Abstract
This chapter looks at linguistic policies carried out by film festivals specializing in minority languages and documentary film that take place within multilingual and pluri-national contexts (including Catalonia, Basque Country, Galicia, Brittany and Sardinia). Firstly, we analyse the specificities of documentary film as a genre that privileges the screening of works in their original languages with subtitles. Secondly, we focus on the institutional policies carried out by the European Union to foster and preserve linguistic diversity in the audio-visual realm, in order to reflect on the challenges of creating a common audio-visual market in a multilingual context. Finally, we investigate the ways in which film festivals specializing in minority languages and documentary film overcome the difficulties of creating spaces of cultural translation that increase the visibility of minority languages, while balancing their local, regional and international dimensions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In commercial Hollywood films, remakes are another way to “translate” films not only linguistically but also in cultural terms.
- 2.
While the “minority language” refers to the quantity of speakers of a given language in relation to a wider population within a territory, the term “minoritized” reflects the marginalization (or even prosecution) suffered by a language.
- 3.
The term “Original Version” is widely used in French and Spanish contexts, which use the abbreviation VO (Version Originale/Versión original) to refer to the language of the original soundtrack of the film. Film festivals also use this abbreviation in their webpages in English, or terms such as “original language” or “spoken languages” in their film fact sheets.
- 4.
- 5.
For a study of multilingualism and the representation of polyglot characters in documentary film, see Berger (2010).
- 6.
Out of which 33 have official status. According to a note published at an EU specialized news website, euroXpress, in Europe up to 70 minority languages are struggling for survival. Available at: https://bit.ly/3bFM0Vp (accessed 29 April 2014). These include only local languages, while the number of languages actually spoken in Europe is certainly increased by migrants from multiple origins.
- 7.
It should be remarked that talking about “Community position” is a way to simplify the European Union’s audio-visual and language diversity policies. We are just speaking about the institutional position. Nevertheless, if we take General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, 1993) as a reference frame, we would find dissenting views between different states, such as French delegation defence of cultural exception, appealing to the Free Trade Agreement negotiations between USA and Canada, where Canada introduced (clause 2005) exceptions for cinema, radio, phonographic products and publishing (Frau-Meigs 2002).
- 8.
Etude sur l’utilisation du sous-titrage. Le potentiel du sous-titrage pour encourager l’apprentissage et améliorer la maîtrise des langues [Study about the use of subtitling. The potential of subtitling for learning and improving language skills]. Endorsed by the European Commission (Directorate-General for Education and Culture) and developed by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Agency Executive Service (EACEA).
- 9.
The Creative Europe Programme will be funding until 2020 the mobility of European artworks and artists, and audio-visual adaptation to digital, in fields such as audio-visual subtitling. The “Cooperation Project” programme incentivizes the translation from minority languages to English, French, German and Spanish, as a means to increase their international visibility. http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/creative-europe/.
- 10.
See Nerekan Umaran and Vallejo (2017) and the “Glocal Cinema” project’s website: http://www.glocalcinema.com/.
- 11.
See the 2011 report by the European Federation of Hard of Hearing People (EFHOH).
- 12.
Other goals are “‘illustrating European debate’ and promoting ‘the circulation of European (co) productions’”.
- 13.
Lux Prize website. http://www.luxprize.eu/news/les-neiges-du-kilimandjaro-wins-2011-lux-film-prize.
- 14.
European Parliament/LUX Prize website. http://www.luxprize.eu/news/european-parliament-lux-prize-2010-winner-die-fremde-be-screened-all-member-states-during-may.
- 15.
- 16.
This is not to say that films featuring European locations and languages are not present in the selection. Nominated and awarded films featuring local aspects of some European regions include Sacro GRA (Gianfranco Rosi, nominee 2014), Hiver nomad (Winter Nomad, Manuel von Stürler, winner 2012), Steam of Life (Miesten vuoro, Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen, nominee 2010), The Beaches of Agnès (Agnès Varda, nominee 2009), Cooking History (Ako sa varia dejiny, Péter Kerekes, nominee 2009) and so on.
- 17.
Awarded cinema theatres include Kino Mladost & Kino Lumiere (Bratislava, Slovakia, 2014), Kino Artis (Tallin, Estonia, 2013), Star (Strasbourg, France, 2012) and Abaton Kino (Hamburg, Germany, 2011).
