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The 70th Flaherty Film Seminar 
Onward!

Artists

^Artist Present at Seminar in NYC

**Fellowship Program Artists

 

ACTIVIST ARCHIVISTS** 

The Activist Archivists is a collective of  media archivists and academics utilizing all  available digital tools to support individuals  and communities in voicing their concerns and  opinions. They share knowledge and provide  assistance with archiving and preservation.  They want to improve the discoverability of  media content and support the use of digital  media as evidence and as a creative resource.  They also aim to ensure that the rights and  intentions of media creators are respected,  preserving social movement legacies. They  see the power of archives to inform and  inspire action, to record the histories of social  movements and change, to document abuses  of power, and to protect activists on the  ground. Activist Archivists is committed to  participation, collaboration, and transparency  in their desire to help archivists and institutions  become active participants in, rather than  passive aggregators of, the global narrative.  The core team includes Howard Besser, Dan  Erdman, Kelly Haydon, Marie Lascu, Lindy  Leong, Yvonne Ng, and Rufus de Rham.


AKRAM ZAATARI** 

Akram Zaatari is an artist who lives and works  in Beirut. He has been exploring Lebanon’s  postwar condition through collecting testimonies and various documents, notably  on the mediation of territorial conflicts and  wars through television, and the logic of Resistance in the context of the current  geographical division of the Middle East. Co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation  (Beirut), he based his recent work on collecting, studying, and archiving a particular  collection on the Middle East, notably studying  the work of Lebanese photographer Hashem  el Madani (1928-) as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices. In addition to his work as an artist, Zaatari is  also the curator of the Radical Closure box set,  which includes his work In This House.


ALEJANDRO DE LOS RIOS | NOVAC** 

Alejandro de los Rios is a Cuban-Venezuelan  filmmaker based in New Orleans and has  directed documentaries, short films, music  videos and commercials. He’s served as  the Virtuous Video Producer for NOVAC  since 2022. Alejandro served as the  Cinematography and Editing Mentor for  NOVAC’s Community Documentary Co-Hort,  which produced short films that won Audience  Awards at the 2024, 2023 and 2022 New  Orleans Film Festivals, as well as a Special  Jury Mention in 2024. His short film, Game  Day Ritual, was a 2024 Louisiana Film Prize  finalist and won Best Editing at the 2024  UNO Film Festival. His credits also include  “Distant Mardi Gras” & “Different Mardi Gras”  documenting Covid’s impact on New Orleans,  its artists and culture bearers; “9 for No. 9,” a  documentary series on NFL quarterback Drew  Brees; “m.a.m.i.” a sci-fi short directed under  the mentorship of Werner Herzog. Raised  outside Washington D.C., he studied writing at  Ithaca College and then worked as a freelance  journalist writing for ESPN the Magazine, VICE,  the Associated Press, Deadspin and others.


ALEX RIVERA** 

Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker  whose work explores themes of globalization,  migration, and technology. His first feature, a  cyberpunk thriller set in Mexico, ‘Sleep Dealer,’  won multiple awards at Sundance and Berlin.  Rivera’s second feature, a documentary/ scripted hybrid set in an immigrant detention  center, ‘The Infiltrators,’ won the NEXT:  Audience Award and the Innovator Award  at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, was  released theatrically in the U.S., and is  currently being developed as a scripted series  by Blumhouse. Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur  Fellow, a Sundance Fellow, and was The  Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He  studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los  Angeles.


ANAHITA RAZMI 

Anahita Razmi is a visual artist working with  installation, moving image, photography,  objects, and performance. Often using her  German Iranian background as a reference,  her practice explores contextual, geographical,  and ideological shifts – with a focus on  shifts between an ‘East’ and a ‘West’. She is  interested in a fluid, transcultural approach  to contemporary art and its histories and  references and in work that is producing  testing grounds for possibilities of import/ export, hybrid identities, and the constructions  & ambiguities of cultural representation.


