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Imagine Film Festival

film festival

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ2344130 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Imagine Film Festival, formerly Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, also known as Imagine Fantastic Film Festival or simply Imagine, is an annual film festival in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The festival was created in 1991 with a focus mainly on fantasy and horror films.

History

Imagine started out as the "Weekend of Terror". After several years, this weekend turned into a full-blown festival in 1991, titled the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival (AFFF). It showed a wide array of international genre films, not just horror but also science fiction, fantasy, martial arts and anime.

In 2004, the festival hosted the Golden Méliès Gala, awarding the best fantastic European films, in both, features and shorts categories.

In 2009, the festival got a new name: Imagine Film Festival. With the name change, the organization wanted to emphasize that the festival had become more focused on films that cannot be strictly defined as fantasy, horror or science fiction over the years.

In 2013, after many years based at the Kriterion, the festival chose the Eye Film Institute as its home base. During the years at Eye, the festival started adding VR experiences as well as games, under the flag of "Imagine Expanded", and extended its science programme.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Imagine Film Festival” as film festival. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Imagine, Film and Festival.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1991, 2004, 2009, 2013—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1984. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Imagine, Film and Festival providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Imagine Film Festival”, the useful work is to connect “film festival” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2344130. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991, 2004, 2009 and 2013.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Imagine Film Festival”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Imagine Film Festival primary sources, Imagine Film Festival archive and Imagine research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Imagine Film Festival”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Imagine Film Festival” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.