- 18.
Interestingly, these are still partly dependent on the EU as they receive its financial support. While Babel Film Festival is sponsored by the European Parliament, DocsBarcelona receives funding from the MEDIA programme of the EU.
- 19.
Personal interview with Charlotte Selb (director of programming of RIDM) conducted by Aida Vallejo (1 March 2013).
- 20.
In the Russian context, simultaneous translation has been also used in projections (see Razlogova 2014). Within the contemporary documentary film festival circuit, we see this practice in festivals such as the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in Czech Republic, which has used this system to translate to English films in the Czech section. The costs and technical requirements of subtitling are some of the reasons behind implementing these practices, which certainly act as an impediment to a direct reception of original languages. For a reflection about problems of cultural translation of African cinema in Q&A sessions at international festivals, see Dovey (2015, 69–72).
- 21.
An intermediary language (Díaz-Cintas and Ramael 2007, 249).
- 22.
For a study of the industry sections appearing in film festivals aimed to promote documentary production and distribution, see Vallejo (2014).
- 23.
In March 2015, the festival paid homage to the recently deceased Breton filmmaker René Vautier with the projection of some of his militant films, such as Afrique 50 (1950), featuring themes like colonialism, which have been key for the festival programming. He had already been the protagonist of a retrospective in Douarnenez in 1998, the year when Wales was the invited region.
- 24.
In 1999 France signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages but practical actions were not implemented until 2012, when the Region of Bretagne published the report to analyse the success of its linguistic policies application approved in 2004 (Région de Bretagne 2012). The agreement reached by the Bretagne Region with the French government and the Centre National de la Cinématographie resulted in a poor investment of just 100,000 euros agreed in 2000–2006 (OFIS 2007, 108).
- 25.
Bretagne & Diversité is a project initiated by former programmer and co-director of the Douarnenez Film Festival, Caroline Troin. BED’s website was created by Association Bretagne Culture Diversité and produced by Rhizomes association, in collaboration with Daoulagad Breizh and the Douarnenez Film Festival. The site offers information and links to online viewing for films appearing in the festival over the years. While the festival’s website appears only in French, BED’s website is available both in French and in Breton. BED’s website. http://bretagne-et-diversite.net/fr/.
- 26.
Babel Film Festival Rules. Online. Available at: https://bit.ly/3aBCu5A (accessed 24 May 2014).
- 27.
Their website appears mainly in Italian and Sardinian, with some parts translated to English (such as the “Minorias” (Minorities) section, where they explain what they consider as “minority or regional” languages, which is based on the European Charter of the Minority or Regional Languages (1992)). http://www.babelfilmfestival.com/?page_id=19.
- 28.
With a programme which is not focused on Basque identity, other bigger festivals in the region include the International Festival of Audiovisual Programs (FIPA) taking place in Biarritz since 1987 (which collaborates with San Sebastian Film Festival’s co-production forum) since 2007 (http://www.sansebastianfestival.com/2014/news/1/4168/in), as well as the Biarritz Festival Latin America celebrated since 1991.
- 29.
Oskar Alegria was appointed director in 2014, following Josetxo Cerdán. A filmmaker himself, Alegria’s film Emak Bakia Baita (The Search for Emak Bakia, 2012) features Basque and Spanish languages and is shot in Biarritz, within the Northern part of Basque Country (in France). In 2018 Garbiñe Ortega (also a Basque speaker) took over his position as the new director.
- 30.
El Documental del mes is a Parallel 40 production initiative that has been economically supported during 2004–2007 by the European Project CinemaNet Europe.
- 31.
Editing and DVD sales are additional ways of allowing cost recovery deriving from creating and delivering Catalan subtitles. DocsBarcelona.
- 32.
Arafilms’ official website. http://films.ara.cat.
- 33.
This problem is due to the necessity to upload a single copy of the film for each version as subtitles are incorporated to the image in flash format. Thus, the use of space in the server with multilingual subtitles increases the costs for Arafilms.
References
Barrios, Graciela. 2008. Etnicidad y lenguaje. Montevideo: Universidad de la República.
Berger, Verena. 2010. Voices Against the Silence: Polyglot Documentary Films from Spain and Portugal. In Polyglot Cinema: Language Contact and Migration in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, ed. Verena Berger and Miya Komori, 211–225. Vienna: LIT.
