Case Study
“Form is when the substance rises to the surface”
Practices, Narratives and Autopoiesis of the Festival dei Popoli
Abstract
This paper focuses on how film festivals research can be epistemologically framed and methodologically designed. ‘How can a film festival be observed?’ and ‘how can a festival secure its own survival and preserve itself over the time?’ are here the necessaries starting questions, for it urges one to look at how and where a festival is formed, in the moment when it takes shape. Drawing from the long story of Festival dei Popoli – International Documentary Film Festival, this paper aims to demonstrate that it is possible to identify three distinct objects of analysis: practices, narratives and autopoiesis, corresponding to three different but complementary ways of observing festivals (as interactions, narrations and organizations). This theoretical and methodological framework, inspired by systems theory, narratives and interaction analysis, can permit an uncommon observational perspective that is able to question what is often taken for granted.
Keywords
2016 (1)
Cultural Management Without Borders

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Keywords
- aesthetics
- higher education
- cultural diplomacy
- career, professional role
- audience studies
- Business
- digitalization, digitization
- diversity
- empirical aesthetics
- entrepreneurship
- development, transformation
- ethics
- Evaluation
- festival
- film
- social change
- ideology
- staging
- communication
- Concert
- creativity
- culture
- arts organizations, cultural organizations
- fincancing the arts
- cultural history
- cultural economy
- cultural policy
- cultural sociology
- audience development, art education
- arts administration, arts management
- cultural industry
- cultural sciences
- art
- arts research
- curating
- artists
- leadership
- management
- marketing
- market
- media
- methods development
- museum
- music
- opera
- orchestra
- organization
- law
- community arts
- state
- urbanism
- dance
- theater
- theory development
- tourism
- civil society, third sector