Fund raising for film festivals in Europe

The film festival phenomenon originated in Europe in 1930s and spread around the globe in the subsequent decades. Nowadays, different types of film festivals exist and almost all countries hold at least one international film event. The characteristics of cultural policies and the structure of financial agreements in Europe resulted in a necessity for festival organizers to be creative in their fundraising strategies. A film festival is impossible to survive without the support from its multiple stakeholders, such as central and local governments, sponsors and business community, media, filmmakers, and the host community. The film festival is a phenomenon embedded in the attention economy, event management, and the film industry, and its most important role is to translate cultural and artistic values into economic and social ones. A range of factors (agendas) influences the financial side of the film festival: political pressures, national legislative patterns, economic conditions of a country, historical significance of the festival, cultural policies, geopolitical implications, status and type of a festival, and many others. European cultural policies, rationale of state intervention, city marketing, and corporate sponsorship are topics that have been researched by the economists in numerous studies (e.g. Acheson & Maule, 1994, 2004; Schulze, 1997; Footer, 2001; Peacock, 1969, Abbing, 1980, Throsby, 1985, Kirchberg, 1995, Bonet, 1997, Smyth, 1994; Ashworth, 1990). However, very little research has been done on the application of the above subject matters in the film industry and the film art. Therefore this study will analyze the financing mechanisms that are applied at film festivals, considering the role which these cultural events play for the economy, society, and the arts. The central research questions of this thesis are: ‘Why do film festivals have so many stakeholders?’, ‘Why do they need to redirect their focus in terms of way of realizing their values?’ and ‘How do festivals cope with changing circumstances as far as their financing is concerned?’ Attention is an important factor driving festival organizers, sponsors and all other stakeholders. Davenport and Beck (2001) argue that today’s most pressing problem is not enough attention to meet the information demands of society and business. We live in a new economy, where capital, labor, information and knowledge are in plentiful supply. What’s in short supply is human attention. Therefore, these scholars state that organizations will have to find more effective ways to allocate attention toward the information and knowledge that matters, and these will focus on paying huge amount of money to buy ‘eyeballs’ and get a few minutes of people’s attention. Film festivals are part of the ‘attention industries’ as the hype, buzz and media exposure related with the event attract a lot of attention and are exploited by various festival stakeholders.