Festivals of films, decolonial spaces, and public pedagogy : some preliminary reflections

Abstract

The present paper offers reflections on festivals of films as potential spaces for public pedagogy, decolonization, and emancipation. The aim is to examine some dilemmas inherent to spectatorship, which overlap with pedagogical dilemmas around the establishing of communities and the recognizing of students — the oppressed, the individual, the collective — as persons. Drawing on the works of Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire, French philosopher Jacques Rancière, Carol Roy, Elizabeth Ellsworth, and others, I offer ways in which film and its deployment within festivals might open up generative spaces of imagination for students, educators, community members, and festival programmers. In order to do this, I argue that watching films and attending festivals should be considered along their collective and individual correlates; that the human dimension of festival participation differentiates it from isolated spectatorship; and that festival programmers can help to place viewers in positions of potential emancipation if they take care to organize films around dialogue, understanding that a key educational dimension of festivals is that they call us into relation with others. In attempting to “demythologize” film and festivals of films in this manner, I make a preliminary attempt to redeem or reconceptualize the festival as a decolonized space of politics, culture, and solidarity building.