ANGELA PARK, NORBERT SHIEH |  VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS** 

Visual Communications (VC) is the first non profit organization in the US dedicated to the  honest and accurate portrayals of the Asian  Pacific American peoples, communities, and  heritage through the media arts. VC was  created in 1970 with the understanding that  media and the arts are important vehicles to  organize and empower communities, build  connections between peoples and generations  through the development of AAPI film, video,  and media. The organization has created  award-winning productions, nurtured and  given voice to our youth and seniors, promoted  new artistic talent, presented new cinema, and  preserved our visual history.


ANNE DE MARE^ 

Anne de Mare is a multiple award-winning  filmmaker and recipient of a MacArthur  Foundation Media & Journalism Grant. Her  feature films as Director/Producer include  the Emmy Award-winning The Homestretch (Independent Lens) about three teens  experiencing homelessness in inner-city  Chicago; Capturing the Flag about voting  rights in the 2016 presidential election; and  the festival favorite Asparagus! Stalking  the American Life about farmers in rural  western Michigan. Her short works include  This Is Where I Learned Not To Sleep (SIMA  Humanitas Award) about the intersection of  law enforcement and domestic violence and  the stop-motion animated short The Girl with  the Rivet Gun (Black Maria Jury Award) about  women workers during WWII. She worked as  a Co-Producer on the Peabody Award-winning  Deej (America Reframed) directed by Robert  Rooy. She has been a Sundance Fellow and  an Associate Artist with Kartemquin Films. 


ASIM ABDULAZIZ AHMED** 

Asim Abdulaziz Ahmed is a Yemeni filmmaker,  visual artist, and producer. In 2021, Asim  directed his first short film 1941, which was  exhibited at the 12th Berlin Biennale for  Contemporary Art in 2022 and at the VA  Museum in London in 2023. Asim served as  the art director of the first Yemeni feature film  to be selected at the Berlinale Film Festival  2023, The Burdened (2023). His work has  also been featured in The Washington Post,  ArtNews, i-D, and Hypebeast. Asim has  been awarded various grants, including an  AFAC Artist Support Grant in 2020, which  helped him develop his photography project  Homesick, and the 2021 Masarat grant from  the British Council for his first experimental  short film, 1941, as well as a Comra Academy  grant for development for his current short  film, I Broke a Vase.


CAMILLE BILLOPS 

Camille Billops (1933-2019) was a fearless  filmmaker, artist, sculptor, historian, archivist,  and staunch supporter of Black art and  artists. Billops came into her own within  the converging contexts of the 1960s civil  and human rights struggles, New York’s  emerging Black artists movement, and her  personal struggles for affirmation. Her work is  autobiographical, interpretive, and challenging.  Without apology, she successfully drew from  her life’s experiences, her education, and her  observations of the world around her to carve  out a space for her voice to be heard. She and  her husband James made their loft in SoHo  a hub for artistic collaborations, collecting  thousands of books, documents, photographs,  and ephemera related to Black culture. They  held salons with Black artists, performers, and  musicians, and recorded more than 1,200 oral  histories, which were published in an annual  journal called Artist and Influence. Camille Billops was a Guest Artist at the 1988,  1992, and 1995 Seminars.


CARLTON JONES, LOUIS MASSIAH |  SCRIBE VIDEO CENTER** 

Carlton Jones is a skilled and multi-talented  videographer, digital photographer and  lighting technician who has worked in the  broadcast TV, film and as an educator with  proven creative abilities from filming to  producing meaningful videos. Also, he has  

been Scribe-based for 25 years and steeped  in the tea of documentary expression  towards community-oriented videos and  photographic documentation images that  lend a hand in telling the experiences and  stories for nonprofit corporations, educational  communities, businesses serving people,  community organizations, and individuals. 

Louis Massiah worked on the team that  produced The Taking of One Liberty Place  (Scribe Video Center, 1987) in Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania. He is a documentary filmmaker  and the founder/director of Scribe Video  Center in Philadelphia. His innovative  approach to documentary filmmaking and  community media have earned him numerous  honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship  (1996-2001), two Rockefeller/Tribeca  fellowships, and a Pew Fellowship in the  Arts. His award-winning documentaries, The  Bombing of Osage Avenue (1986), W.E.B.  Du Bois – A Biography in in Four Voices  (1996), two films for the Eyes on the Prize  II series (1987), and A is for Anarchist, B is  for Brown (2002), have been broadcast on  PBS and screened at festivals and museums  throughout the US, Europe, and Africa. 


