Queer Film Festivals and Urban Space: Reclaiming the City

This timely and innovative book argues that queer film festivals reclaim urban space for queer women and other marginalised queer subjects through the mobilisation of both material and diegetic space.

It is a response to the loss of queer urban venues and community spaces across across many parts of the Global North and a claim for the political potential of queer film festivals in the context of late-stage capitalism. Drawing from critical events studies, film and film festival scholarship, archival research, cultural geography, and research in the creative industries, the book deploys an interdisciplinary arsenal of tools in order to understand the complexity of festival space. Covering the period from 1980 to the present, the volume posits original case studies of two long-running festivals, as well as analysis of ephemeral, grassroots events. This thorough and critical exploration offers significant insight into the strategies deployed by queer film festivals to carve out queer geographies in the city, and the potential of event-driven place-making to construct alternative morphologies and more equitable approaches to urban space.

This volume will be of pivotal interest to students, scholars, and academics of critical event and festival studies, film and film festival studies, cultural, creative, and media industries, cultural geography, sociology, and urban studies, as well as those with an interest in these areas more generally.

Theresa Heath is a Vice Chancellor Independent Research Fellow at Loughborough University London, specialising in queer, feminist and disability film festivals and cinemas; festivals, events and urban space; disabled access in the creative and cultural industries, and disability activism. Theresa has a PhD in Film Studies from King’s College London where she researched the relationship between queer film festivals and urban space in the context of increasingly neoliberal approaches to art and culture. She holds an MA in English Literature 1850-Present, also from King’s, where she researched queer women’s writing on the city.