Film festival research from an organizational studies perspective

by Charles-Clemens Rüling, Grenoble Ecole de Management, France and Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

The annual film festival is a very European institution invented more than 70 years ago. As a research topic, however, film festivals have received surprisingly little and scattered attention within organization and management studies despite a mounting interest among film and media scholars. This article provides an introduction to the emerging literature on film festivals and argues for a threefold research agenda within organizational studies by looking at film festivals as arenas of emergence, analyzing the role of film festivals within the global film industries, and studying film festivals as organizations. By suggesting this research agenda we intent to draw the attention of organization and management scholars to a hitherto overlooked and potentially promising area of research.