Glamorous Work: Notes from the Red Carpet

Abstract

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) attracts filmmakers and film audiences from around the world each year. In this article, I take an ethnographic approach to understand the way film festival organizers bring groups together and act as intermediaries in negotiating the value of particular films and cinema. I argue that film festival organizers engage in glamorous work—a strategy that employs visual cues and artful mediation to cultivate a sense of the extraordinary while obscuring the risky nature of film festival organization. This article considers the risks involved in film festival organization and the way glamorous work attempts to alleviate these risks.