This thesis investigates programming practices at the Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF), a state-sanctioned cultural event situated within China’s complex interplay of political agendas and cinephilic culture. Drawing from Bourdieu’s field theory and the concept of cultural intermediaries, the research positions festival programmers as key agents negotiating various forms of capital within a contested discursive space. Employing narrative analysis, the study explores how programmers articulate their agency and mediate competing interests through three narrative devices: self-presentation, strategic narration, and community engagement. The analysis reveals that programming at BJIFF is fundamentally narrative-based, shaped through relational storytelling practices that negotiate professional identities, aesthetic values, and institutional constraints. Programmers strategically navigate between political agendas and artistic autonomy, using “encoded” programming to embed layered meanings and maintain artistic integrity under state oversight. Furthermore, it is argued that BJIFF programmers actively foster cinephile communities, extending festival impact beyond immediate temporal and geographic boundaries, thus cultivating alternative discursive spaces within the state-sanctioned cultural field. This study extends scholarship on global festival models, challenging Eurocentric perspectives by illuminating internal hierarchies and localized adaptations within state-sanctioned film festivals. It also demonstrates how programmers function as cultural intermediaries who mediate and translate competing forms of capital, contributing significantly to broader discourses of cinephilia and cultural landscape in contemporary China.
Mediating cinephilia and political agendas: programming the state-sanctioned Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF)
Li, J. (Author). 15 Jan 2026
Student thesis: PhD Thesis