Last May, Estrella Sendra (CMCI, KCL) participated in the International Documentary Film Festival StLouis' DOCS as a jury member, being the whole jury presided by renown Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Sene Absa. The festival is a meeting point for documentary filmmakers, cinephiles and professionals of the film circle in Senegal and Africa, offering a wide range of free screenings followed by discussions across a wide range of spaces, as this map shows.
The invitation was motivated by Estrella Sendra's research fieldwork for the purpose of the 'Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World', a project funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, Government of Canada. StLouis' DOCS is one of the partner festivals. Following the research fieldwork in 2022 led by our research collaborator, Laura Feal, a journalist and cultural manager from Hahatay Association based in Gandiol (Saint-Louis, Senegal), both CMCI researchers Estrella Sendra and Ana Camila Esteves, postdoctoral research associate in the project, joined Laura Feal to conduct fieldwork in 2023, observing decolonial curatorial practices and approaches at the festival. The festival took place from 2 to 6 of May, with a remarkable audience-centred curatorial approach, an aspect already analysed by Laura Feal and Estrella Sendra in the review of the festival that took place during the pandemic, in 2020, published in NECSUS, and entitled 'Nearby the Festival International du Film Documentaire de Saint-Louis: Rethinking proximity in times of COVID-19'.
Jury members delivering the awards at the closing ceremony of the Festival StLouis' DOCS on 6 May 2023 (Photo: Laura Feal, 2023)
Acting as a jury member was a great opportunity for Estrella Sendra to join jury deliberations and participate in discussions around taste, quality and value in film festivals, examining what are 'festival films' and how these are evaluated with relation to different contexts. It was also a form of collaboration between a research partner (a festival being researched) and a researcher (the person researching the festival), thus engaging in a reciprocity practice which is mutually beneficial. Estrella Sendra is very grateful for the visibility and acknowledgement this opportunity has given to her. See the full programme of the festival here.
This opportunity has been possible thanks to the Government of Canada's New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF).
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