CAULEEN SMITH^**  

Cauleen Smith is a filmmaker and artist.  With a BA in cinema from San Francisco  State University (1991) and an MFA in  filmmaking from the University of California 

Los Angeles (1998), her interdisciplinary  work expands from histories and practices  of experimental film, including structuralism,  Third World cinema, and science fiction.  Through immersive installations, moving image works, sculpted objects, and textiles,  she engages with non-Western cosmologies,  Afro-diasporic histories, Black cultural icons,  real and speculative utopias, and, in her words,  “the everyday possibilities of the imagination.”  

Cauleen Smith was a Guest Artist at the 2018  Seminar, The Necessary Image, programmed  by Kevin Jerome Everson & Greg de Cuir Jr. Her  work was first shown at the seminar in 1992.


CHARLES RABOTEAU, GAIL LONEY,  JACQUELINE WIGGINS, MARCUS  RIVERA, TINAMARIE RUSSELL, WILLIAM  MICHAEL | SCRIBE VIDEO CENTER** 

Scribe Video Center was founded in 1982 as a  place where emerging and experienced media  artists could gain access to the tools and  knowledge of video making and work together  in a supportive environment. Scribe provides  training in all aspects of film, video and audio  production. We also offer classes in computer based interactive media to individuals and  community organizations as well. We give  emerging and mid-level video makers the  skills and opportunity to use video and film as  tools for self-expression and for representing  and supporting their communities. In the  three decades since its inception, Scribe has  established eight ongoing programs designed  to meet the needs of the general public and  media artists. 


DAVID MARK GREAVES^  

David Mark Greaves has an award-winning  career that spans filmmaking, publishing,  and corporate management. As a filmmaker  with his father William Greaves, he worked  as cinematographer and/or editor on the  documentaries From These Roots (about  the Harlem Renaissance), Nationtime Gary:  the First Black Political Convention, Voice  of La Raza with Anthony Quinn, The Fight  of the Century: Ali/Frazier, and the famed  feature film, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm:  Take 1. Significantly, he was one of the  original cameramen during the 1972 shoot  for Once Upon a Time in Harlem. In 1996  he founded DBG Media and the award winning independent newspaper Our Time  Press. As a journalist and writer, he has won  numerous awards from the Independent Press  Association and the New York Association of  Black Journalists, including First Place awards  for investigative reporting, in-depth reporting,  and personal commentary, among them.


HASKELL WEXLER 

Haskell Wexler is the two-time Academy  Award–winning cinematographer behind  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Bound for  Glory. The 1969 film Medium Cool, which he  wrote, directed, and shot, was selected for  preservation by the Library of Congress in  2003.


IGNACIO AGÜERO 

Born in 1952, in Santiago, Chile. Agüero  studied architecture and then went into film  studies the year after the military coup, when  all the filmmakers went into exile. He made  his first films under the Pinochet dictatorship,  up to One Hundred Children Waiting for a  Train. During all those years he worked in  advertising, until he co-directed the Franja  del No, a television program of the opposition  parties to Pinochet that defeated him in the  1988 plebiscite. His line of work as an artist  has been mainly as the author of documentary  films, but he has also made telefilms and has  been an actor in numerous films, including  several by Raúl Ruiz. Retrospectives of his  films have been held in various countries,  such as Mexico, Spain, Peru, Argentina (at  BAFICI), Bolivia, New Zealand, and France.  He has received numerous awards including  the Grand Prix at FIDMarseille in 2016 and  2019 and also best Latin American film at  the Mar del Plata Festival in 2019. He is  a film professor at the University of Chile  and participates in the Zéro en Conduite  organization doing film workshops for children.


