international film festival and curating the festival event and the emergent experience. The participants demonstrated their knowledge and expertise and how as a collective they understood the issues that are significant facets which are central to the film festival’s identity, status and reputation. Additionally, the discourse on the curation of the festival event and the emergent experience revealed characteristics of a field-configuring film festival event through several factors that were primarily connected to the multidimensional nature of the film festival - partnerships, collective sensemaking and information exchange that emerged as plausible and integral aspects both in a local and global context. \n \nThe overall findings highlighted that there is need for further understanding of film festival as a phenomenon and the multidimensionality of programming; therefore the research suggests additional areas for scholarly investigation that can contribute to our understanding of film festivals and their interconnectedness in relation to our cultures and societies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".