The Online Flaherty Fellowship

Applications for the Fellowships are now closed.

*applications remain open for the UCSC Center for Documentary Arts and Research Flaherty Fellowships Online, see below.

After two successful and invigorating online experiences, we are continuing to shift and experiment with the ways in which we watch films and build community in online formats. We are eager to reimagine the fellowship experience through the online fellowship and to create an accessible and enriching online experience for a global cohort of emerging and mid-career filmmakers, media professionals, and community members to attend the Flaherty Film Seminar online.

The Online Fellowship program is an online-only, expanded experience of the seminar, led by an Online Fellows Coordinator and designed to further your knowledge of cinema through participation in an array of unique activities. Fellows are expected to be available for the seminar four hours a day from Friday, June 16th through Friday, June 23rd.

The online fellowship will have both a synchronous and asynchronous component. Online Fellows will gather once a day on our custom online platform to watch and discuss one program synchronously. Fellows will have access to the full additional programs to watch at their own time throughout the week, as well as access to all the other programs and discussions after the in-person seminar ends.

Online Fellowship Categories

• Professional Development

  The Professional Development Fellowship is designed for emerging or mid-career filmmakers, programmers, writers, scholars, archivists, and media professionals, from the US and abroad. If you have received any Flaherty Fellowship in the past you are not eligible to re-apply. Three spots available.

• Curatorial Fellowship
  Flaherty Curatorial Fellowships are open to emerging/early career curators. The intention is to create a pathway for diverse film and media curators to advance in the field. Three spots available.

• Corrientes Fellowship: The Corrientes Fellowship is open to emerging to mid-level career filmmakers, artists, and film programmers from, or based in, Latin America. Two spots available.

Sponsorship

If you are interested in the online fellowship and have an institution or other funding source that might sponsor you, please reach out to Sarie Horowitz for more details: sarie@theflaherty.org

Sponsored fellowships are guaranteed, whereas applications are subject to eligibility and a competitive selection process.

Azucena Losana
2021 Flaherty Seminar Professional Development Online Fellow

Born and raised in Mexico City in 1977, Azucena lives and works in Mexico City and Buenos Aires. She works in experimental film, installation, and video.

Azucena holds a Multimedia Arts Degree from the National Arts University in Argentina, a Diploma of Audiovisual Preservation and Restoration (DIPRA) from the Film Archive, and has completed the National Image of Argentina (CINAIN) and Claudio Caldini's experimental film workshop.

She received the Third Prize of Arts and New Technologies from the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires and Telefonica, in 2009. She received the e-flux Prize at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen and a special mention by the Black Canvas Festival in Mexico City in 2022. In 2017 she received a Creation Grant from the National Arts Fund in Argentina, and a Art Creators National System Program (SNCA) grant from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) in Mexico.

Our Fellows Coordinator Anisa Hosseinnehzad recently spoke with Azucena about her art practice and Online Fellowship experience:

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your practice! How and when did it start?

My first experience in cinema was with La Trinchera Ensamble in 2004, a film collective from Mexico City that I worked with for several years and learned everything related to analog projections, improvisation, performance, and collective experiences. I moved to Buenos Aires in 2006, at a key moment for the new Argentine experimental film scene. We call it new because it arose from a first generation of experimental filmmakers who produced short films 1960–1980s. Claudio Caldini became a bridge between that generation and this new generation through his experimental film workshop in Buenos Aires. La Trinchera Ensamble allows filmmakers interested in reduced formats to come together and show our work in independent and institutional locations. Through this collective, I started filming on Super 8 and 16mm film, and later developed my own film and worked as a laboratorist at the mythical small gauge lab Arcoiris Super 8. 

What medium you are drawn to most?

I usually work with Super 8 and 16mm film, and sometimes video. I create short films, performances, and installations. I work with film partly because this was the medium used by my generation, but also because the physical components of this material offer an immense playground to explore, and to exercise experiments with the camera, in the lab, and during the screening of the work. Participating in all of the aspects of the making and sharing films has provided a great deal of freedom and independence. I belong to a hybrid generation that has the ambidextrous ability to work with various supports and technologies.

I saw your work 'Feriado’ at the Oberhausen film festival in 2022 where you won the e-flux Prize! Congratulations! Can you tell us about that piece and your process of making it?

In 2019, I was filming in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. I wanted to shoot different panoramic views of the cities' public spaces and peripheries from very tall buildings; like a CCTV camera perspective. I used regular 8mm black and white film on a 16mm camera to experiment with image rhythm arising from the frame jumps, due to the difference of film stock and my homemade film development system.

