See it at a festival near you: the film festival as exhibition practice in Melbourne, 1952-2012

This thesis charts the development and operation of film festivals within Melbourne from 1952 to 2012. While film festival studies is expanding rapidly as a field of academic enquiry, the specificities of the Australian film festival experience have thus far received little critical attention. This thesis seeks to address the lack of an Australian perspective on film festival development and operation, taking the experience of film festivals in Melbourne as a case study for exploring the extent to which local contexts influence the tenor, function and evolution of cultural celebrations. Engaging with current research on film festivals, as well as archival and contemporary material, this thesis argues that film festivals in Melbourne have evolved along different lines to international celebrations generally and those in Europe – as the leading source of existing literature – in particular. By scrutinising the particular nature of Melbourne festivals with an emphasis on the city’s leading event, the Melbourne International Film Festival, this thesis argues that festivals in Melbourne act primarily as sites of film exhibition, with events presented first and foremost for the benefit and pleasure of audiences. Through examining the way in which film festivals have developed and prospered in Melbourne over the last sixty years, their tenor and the unique local factors that have influenced their operation, this thesis challenges the Eurocentric understanding of international film festival development that has thus far dominated the study of such events. This thesis constructs its study of Melbourne’s involvement with the film festival format in three parts that examine the city’s festival history, event practice and possible avenues for future development. More specifically, this study identifies five major areas of discussion: the initial development of film festivals in Melbourne (1949-1979); the expansion and consolidation of the format in the city (1980-2000); the use of a rhetoric of taste in film festival advertising as a means establishing cultural legitimacy; the multifaceted nature of festival success and its relation to local environments; and the potential future development of festivals as the premiere source of non-mainstream film within Melbourne. The conclusion reached by this study is that film festivals in Melbourne developed first and foremost as a response to local conditions rather than international trends in film festival operation. Informed by the time, place and circumstance in which each of the city’s festivals emerged, the Melbourne festival movement evolved primarily as a practice in film exhibition and, as a result, charted a different historical path to that established by international events and existing festival scholarship.