About the research project

This project was submitted in response to the New Frontiers in Research Fund Special Call in 2021 ‘Innovative Approaches to Research in the Pandemic Context’, from the Government of Canada. The call was triggered by the context of the global pandemic of COVID-19. Whilst acknowledging the evident disruption the pandemic has had on researchers, particularly in community and field-based research, the call shared an optimistic view of the opportunity brought by the pandemic to “explore new directions in research methodologies”. The goal of the rapid response then, as stated in the website, was to “accelerate the exploration of new approaches and the development and testing of new directions in research methodologies”, supporting “new ways of conducting community and field-based research”.

Funding Body: New Frontiers in Research Fund, Government of Canada

Project Title: Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World

Amount: $237,779 [NFRFR-2021-00161]

By September 2021, when the notice of intent to apply was submitted, both Prof Sheila Petty (NPI) and Dr Estrella Sendra (CO-PI), had participated in a number of academic and public events reflecting on the film festival sector, and the need for practitioners and researchers to decolonise themselves. In September 2020, Estrella Sendra participated with the paper ‘Immersive Methodology and Collaboration in Film Festival Research’ in the online conference ‘Contours of Film Festivals Research and Methodologies’, co-organised by Dr Dorota Ostrowska (Birkbeck University, UK), and Dr Tamara Falicov (University of Kansas, USA), whose proceedings will be published in a forthcoming book with Amsterdam University Press. It was in the context of this conference that Sheila Petty and Estrella Sendra met and exchanged communication about a shared interest in self-reflexivity and decolonisation in research methods.

Both Sheila Petty and Estrella Sendra had participated in the special dossier on film festivals and the first and second waves of COVID-19, co-edited by Marijke de Valck and Antoine Damiens in NECSUS, the European Journal of Media Studies, with a review of Vues d’Afrique (Petty, 2020), an African film festival in Canada, and of the Festival International du Film Documentaire de Saint-Louis (Feal and Sendra, 2021), an African documentary film festival in Senegal, co-authored with Laura Feal, a Spanish journalist based in Senegal with active engagement in festivals and cultural industries. Estrella Sendra had further joined forces with Prof Lindiwe Dovey to co-write the chapter-manifesto ‘Toward Decolonized Film Festival Worlds’ (Dovey and Sendra, 2023), published in the book Rethinking Film Festivals in the Pandemic Era and After, edited by Marijke de Valck and Antoine Damiens (2023), with international contributors from the Film Festival Research Network. Lindiwe Dovey was then the leader of the ERC-funded research project ‘African Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies’, producing inspiring work committed to decolonising academia.

Estrella Sendra was invited to present on “Festival Films Femmes Afrique”at the June 24-26, 2021 virtual symposium: Transnational Screen Media Practices: Safeguarding Cultural Heritage, at the University of Regina; co-organized by Sheila Petty with Dr. Charity Marsh, Director, Humanities Research Institute. This symposium and film screenings brought together scholars, media artists, cultural practitioners, industry funders and policy makers from different areas of the world grappling with common issues around the safeguarding, presentation, and documentation of living cultural heritage in the domain of screen media. The HRI Barbara Powell Lecture and keynote address, “Revitalisation de la langue Amazighe/ Revitalization of the Amazigh Language” was presented LIVE in French via Zoom by the distinguished professor, Dr. Ahmed Boukouss, Recteur at Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, Rabat, Morocco, on Thursday, June 24th at 10am (CST).

When Sheila Petty saw the New Frontiers in Research Fund funding call in July 2021, she contacted Estrella Sendra and other collaborators and partners in her Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Development Grant, “Film festivals and transnational flows of living cultural heritage: Africa in the world”, hoping to continue these discussions and make further contributions, through action. The submitted project, entitled ‘Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World’ would design and trial a research method, a two-part Decolonial Test, that would begin offering insights on the ways in which research might be decolonising.

COVID-19 has had clear disruptive effects on global film festivals, with postponed editions and cancellations. Yet, it has also fostered a reflexive environment where problematic hierarchical issues have become productively salient. This project proposes a first step in the process of decolonizing film festival research by bringing together an international team of African film festival researchers to investigate methods to decolonize festival research.

The team has been designing and trialling an innovative and accessible two-part Decolonial Test, able to:

1. Identify potential unconscious bias in the research design itself; and
2. Develop a series of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion variables that can foster inclusive, dialogical and polycentric ways of knowledge production and dissemination which will in turn ensure ownership of the process for communities concerned.

Test 1 has now been created, trialled, and polished to help students and researchers in the research design, in preparation for fieldwork and conducting interviews with festival participants. The test seeks to increase self-reflexivity from the very beginning of the research process as a first step towards decolonizing research practices. These are a set of questions to think about, including issues around positionality, access, multilingualism, dialogue, engagement in reciprocity practices, diversity, pluriversality and inclusivity of knowledge production and dissemination. The researcher should note that this is just a starting point in the research process, which should be followed by further dialogue and exchange with the participants. We recommend researchers to engage in peer feedback, asking someone else in the team (if the research is led by a group of researchers) or in a related research field (in case the research project is individual) to ask them the questions in this Decolonial Test: Part 1, and reflecting together about the answers. Following this, the lead researcher should design a fieldwork plan, with the key contacts, spaces, resources, and aspects to consider when being on the field, with reference to both the questions in the Decolonial Test: Part 1 and Part 2.

Test 2 has now been designed, trialled and polished as an interview guide for students and researchers interested in understandings and practices of decolonisation in the context of film festivals. It should be conceived as a flexible guide, to be adapted to the different contexts of research. When designing and conducting the interview, we recommend taking into account the relationship with the interviewee, trying to ensure care and safety in the process of learning through listening.

The follow-up focus group is an opportunity to unpack further some of the answers given to the Part 2 Decolonial Test, and to emphasise the dialogical dimension of this research method, conducted in conversation with research participants, following the festival dates.

Researchers are now working on the research outputs of this project, reflecting critically about the research design, identifying strengths and limitations experienced throughout the process.