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.
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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).
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Acknowledgements
The research reported in this chapter has been funded by the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme (Irish Research Council).
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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
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