In “Il racconto dei festival: storia, archivi, fonti, memorie”, Bologna, 17 December 2024.

The Udine Far East Film Festival (FEFF) is one of the world’s leading venues for the promotion of popular East and Southeast Asian cinema. Established in 1999 as a thematic retrospective led by a provincial film club, FEFF has since grown into an international event that attracts a vast and diverse audience of enthusiasts and film professionals, who view Udine as a launching pad for European markets. In its nearly thirty years of activity, FEFF has been able to intercept and anticipate trends, promote emerging filmmakers or lesser-known cinemas, and contribute to the rediscovery of forgotten films and subgenres. In doing so, it has helped to legitimize and promote East and Southeast Asian film culture on the international stage.
Still “in the making,” since they are intended to hold sources produced by a festival actively operating, the FEFF archives contain a variety of documents that allow for the study of its history and the functioning of the collaborative international networks that enable its activities. The presentation will showcase the initial findings resulting from an ongoing research project conducted on these archives. Specifically, it will focus on the various document types they contain and on strategies for analyzing sources from diverse cultural and linguistic contexts.