The film festival as a course presents a unique opportunity for students to enrich their media education by helping plan and stage a centrally important media industry event while also developing transferable project-based skills. For emerging filmmakers, festivals provide valuable opportunities to engage audiences for their work while also offering professional development and networking exposure. But how might we understand the additional pedagogical benefits that programming such festivals create? In particular, producing a film festival in the classroom encourages students to consider a number of interrelated questions: What is the core function of a film festival and who is its intended audience? What are the various entanglements connecting the course to the university, community, and broader film industry? Is the film festival primarily a showcase of the program’s or school’s output or an opportunity to connect the program to other players beyond the university campus? How does the festival produce a uniquely curated experience? And relatedly, what methods of evaluation and judgment are used to curate a program whether that means establishing criteria of inclusion and exclusion or determining how films are to be ordered in programming blocks? This panel identifies the benefits of such efforts, which includes incorporating students into film curation practice, utilizing films as vehicles for instruction given their ability to enliven class content, and further connecting courses to the broader community through shared exhibition spaces.