JAMES BLUE 

James Blue (1930-1980) was a groundbreaking filmmaker, as well as  educator, actor, avid film historian, and  advocate of nonfiction experimentation and  the democratization of media. James worked  as a maker of the public television series  The Invisible City: Houston’s Housing Crisis,  Part 2: Messages (Southwest Alternative  Media Project, 1979). He collaborated with  nonprofessional actors to produce The Olive  Trees of Justice (1962). He created the  pretense it was about the wine business,  when it was an anti-colonialist narrative about  liberation struggles. Smuggled to France,  it won the Critics Prize at Cannes. He later  won the first Ford Foundation grant awarded  to a filmmaker. His other films include The  March (1963-64) and A Few Notes on Our  Food Problem (1968). He worked with  anthropologist David MacDougall at Rice  University and founded the Southwest  Alternative Media Project (SWAMP) in  Houston. He later joined the faculty of the  Center for Media Study at SUNY Buffalo. 


JAMES BLUE WITH ADELE NAUDE  SANTOS SOUTH WEST ALTERNATIVE  MEDIA PROJECT** 

Internationally acclaimed filmmaker and  educator James Blue and founding director Ed  Hugetz founded SWAMP in 1977. With initial  financial support of Houston philanthropists  John and Dominique de Menil, SWAMP  became the first Texas independent nonprofit  organization focused on the citizen filmmaker.  SWAMP is committed to Texas film and video  art and independent media artists. SWAMP  works to develop and expand audiences for  artistic voices that reflect, celebrate, and  examine the cultural, social, and political  diversity in Texas. It has supported the work  of noted filmmakers Richard Linklater, Robert  Rodriguez, and Jane Campion, and helped  Texas filmmakers receive over $2 million  to support non-commercial filmmaking. It  offers professional development workshops,  after-school programs, summer film classes,  special screenings, fiscal sponsorship, grant  opportunities, collaborative events, and  other initiatives to promote the creation  and appreciation of film and new media as  art forms chronicling Houston’s diverse  multicultural community.


JAZMIN GARCÍA** 

Jazmin Garcia is a Director and cinephile based  in Los Angeles. She has been developing her  body of work through music videos and short  documentaries.Her work explores themes of  immigration and cultural assimilation, using  family histories and her own experience as  a first generation Mexican-Guatemalan American to weave intimate stories of trauma,  magic, amor, and the perseverance of hope. Her  short films evoke moments of timeless beauty,  reveal the sweetness in individual struggle, lend  visibility to, and inspire those whose stories are  so often left out of the picture.


JEANNE KELLER | NEW ORLEANS VIDEO  ACCESS CENTER (NOVAC)** 

Jeanne Keller was a part of the team of VISTA  volunteers that made Must I Pay the Rent?  (New Orleans Video Access Center, 1975).  NOVAC was a VISTA project affiliated with  the New Orleans Legal Aid Center, which  produced educational videos for distribution  via the new cable access channel in New  Orleans. NOVAC was dedicated to using video  as a social action and educational tool for the  low-income community in the city. A video  Keller co-produced at NOVAC with Kath Quinn  and Casey Caldwell, Rape in New Orleans,  part of the NOVAC “Survival Information  Television” project, won an award for Best  Documentary from the New Orleans Press  Club, a surprising honor in those early days  for a community-based cable access team. 


JOCELYNE SAAB** 

Jocelyne Saab (Lebanon/France) was an  trailblazing artist, photographer, filmmaker,  producer, and journalist born in Beirut in 1948.  She is considered a pioneer of Lebanese  cinema. Her filmmaking practice focussed on  the disadvantaged—from displaced people  to exiled fighters, cities at war, and a Fourth World without a voice. Her work is grounded  in representations of historic violence and an  awareness of the actions and images required  to document and counteract it. Saab studied  at Saint-Joseph University (Beirut) and  received a BScEcon from Sorbonne University  (Paris), before being invited by poet and artist  Etel Adnan to contribute as a journalist to  As-Safa newspaper. In 1973 Saab became a  reporter for French television, covering the  Lebanese War from her home country for  fifteen years. Her 50+ feature-length and  short documentary, fiction, and essay films,  as well as multimedia installations, have been  exhibited extensively around the world. Saab  died in Paris in 2019. 