Brown, Penelope. 2004. Linguistic Politeness. In Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, ed. Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier, and Peter Trudgill, 1410–1415. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Canova, Matías R. 2013. Un acercamiento teórico-lingüístico al documental argentino sobre grupos indígenas. Lingüística 29 (1): 205–235.
Czach, Liz. 2004. Film Festivals, Programming, and the Building of a National Cinema. The Moving Image 4 (1): 76–88.
de Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals. From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Díaz-Cintas, Jorge, and Aline Ramael. 2007. Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Dovey, Lindiwe. 2015. Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Frau-Meigs, Divina. 2002. Excepción cultural, políticas nacionales y mundialización. Quaderns del CAC 14: 3–18.
Martinez, Josu, Miriam Frances, Katixa Agirre, and Miren Manias-Muñoz. 2015. Zinegin Basque Film Festival: A Non-existent Audience Revealed. Participations 12 (1): 725–738.
Nerekan Umaran, Amaia, and Aida Vallejo. 2017. Rethinking Geolinguistic Spaces: The San Sebastian Film Festival Between Latin America and Europe. Necsus. European Journal of Media Studies 11 (Spring). http://www.necsus-ejms.org/rethinking-geolinguistic-spaces-the-san-sebastian-film-festival-between-latin-america-and-europe/.
Nichols, Bill. 1991. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Pérez Pereiro, Marta, and Fernando Redondo Neira. 2014. Novo Cinema Galego: cartografías audiovisuais trazadas dende a periferia. Paper presented at Lusocom Conference, Pontevedra (Galicia).
Razlogova, Elena. 2014. Listening to the Inaudible Foreign: Simultaneous Translators and Soviet Experience of Foreign Cinema. In Sound, Music, Speech in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema, ed. Lilya Kaganovsky and Masha Salazkina. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. http://elenarazlogova.org/?page_id=70.
Vallejo, Aida. 2014. Industry Sections. Documentary Film Festivals Between Production and Distribution. Iluminace 26 (1): 65–82.
Reports
EFHOH. 2011. State of Subtitling Access in the EU. Creating a Barrier-Free Europe for all Hard of Hearing Citizens.
Media Consulting Group (MCG) and Peaceful Fish. 2007. Étude des besoins et pratiques de l’industrie audiovisuelle européenne en matière du doublage et sous titrage. Paris: European Commission.
Media Consulting Group (MCG) and EACEA. 2011. Etude sur l’utilisation du sous titrage. Le potentiel du sous titrage pour encourager l’apprentissage et améliorer la maîtrise des langues. Paris: European Commission.
Observatoire de la langue Bretonne (OFIS). 2007. La langue bretonne à la croisée des chemins. Deuxième rapport général sur l’état de la langue bretonne 2002–2007. Carhaix-Plouguer: Office Public de la Langue Bretonne. www.ofis-bzh.org.
Region de Bretagne. 2012. Une politique linguistique pour la Bretagne. Rapport d’actualisation. Region Bretagne. http://www.bretagne.fr/internet/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-04/rapport_dactualisation_de_la_politique_linguisique_2012.pdf
Acknowledgements
This work has been developed as part of the following research projects: “Towards the European Digital Space. The Role of Small Cinemas in Original Version” (CSO2012-35784) led by the Audiovisual Studies Research Group directed by Full Professor Margarita Ledo Andión at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Galicia); @CIN-EMA: “Transnational Relations in Hispanic Digital Cinemas: The Axes of Spain, Mexico, and Argentina” (CSO2014-52750-P), https://bit.ly/2JymIN4—both funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness in the frame of the National Plan Research Actions I+D+I; and ikerFESTS: “Film and Audiovisual Festivals in the Basque Country” (EHUA16/31) led by Aida Vallejo and funded by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). https://bit.ly/2JxYhz2.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
López-Gómez, A., Vallejo, A., Barreiro, M.S., Alencar, A. (2020). Found in Translation: Film Festivals, Documentary and the Preservation of Linguistic Diversity. In: Vallejo, A., Winton, E. (eds) Documentary Film Festivals Vol. 1. Framing Film Festivals. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17320-3_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17320-3_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17319-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17320-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)