ABSTRACT
Film festival research is largely informed by ethnographic methods, guaranteeing access and participation in events defined by their liveness and multi-faceted dimension. By self-reflecting on the experience of conducting fieldwork in Senegal, this chapter invites reflection on the researcher’s role and research methods. In an effort and commitment to contribute to decolonising academia, it identifies three main phases in the research design. These are the researcher’s positionality, their immersion in the film festival, and the collaboration with festival participants and fellow researchers. By reflecting on these three dimensions, this chapter engages with a key research question: how do researchers arrive at film festivals and subsequently move along its circuit, in order to examine them?