JON-SESRIE GOFF^   

Jon-Sesrie Goff is a multidisciplinary artist,  filmmaker, curator, and cultural strategist  whose work bridges narrative, infrastructure,  and justice. A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow  and 2015 Princess Grace Award winner,  he is the director of the award-winning  documentary film After Sherman (POV,  ITVS). His filmmaking practice is grounded  in archival research, oral history, and  community engagement, centering Black life  and cultural memory as acts of resistance  and reimagination. In his role as a Program  Officer at the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms  initiative, Jon makes grants globally in  documentary film, emerging media, and visual  storytelling– his portfolio supports artist centered infrastructure, equitable distribution  networks, and transnational partnerships that  build cultural power and deepen narrative  sovereignty. At Ford, he also served as co-chair of the African-American subgroup for the  Foundation’s Racial Justice Working Group. A practicing artist and field-builder, Jon  contributes to cross-sector initiatives focused  on narrative equity, AI ethics, global media  infrastructure, and the future of public interest media. His leadership roles include  Executive Director of the Flaherty Film  Seminar and serving as the inaugural Museum  Specialist for Film at the Smithsonian’s  National Museum of African American History  and Culture. Jon attended Morehouse College  and The New School and holds an MFA in  Experimental and Documentary Arts from  Duke University. He mentors emerging socially  conscious artists and storytellers and has  taught film production, photography, and  media studies at Duke, Villanova, and West  Chester University.


KARRABING COLLECTIVE 

The Karrabing Film Collective is a grassroots Indigenous-based media group. Filmmaking provides a means of self-organization and social analysis for the Karrabing. Screenings  and publications allow the Karrabing to  develop local artistic languages and forms and allow audiences to understand new forms of  collective Indigenous agency. Their medium is  a form of survivance – a refusal to relinquish  their country and a means of investigating  contemporary social conditions of inequality. The films represent their lives, create bonds  with their land, and intervene in global images of Indigeneity. 


LARISSA SANSOUR** 

Born in East Jerusalem, Sansour (PS/DK)  studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London and  New York. In 2019, she represented Denmark  at the 58th Venice Biennale. Recent solo  exhibitions include Amos Rex in Helsinki and  Göteborgs Konsthall in Gothenburg. In the  autumn of 2025, Charlottenborg Kunsthal in  Copenhagen will be hosting a retrospective  featuring a new installation. Sansour is  currently working on two new film projects, a  short film commission for the Wereldmuseum  in Amsterdam and her first feature film, In  Memory of Times to Come. She lives and  works in London.


LIANI GREAVES^ 

Liani Greaves is an independent producer,  strategy consultant and professional coach.  She is currently the Vice-President of William  Greaves Productions. Her work in film began  in the mid-90s on Columbia Pictures’, I Like  it Like That and as the Assistant to Director  Jeff Pollack on New Line Cinema’s Above The  Rim. She went on to manage production on  several music videos, eventually joining Big  Dog Films as Director’s Representative to  Hype Williams and brokering music videos for  artists including Notorious B.I.G and Brandy.  Liani entered the non-profit world in the late  90’s as the Manager of Entertainment for the  AIDS Walks and AIDS Dance-a-thons around  the country. She built a respected producing  practice and conceived and produced several  successful fundraising campaigns and events,  including Art, Rhymes & Life: Draw the Line  on HIV; A Woman’s Work, a fundraising  benefit for Women’s Prison Association; and  You Rock My Soul, a fundraising concert at  Carnegie Hall for GMHC. In 2005, she had the  honor of working alongside her grandfather  William Greaves and actor Steve Buscemi  on the feature film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm:  Take 2½, the follow-up to Greaves’s critically  acclaimed Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 1.


LOUIS MASSIAH^ 

Louis Massiah is a documentary filmmaker  and the founder of the Scribe Video Center in  Philadelphia, a media arts center that provides  production workshops to community groups  and emerging media makers. Massiah has  presented at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar  and has been a co-programmer and board  member.


