ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the current state of film festival scholarship, particularly in relation to Asian and Korean film festival studies, and explores the aims, objectives, questions, and contents of this book. Despite the global prominence and popularity of film festivals, film festival scholarship is still quite young and was developed mostly in the field of film studies in the new millennium. It has only become popular in area studies over the past few years.
The relationship between Korean cinema and film festivals has rarely been discussed, despite the fact that Korean cinema has mostly been introduced to global audiences through international film festivals since the 1950s. Korean cinema has been making large waves in international film festivals for well over a decade now, and this book sees it as necessary to research Korean film and festivals in three ways: (1) The significant role of film festivals—both domestic and international—in the production, distribution, marketing and reception of Korean cinema; (2) to place Korean cinema within the internationally growing cutting-edge research field of Film Festival Studies; (3) to address the lack of research and work on Korean film festivals in comparison to other international film festivals.
