Investigation On Audience Of International Eskisehir Film Festival

Festivals are important events to extent the cinema culture. The film festivals, which are created with the support of various foundations and local administrations, can be formed with various programs. There are lots of national and international film festivals in Turkey. In some of them there are short movies or movie competitions. In Eskisehir, which is a university, town and holding a huge number of students Eskisehir Film Festival is organizing at the first week of the may every year. It is the only international event that is organizing in the name of cinema at the city. Its aim is developing the cinema culture. Festival draws the attention of people living in the city and the youth of the university. The Anadolu University supports organizing of the festival. Program is prepared by the lectures of the faculty of communication science department of cinema and television. At the festival, classics of cinema history, the movies picked from the world festivals, examples of animation, examples of movies shot at the last year of Turkish cinema, and short films are screened. During the festival international and national directors, actors, and academicians meet with the audiences. These audiences can also be people living in the city, like the students will work at the cinema industry. During the festival there are documents about the festival program and at the end of the festival there are some essays or article and news published about the festival on press but the scientific researches are inadequate about festivals. There is any research to define the festival audiences and gain the understanding of how they make their choices. During the Eskisehir Film Festival, which is maintaining 10 years, a survey was carried out to realize how the audiences make their choices. In 500 questionnaires answered and the point of view of the spectators and their choices was tried to understand. In the concept of that survey all of the documents of the festivals were assessed so the data gained from the questionnaires helped to understand the reasons of why spectators join the festival, in what circumstances spectators choice the movie and which parts draw an attention at the festival.