Conversation: Film Festival Accountability, Apr. 3, 12PM ET

Panel discussion with Orwa Nyrabia, Jemma Desai and Chris Boeckmann

Click here for the registration link.

Film festivals, as they currently exist, are necessarily limited curated events. When it comes to programming, some film festivals explicitly address the ethical and political stakes of their selections, while others defer to the belief that a festival is merely a marketplace of ideas, and that limiting a selection based on the ideology of a film is tantamount to censorship. When should programmers resist market structures or use them as justifications? When should they play into those structures for the purpose of entertainment? How are the relationships between filmmakers, the market and audiences shifting?

Distribution Advocates is holding space to discuss how film festival programmers should, can and have been accountable as gatekeepers for wider film distribution. Though this conversation follows Sundance's response to their programming of films like Jihad Rehab and Cannes’ stated barring of the Russian delegation, which has been widely covered by the trades, we seek to question the responsibility of all top tier market festivals.

Join us on Sunday, April 3, at 9AM PT / 12PM ET / 6PM CET, for a virtual conversation with Jemma Desai, Orwa Nyrabia, and Chris Boeckmann, moderated by Distribution Advocates member Abby Sun, and followed by an audience Q&A.

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Jemma Desai is based in London. Her practice engages with film programming through research, writing, performance, as well as informally organised settings for deep study, and her work experience spans distribution, cinema exhibition and festival programming. Her most recent body of work is "This work isn't for Us", an autoethnographic exploration of institutional racism in the UK arts sector. She has previously worked at  the BFI and British Council and is interested in the ways imperialism replicates itself through institutionalised work processes, translating into the ways we relate to one another through art. She was Head of Programming at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival in 2021 is and is currently the chair of the feature film programming committee at Blackstar Film Festival for the 2022 edition. She is also a practice based PhD candidate  at Central School of Speech and Drama thinking through practices of freedom in cultural production.  She has written for ART Papers, Sight & Sound, SEEN, ARTWORK, BFI Online and Dazed & Confused.

Orwa Nyrabia is the Artistic Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the world’s leading documentary film and new media festival. Before IDFA, Orwa co-founded Syria’s first independent film festival, DOX BOX, with Diana El Jeiroudi, and was a producer with credits that include Republic of Silence (Diana El Jeiroudi, Venice 2021), Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi, Venice 2020), Silvered Water (Ossama Mohammad and W. Bedirxan, Cannes 2014), Return to Homs (Talal Derki, IDFA 2013) and Dolls, A Woman from Damascus (Diana El Jeiroudi, IDFA 2007) a.o. His work was recognized by awards such as the George Polk Award, the HRW Courage in Filmmaking Award, and the Katrin Cartlidge Award, a.o. An actor by training (Gate of the Sun, Yousri Nassrallah, Cannes 2004), he started his film career as 1st AD of Ossama Mohammad (Sacrifices, Cannes 2002) and worked as a journalist at the same time until he co-founded his first company in Damascus 2002, then followed up as he moved to Cairo and then to Berlin where he co-founded No Nation Films in 2014. 

Chris Boeckmann is a story consultant, writer, and programmer from Missouri. He is working on Subject, a research project looking at the long-term repercussions nonfiction films have on their participants.