On that trip, I discovered the big slams of spoken poetry in Brazil and found a lot of young poets with amazing lyrics and performances reciting marginal literature from the peripheries. That’s where I discovered Bruno Negrão. I loved his first-person poetry, spoken in peripheral everyday language. His poem Se jesus fose preto (What if jesus was black) blew my mind–in a few lines he's able to powerfully deconstruct our deepest beliefs, but the musicality of its structure is closely related to the rhythm of the images that I was filming... the repetition of lines... ei meu, ei meu, hey dude, like a clandestine call or an information traficant. It's a caption-grabber tool, in perfect syncronisation with the images of the film, that is corrupting its own format; jumping out of the frame, with the question looping what if? what if?, digging very deep. I contacted Bruno and told him about this collaboration. Luckily he agreed to recite the poem for the film. I recorded electromagnetic noise at these locations to complete the audiovisual composition, and this is the final result. 

What are you up to now?

Two years ago I moved to Tepoztlan, a small town near Mexico City, where, according to our ancestors, the mountains and the sacred caves lead to the heart of the earth, where the ancient gods live. Every rainy season I join a group of mycologists, speleologists, and fungi enthusiasts to learn and record the vast biodiversity in this area. I am stunned by the complexity of the chamber networks, the edible species of fungi, and their coexistence with the plant kingdom. Unfortunately, the young generations of these communities don't carry this ancient knowledge.

As a former Flaherty Fellow, what is the most important part of the Fellowship Experience?

The overall experience was fantastic. Not having information ahead of time about the Seminar, the curator, or the films really worked for me because I was surprised all the time. Janaina's notion of Opacity was present in every program. I particularly loved the films of the Sudanese Film Group. They spoke to the process of making films in Sudan at a time with very few available resources, similar to Latin America. Deanna Bowen was another great discovery for me. I like that she's an interdisciplinary artist and how she is deconstructs and recovers archives, which is important for my work too. Finally, Grace Passô gave me a lot of inspiration and energy, she is a brilliant actor and director. I was very inspired by the poetry from the peripheries. I got enough motivation from her films to finish my short film Feriado.

Can you share a memorable experience from your time as a Flaherty Fellow?

Even though I'm not accustomed to virtual environments, I was really comfortable with the way that the crew managed the Online Fellowship agenda, the meetings, and the entire experience. Sharing a Seminar space with curators, programmers, researchers and other participants from all over the world was new for me, and enriched the experience.

The masterclasses were really important to dig into the filmmaker's process. I particularly enjoyed Deanna’s class because she went through her historical process, and her body of work is congruent and solid. The Sudanese Film Group talk was very touching.

Thank you, Azucena!

The In-person Flaherty Fellowship
(Applications Closed March 31)

Each year, the Flaherty offers fellowships to enable emerging and mid-career filmmakers, media professionals, and community members to attend the Flaherty Film Seminar. The Fellowship program is an expanded experience of the seminar, led by Fellows Coordinators and designed to further understandings of cinema through participation in an array of unique activities. If you are Indigenous to the land you call home or have been historically dispossessed of your land, history, culture, and/or power, we especially encourage you to apply to the Fellowship program.

For the 2023 edition of the Seminar, Queer World-Mending, the Flaherty will welcome an in-person cohort of 25 to 30 fellows to participate in the Seminar program at Skidmore College.

The Fellowship strives to provide more intimate opportunities to engage with and reflect on screened work in conversation with the filmmakers, programmers, your cohort, and other seminar participants. You will have the opportunity to share details of your creative, community, or curatorial practice with one another and self-organize spaces for further conversation.

The Fellowship program will begin with online pre-seminar onboarding sessions led by the Fellowship Coordinator(s). The fellows will convene at Skidmore College on Friday, June 16th, one day before the broader Seminar program begins. Fellows will learn about the history of the Seminar, take part in workshops with Seminar artists, discuss (optional) pre-assigned readings relating to this year’s Seminar theme, and watch and discuss clips of each other’s work. In addition to being fully part of the larger group of Seminar participants, Flaherty Fellows will also take part in private meetings and discussions with featured artists, programmers, and other special guests in attendance. 

Fellowship awardees are invited but not required to assist with various assignments during the Seminar. This includes assisting with administrative tasks, hospitality, or audio recording during certain Seminar discussions. These tasks will be kept to a minimum so as not to interfere with your participation in the Seminar. 

We strive to build community and provide an engaging and fruitful fellowship experience. At the end of the program, all Fellowship awardees will participate in an off boarding session and may choose to submit a final report about their experience and/or participate in an anonymous survey. Fellows’ feedback is instrumental to the continued growth of the fellowship program. 

The weeklong Flaherty Fellowship offers participants an opportunity to form new and potentially long-lasting relationships, ensconced in rich creative inspiration and conversations.