• Sten-Kristian Saluveer Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo

• Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director

The past decade has witnessed a dramatic transformation from national to transnational mode of how cinema is being produced, exhibited and consumed globally. This exponentially escalating process can be witnessed most clearly at three levels: the transnationalization and proliferation of the international film festival spectacle globally and in Asia, the increase in the number and prevalence of film markets and professional trade events, and lastly the flourishing of film co-productions pooling talent, finance and audiences across borders. Accompanying and driving the former three has been the growth of the size and the importance of the “international film industry circuit” of global film professionals that blends “local and the global, the city and the nation, and the space of the media with the place of the event in a network configuration” (DeValck 2007).

The PhD thesis draws by the the recent emergence of the discipline film festival studies, by providing a pioneering look behind the scenes of the international film festival circuit and the inner mechanics between the red carpet spectacle of the film festival, and the forces of capital and practice within the film and content markets that supply the festival with talent, content and finance. Specifically the work examines the historical, technological and cultural forces behind the transnationalization of the film festival and the market, the actors, networks and practices of the film industry circuit, the dichotomous relationship in transforming cultural capital to fiscal capital between the red carpet and the market, as well as cosmopolitan identity building activities in the global film community through the technology of assemblage of international co-productions.