LOUISE ARCHAMBAULT GREAVES

Louise Archambault Greaves was President  of William Greaves Productions Inc., the  NYC-based film production and distribution  company she founded with her husband in  1963 and ran for sixty years, until her passing  in 2023. Louise managed the logistics and  finances of their productions, and handled  the distribution of their films, filling orders  for 16mm prints, then VHS cassettes, then  DVDs, up until a few weeks before her death.  She appeared on-screen in three of their films,  Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (alongside  Shannon Baker, who had first introduced  her to Bill), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take  2 ½ (again with Shannon Baker), and Still a  Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class.  In 2018, Louise oversaw IndieCollect’s 4K  restoration of the never-before-released  80-minute version of Nationtime. The only  film made about the National Black Political  Convention of 1972, it serves as a vital link  in the history of Black Power in America.  Restorations of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm:  Take One and its 2005 sequel,  Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2½ (the latter  financed with the support of Steve Buscemi  and Steven Soderbergh), were released by The  Criterion Collection / Janus Films in 2006. In  2021, Louise made a new deal with Janus Films  to acquire another thirteen films by William  Greaves to be released in a Criterion Collection  boxed set. At the time of her death, she was  working with Criterion on restoration of the  126-minute Director’s Cut of The Fight. With  support from The Film Foundation, this project  is being completed in collaboration with the  New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center  for Research in Black Culture, which holds part  of the William & Louise Greaves archive and  unique motion picture and sound elements. 


MADISON BUCHANAN | APPALSHOP** 

“My name is Madison Buchanan. I grew up  in Central Appalachia, in a family that knew  poverty extremely well. To date, I have lived  in 33 different places throughout my life in places ranging from apartments and trailers  to motels and campgrounds. My experiences  with homelessness and watching my parents  desperately struggle to keep me warm and  fed have led me to dedicate much of my work  to helping people in similar situations to mine.  I am a documentary filmmaker who is very  passionate about uplifting and amplifying  the voices of my community. Specifically, I  work to highlight the experiences of people  who struggle with poverty, homelessness,  addiction, incarceration, and other compounding traumas. These are systems and  obstacles that I have known deeply throughout  my life and an experience I strive to humanize.  It is only through lifting up those who are  suffering that we can create meaningful  change.” 


MARIA ESTELA PAISO^** 

Born in Quezon City, the Philippines in 1997,  the filmmaker graduated with a degree in  communication arts in 2016 and has since  worked in post-production. After several  music videos and visual experiments, she  made It’s Raining Frogs Outside (2021), her  debut film as a director selected at Berlinale. In  her free time, she works to perfect her karaoke  skills. Her short Nightbirds, co-directed with  Ashok Vish, is part of the Philippines Factory (2024) project by Directors’ Fortnight.  


MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister  and civil rights activist who had a seismic  impact on race relations in the United States,  beginning in the mid-1950s. Among his  many efforts, King headed the Southern  Christian Leadership Conference. Through  his nonviolent activism and inspirational  speeches, he played a pivotal role in ending  legal segregation of Black Americans as well  as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964  and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King won  the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several  other honors. Assassinated by James Earl  Ray, King died on April 4, 1968, at age 39. He  continues to be remembered as one of the  most influential and inspirational Black leaders  in history.


MAXIME JEAN-BAPTISTE 

Maxime Jean-Baptiste is a filmmaker based  between Brussels and Paris. His audiovisual  and performance work is focused on archives  and forms of reenactment as a perspective to  conceive a vivid and embodied memory. 


MERIEM BENNANI** 

Meriem Bennani is a New York-based artist  from Rabat, Morocco, whose work spans  video, sculpture, installation, digital media  and drawing. Mixing multiple media, genres  and aesthetic references, she develops highly  original approaches to storytelling through  magical realism and humour. Her works  explore the intersection of globalised popular culture with the vernacular and traditional  representation of Moroccan culture and  history. They comment on contemporary  society, identities in transition, geopolitics  and the ubiquity of digital technologies.  


MIRYAM CHARLES 

From Haitian descent, Miryam Charles is a  director, producer and cinematographer living  in Montreal. She has produced several short  and feature films and directed several short  films. Her films have been presented in various  festivals in Quebec and internationally. She  has just completed the direction of her first  feature film This House. Her work explores  themes related to exile and the legacies of  colonization.


