(Photo of the roundtable of the NFRF research project during the Colloque (Photo: Maïmouna Jallow, 2023))

‘Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World’ is a research projected funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, Government of Canada, led by Professor Sheila Petty (University of Regina) as the nominated principal investigator, and Dr Estrella Sendra (King’s College London), co-principal investigator. Ever since January 2023, a postdoctoral research associate was employed full time for a year to join both researchers in the project work, Dr Ana Camila Esteves. Last April 2023, the researchers involved in this project had a public group meeting in the international conference ‘Marginality and Fragility in African Cinemas’, organised by the African Documentary Collective (Prof Suzanne Crosta, McCaster University; Prof Sada Niang, University of Victoria; and Prof Alexie Tcheuyap, University of Toronto), from 26 to 28 April 2023, as part of the programme of the Festival Vues d’Afrique, which took place in Montréal (Canada) from 20 to 30 April 2023.

The project seeks to contribute to the decolonisation of research methods, trialling and testing an innovative two-part “decolonial test”, which has been designed with the purpose of increasing self-reflection among researchers in their research design, prior to conducting fieldwork and interviewing research participants, rethinking and defying ethnography as a research method; and to share an interview guide that could be adapted by film festival researchers interested in understanding different decolonial approaches and practices in film festivals. The project has just concluded the data collection, with the exception of the fieldwork to be conducted from 6 to 13 September 2023 at the Mostra de Cinemas Africanos in Brazil, a festival directed by our research associate Dr Ana Camila Esteves.

The test has already been trialled in five other festivals: The Festival StLouis’ DOCS (Senegal) in May 2022 and May 2023, led by our research collaborator Laura Feal, based in Gandiol, Saint-Louis (Senegal), with the presence of Estrella Sendra and Ana Camila Esteves in 2023; the African Movie Festival in Manitoba (AM-FM) (Canada) in September 2022; led by our NPI Prof Sheila Petty, based in Canada, being our research collaborator the director of the festival, Dr Ben Akoh; Film Africa in London (UK) in November 2022, led by our research collaborator Dr Robin Steedman, with the presence of Estrella Sendra in the festival; the ‘Women Creators of the Future’ strand co-curated by Leeds International Film Festival (UK) and Festival Films Femmes Afrique (Senegal), hosted in Leeds in November 2022, led by our research collaborator, Dr Rachel Johnson, based in Leeds, with the presence of Estrella Sendra in various days; and the Festival Vues d’Afrique in Montréal (Canada) in April 2023, co-led by Prof Sheila Petty and Dr Estrella Sendra, with the presence of our postdoctoral research associate, Dr Ana Camila Esteves, and all of our research collaborators, with the exception of Prof Lindiwe Dovey (SOAS, University of London). The project seeks to inspire researchers from the arts and humanities and across disciplines, who could apply some of these findings and practices to their research design and methodologies.

Having already conducted a pilot implementation of the test across these festivals that share the regional focus on Africa, the participation in the conference in a roundtable with all the researchers involved on 28 April offered a great opportunity to publicly brainstorm ideas, thoughts and experiences. Very often, what is shared in public spaces is either the finalised work or preliminary ideas after having applied a particular methodology. Hardly ever there are spaces where a critical reflection on methodologies is shared. Doing this out loud, publicly, in front of people who share an interest in film, festivals and the place of Africa in both, was also a great opportunity to gain feedback from diverse people, that we can take into account in the writing up of the research outputs of this research methods-focused project. It was also beneficial in that it was a reminder of:

• The need to reflect about our research methods, confirming the goal of this project
• The collective and collaborative dimension of research, confirming the collaborative ethos that our project relies on
• The important role of festivals as mediators of film experiences for filmmakers, critics, film professionals, researchers, educators and general audiences
• The collective and contested dimension of decolonisation, to be understood and practised in relation to different contexts, and as a process and call to action that requires the engagement from diverse individuals and collectives
• The benefit of working with partner festivals and establishing mutually beneficial relations

Being at a festival offered a unique source of inspiration and reflection on our project, which seeks to increase reflexivity, as a first step towards decolonising research practices and methods, among film festival researchers, and to understand diverse understandings and practices of decolonisation at African film festivals in Africa and the diaspora. These remain under-explored in academia. However, placing them at the centre of this project was a strategic choice to inspire further international film festivals, as there have been recent discussions about the need for festivals to be more inclusive and to decolonise themselves (see Dovey, and Sendra, 2023).

Among the reflections shared by the various researchers, it is worth highlighting the need to design flexible methodologies, informed by local contexts and by the positionality of the researchers involved. The test two offered insights on diverse forms of engaging audiences, observing a decentralisation and free access to all festival screenings in the Africa-based festival, StLouis’ DOCS, which contrasts with the often ticketed entrance to screenings in a central festival venue at African festivals outside of the continent. Researchers suggested a few modifications to the questions, so that they could offer us an understanding of the origins of the festival, their missions, and how these were performed and modified over time. Further comments on the research design included taking into account the amount of knowledge already of the festival to be researched, or the relationship with the festival organisers, which can often either depart or lead to friendships. There were rich discussions about the role of care and loyalty in research, and their relationship with criticism, making us question how to talk about a festival with both care and criticism at the same time. Decolonial practices were also discussed with relation to the curation of African cinemas, and whether this was treated as cinema or as a window to at times NGO-informed topics which may be related to the agendas of the festival sponsors. The role of collaboration, trust and informal conversations was also under discussion, and the ways in which we may achieve these under the institutional constraints of ethical considerations that often bring barriers in the relationships with the research participants, under the basis of protection. 

These reflections are all of crucial importance for the writing up of the research outputs, which will include a multilingual toolkit including the two-part decolonial test and the focus group, and a critical reflection about the research design in a journal article. Researchers are currently in the writing up phase of the project and look forward to sharing the results with further researchers and festival organisers.

This article draws upon research supported by the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF).