Rethinking the Cultural Distinction: How the dynamic of film festivals as a network influences the cultural production of South East Asian independent filmmakers

Film festivals have long been occupying the foreground of film studies for its significance as the cultural gatekeeper of the arthouse film world. Drawing on a qualitative research project examining the artistic practices of South East Asian filmmakers – a vigorously rising region in the field of arthouse filmmaking – the analysis of this paper pays attention to trace the imprints of the film festival network’s strategies of cultural distinction multidimensionally shown in the cultural production process of independent filmmakers. It, thus, reveals that Bourdieu’s model laid out in “Distinction” is still in progress with inquiries into the inherently dynamic nature of cultural capital. On the one hand, it is undeniable that the SE Asian filmmakers have constructed their own artistic autonomy with their internal values being embraced by the network. On the other hand, at the same time, film festivals also have been internalizing their values of cultural distinction into the filmmakers’ careers. These two “actors” interact with each other, creating a dynamic in cultural production which is enabled only by and within the film festival network. Elaborating this point, the paper contributes the exploration of how the intersections of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural distinction and Latourian Actor-Network Theory enables film festivals to operate its self-sustainable system and cultural gatekeeping functions in the contemporary context.