OMAR AMIRALAY 

Omar Amiralay, (born 1944 in Damascus,  Syria; died 5 February 2011) is considered  one of the leading documentarists in the Arab  world. After studying at the Paris film school  La fémis, he returned to Syria in 1970, where  he made, among others, documentaries  about the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates, the  screenings of which were banned because  of criticism of the corrupt state apparatus in  Syria. In 1976, he won the Interfilm Award – Otto Dibelius Film Award at the International  Forum of Young Cinema for Al hayatt al  yawmiyah fi quariah suriyah (Everyday Life in a  Syrian Village). Omar Amiralay was a Guest Artist at the  2009 Seminar, alongside Kamal Aljafari,  Kasim Abid, Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing Taylor, Juan Manuel Echavarria, Jeanne C.  Finley, Amar Kanwar, Beryl Korot, John Muse,  Abderrahmane Sissako, Chick Strand, and  Pawel Wojtasik (among others). 


OTOLITH GROUP 

The Otolith Group was founded in London  by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in  2002. They are interdisciplinary artists  working internationally for over two decades  with a pluralistic body of forms including  installation, publication, performance,  photography, and video. Their practice  observes methods of research that manifest  as distinct cosmogonies that see and listen  across media. Sounds, texts, and images  emerge in dialogue with the cultural worlds  and communities of the global majority who  form the continents and countries of the  global south and its diasporas. Their research  emerges through collaborations, friendships,  and affinities with the living and the dead;  artists, theorists, philosophers, poets and composers, performers, cooks and organisers.   The Otolith Group’s work has been exhibited  internationally and this site is an archive of  their past, current and future work. The Otolith Group were Guest Artists at the  2013 Seminar, History is What is Happening, programmed by Pablo de Ocampo. Their work  was also shown in the 2022 FNYC Opacity  Spirals program curated by Janaína Oliveira   and Inney Prakash. 


SARA GOMEZ 

A true cinematic revolutionary who used  the camera as her tool in the fight against  oppression in all forms, the Afro-Cuban  filmmaker Sara Gómez brought the stories  of ordinary Cubans to the screen with a  bracing immediacy and insight. Drawing  on her background in ethnography, Gómez  became her country’s first woman director,  exploring issues of class, race, labor, women’s  health, and Afro-Cuban culture in a string of  intimate, illuminating shorts that revealed the  complex realities of life in a postrevolutionary  society rocked by seismic change. Though  she directed only one feature—the formally  innovative landmark of radical feminist cinema  One Way of Another—before her death from  an asthma attack at age thirty-one, Gómez  left behind a vital legacy as a pioneer whose  work continues to offer lessons in what a truly  engaged, decolonial counter-cinema can be.  —CRITERION  


SOFÍA GALLISÁ MURIENTE** 

Sofía Gallisá Muriente is an artist whose  research-based practice resists colonial  erasures and claims the freedom of  historical agency, proposing mechanisms  for remembering and reimagining. Her  work deepens the subjectivity of historical  narratives and contests dominant visual  culture through multiple approaches to  documentation. She employs text, image and  archive as medium and subject, exploring  their poetic and political implications. Sofía  has been a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute,  Cisneros Institute at MoMA, Puerto Rican Arts Initiative, Annenberg  Media Lab at USC and the Flaherty Seminar,  and participated in residencies with the  Vieques Historical Archive, Alice Yard  (Trinidad & Tobago), FAARA (Uruguay) and  Fonderie Darling (Montreal), among others.  She has exhibited in Documenta, Museum  of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Queens  Museum, Savvy Contemporary, Museo de  Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, and  galleries like Km 0.2 and Embajada. From  2014 to 2020, she co-directed the artist-run  organization Beta-Local. In 2023 she was  awarded the Latinx Artist Fellowship. Sofía  was a Guest Artists at the 2022 Flaherty  Film Seminar, Continents of Drifting Clouds,  programmed by Sky Hopinka and Almudena  Escobar Lopez. 


SUDANESE FILM GROUP 

In the late 70s and early 80s, a group of  filmmakers who were then working in  the Ministry of Culture’s film department  published the magazine Cinema. In April 1989,  Suliman Elnour, Eltayeb Mahdi, and Ibrahim  Shaddad founded the Sudanese Film Group  (SFG) in order to operate more independently  from the state. Their goal was to be involved in  all aspects of film production, exhibition, and  teaching, and to maintain Sudanese people’s  passion for cinema. The Sudanese military  coup of June 30, 1989 ended all cultural  endeavors, and civil society organizations were  banned. But in 2005, the state’s tight grip was  loosened and the SFG was able to re-register.  The Berlin-based Arsenal—Institute for Film  and Video Art digitally restored works by these  Sudanese filmmakers in 2018. The Sudanese Film Group were Guest Artists  at the 2021 Flaherty Film Seminar, Opacity,  programmed by Janaína Oliveira. 


