Environmental Film Festivals: Beginning Explorations at the Intersections of Film Festival Studies and Ecocritical Studies

Abstract

Drawing from the burgeoning field of film festival studies and its engagement with public sphere theory, I examine environmental film festivals to suggest that their festival terrain is bounded by three end-member festival types, that of the official public sphere, the alternative public sphere, and the corporate or trade-show sphere. Few environmental festivals fall neatly into a single end-member category. Analyzing how they construct their identities suggests the complex ways in which these festivals work to negotiate their presence in a heterogeneous environmental and media landscape and makes room for continued attention to these unique sites of ecocinema engagement