Film Festivals on the Small Screen: Audiences, Domestic Space, and Everyday Media

Abstract

Since March 2020 in the UK, film festivals have moved to a variety of broadcast, video-on-demand (VOD), and VOD-like forms of film exhibition. Film viewing takes place on home television sets, laptops, and mobile devices and, due to the often-flexible form of film scheduling, the film festival comes to sit within and against the rhythms of everyday media use. This chapter provides a conceptual framework to theorize film festival audiences in this context. We argue that any account of online film festival audiences should take into consideration the relationship between film festival viewing and other media practices. Specifically, we draw attention to the ways in which film festival viewing practices are framed as distinct from other domestic media practices in the context of everyday life. We outline three main “sites” in which this framing occurs. The first site relates to the spaces of media consumption. The second relates to the temporal rhythms of media use. The third encompasses the forms of social interaction between different audience members. We argue that it is within these three sites that the frame of the online film festival is performed, negotiated, or felt to be missing.