TIM, RIO | B MEDIA COLLECTIVE** 

Tim and Rio are part of the B Media Collective,  and produced Occupy Portland Eviction  Defense (B Media Collective, 2011). 


TONY BUBA^** 

Tony Buba made Voices from a Steeltown  (1983) in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Tony and  his production company, Braddock Films,  represent a singular commitment to the  communities of Braddock and Pittsburgh. An  active independent filmmaker and lifelong  resident of Braddock, Buba produced films  since 1974 and is responsible for telling the  world about the deindustrialization of the  Monongahela River Valley. Voices from a  Steeltown followed his short film series The  Braddock Chronicles. The Independent Spirit  Awards nominated his film Lightning Over  Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy (1988) for  Best First Feature. His other titles include  Struggles in Steel: A Story of African American  Steelworkers (1996) and We are Alive: The  Fight to Save Braddock Hospital (2013).  In addition to the many films produced  by Braddock Films, Buba has worked on  industrials, commercials, documentaries,  and features. Early in his career he played a  motorcycle raider in the cult classic Dawn of  the Dead (1978). 


VICTOR JARA COLLECTIVE** 

Guyana’s Victor Jara Collective may have  produced just two films, yet as an example of  a politically committed and formally radical  approach to documentary filmmaking, their  intervention remains unique in the relatively  short history of indigenous Caribbean cinema  production. Named in honour of the Chilean  musician and dissident Victor Jara, the  collective was influenced by the New Latin  American and Third Cinema movements as  well as the theories of Soviet montage and  the European avant-garde. The collective— born out of a Marxist study group at Cornell  University—aimed to create work that explored  Guyana’s own political, social and economic  struggles as a newly postcolonial nation.


WILLIAM GREAVES 

Director, producer, actor and writer William  Greaves began his career as a featured actor  on Broadway and in motion pictures. His work  behind the camera has earned him over 70  international film festival awards including an  Emmy and four Emmy nominations. In 1980  he was inducted into the Black Filmmakers  Hall of Fame, and in the same year he was the  recipient of a special homage at the first Black  American Independent Film Festival in Paris.  In 1986, he received an Indy — the special Life  Achievement Award — from the Association  of Independent Video and Filmmakers. He was  honored by the National Black Theater and  Film Festival with its first award for Lifelong  Achievement in Film and for Contributions  to Black Theater. For two years, he served  as executive producer and co-host of the  pioneering network television series Black  Journal, for which he was awarded an Emmy.  Among his outstanding documentary films are  From These Roots (1974), an in-depth study  of the Harlem Renaissance which has won  over 20 film festival awards and has become  a classic in African American history studies,  and Ida B. Wells: A Passion For Justice (1989),  which has won 19 film festival awards and was  nominated for a 1990 NAACP Image Award.  Greaves also served as Executive Producer  of Universal Pictures Bustin’ Loose (1981),  starring Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson, and  produced, wrote and directed the feature  films Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One  (1968); The Marijuana Affair (1975); and The  Fighters (1974), starring Muhammad Ali and  Joe Frazier. Retrospectives of William Greaves  work have been held at the Museum of Modern  Art and the Brooklyn Museum in New York.  A long-time member of The Actors Studio in  New York, William Greaves was honored by  the Studio in 1980 as a recipient of its first  Dusa award. From 1969 to 1982, he taught  acting for film and television for the late Lee  Strasberg at the Strasberg Theatre Institute  in New York, and on occasion, substituted  for Mr. Strasberg as moderator of the Actors  Studio sessions. He later was a member of the  Studio’s board of directors. Greaves was a life long student of Yoga and Eastern Philosophy,  and this practice was foundational to all of  his work and his philosophy of filmmaking as a mission. Greaves passed at the age of 87 at his  home in Manhattan on August 25, 2014.