New publication on the circulation of documentary films in minoritized languages

Palgrave Macmillan has just published a new volume that focuses on the international circuit of documentary film festivals to analyze its development and its impact on the visibility, distribution and accessibility of films and to explore methodologies with which to conduct research in this environment. Edited by Aida Vallejo (UPV / EHU) and Ezra Winton (Lakehead University, Canada), the book Documentary Film Festivals Vol. 1 Methods, History, Politics, brings together various contributions by researchers from different centers and disciplines and among which are several members and collaborators of the Audiovisual Studies Research Group.

Written by Antía López Gómez, Aida Vallejo, Mª Soliña Barreiro and Amanda Paz Alencar, this chapter argues that research about minority-language films can be highly enriched if focused on the documentary genre. In opposition to the artificial imposition of dubbing practices, documentary films favour subtitling practices, providing the means for experiencing cultural diversity in multilingual contexts in a natural way, especially in the festival context, where subtitling is the norm.

Based on the R+D Project «Towards the European Digital Space. The Role of Small Cinemas in Original Version» (MINECO CSO2012-35784), a study of the institutional policies carried out by the European Union to foster and preserve linguistic diversity in the audio-visual realm , this chapter looks at film festivals that specialize in documentary film or minority languages, in order to interrogate their role in the visibility and circulation of cinemas featuring minority languages.