Festive Excitement and (Dis)sensus Communis in Action at Two Film Festivals in Africa

Abstract

A focus on the “international” dimensions of film festivals in Africa may lead analysts to overlook the way their intensely localized, domesticated elements do not necessarily correspond neatly to conventional definitions of film festivals, as “glittering showcases for films and people” and “vital nodes for global film industries” that “attract widespread global attention” (Wong 2011: 1). A group of very original film festivals on the African continent is contributing to disruption of the standard definition of a “film festival” that seems to be settling in all too easily within the scholarship. For all the contradictions that these festivals may exhibit (see Dovey, McNamara, and Olivieri 2013), they have rich potential to redefine local and international curatorial practices and discourses, as well as our understandings of the meanings of films. At the same time, any audience-centered approach to a festival drawing on ethnographic methods will reveal the degree to which all film festivals are potentially unique through the spontaneity through which (dis)sensus communis may be conjured at them, thereby revealing a very different image of the festival from the one that may be marketed to the world. I want to start with just such an example, drawn from my fieldwork at the 2013 Durban International Film Festival (DIFF), that shows the extent to which festival and film meanings are not stable, but constantly redefined by specific audiences. I will then move on to an analysis of the 2013 FiSahara Film Festival, searching for signs of dissent amidst the overwhelming “consensus” produced through this unusual festival—the only annual film festival in the world that takes place in a refugee camp.