THE NECESSARY IMAGE
THE 64TH ROBERT FLAHERTY FILM SEMINAR
JUNE 16 – 22, 2018, COLGATE UNIVERSITY, HAMILTON, NY
PROGRAMMER: KEVIN JEROME EVERSON AND GREG DE CUIR JR
Contemporary society is suffused with images – we do not need to see them all. The necessary images are those in the service of building a better, more humane, more open world. What is really good is not a commodity. Cinema of real value is often considered imperfect or poor. Those who make such films and videos operate against the flow of popular taste and concern themselves with the ethics of their aesthetics.The 64th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar will highlight artists of this type in an effort to locate and elaborate on the necessary image. What is really needed is an engaged, benevolent gaze. In organizing this year’s Seminar we are concerned with that gaze as mediated by the film and video camera – and not with what it captures but rather what it constructs.A necessary image is one in which the lens is a scalpel, not a paintbrush, in which the maker is an artisan, not an aesthete, in which the curator is a polemicist, not a prospector. The necessary image is the elemental component of a necessary cinema. Such a cinema requires a viewer that is active, not passive. There is work to be done. What tools will you bring?
2018 Seminar Programmers - Kevin Jerome Everson & Greg de Cuir Jr.
Kevin Jerome Everson is an artist/filmmaker born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. He has made 8 feature-length films and over 120 short films. His films and artworks have been widely shown throughout the world and recognized with many awards. Everson is Professor of Art at University of Virginia.
Greg de Cuir Jr. is a writer/translator/curator born and raised in Los Angeles, California. His essays have been published in many journals and anthologies and he has organized film/video programs for a number of institutions. De Cuir lives and works in Belgrade (Serbia) where he is the selector for the festivals Alternative Film/Video and Beldocs.
Thank you to our major Seminar funders: The Ford Foundation – JustFilms, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Johnson Family Foundation, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The William H. Donner Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts
Thank you to our Seminar grantee partners: COUSIN, Princess Grace Foundation-USA, and the Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Initiative