Management of physical and online film festival

This diploma thesis is dedicated to the management of film festivals and compares the course of making physical and online events. The work describes and analyzes in detail all processes and changes, which accompany the festival’s transformation from physical to online form. The Sars-Co-V-2 pandemic (covid or Covid-19) is the first global crisis that disrupted everyday life of the world population as well as all sectors of global economy and culture. There is no precedent that could be used as a comparison to Covid-19. The impact to the entire cultural sector and specifically to the audiovisual segment is unparalleled. The theoretical part of this thesis describes the most extreme past events that have infamously affected renowned cultural institutions and events. This part also focuses on the consequences and how the affected subjects responded. The thesis’ practical part uses materials from structured and half-structured interviews and publicly available information to map the real impact of the pandemic on institutions that are partially or fully involved in film festivals’ organisation. This thesis also describes – on the example of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – the specific changes that the organization and its diverse departments had to adopt in connection with the shift from physical to online space. Aim of this thesis is to identify the effects events such as pandemic have on film festivals and to predict how this will be reflected in their future activities. In the conclusion I intend to answer the question of how these unprecedented changes will influence the whole film industry.