ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which festivals are not only exhibition and distribution platforms, but play an active role in shaping the very landscape of world cinema, and by implication our understanding of it. The primacy of geopolitical agendas continued in the post-war era, with the Cold War playing a key role in the formation of new festivals. The global change that characterized the 1960s, radically transforming social relationships as well as the geopolitical and cinematic maps of the world, also profoundly affected film festival history. The most important moment for our context of world cinema is the 1980s, when festivals spread over the entire globe, diversify, and become institutionalized, forming an international film festival network. The chapter focuses on one such festival, the Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF), initially a tiny singular event that has evolved into the most important platform for the cinema of Southeastern Europe.
