The 70th Flaherty Film Seminar

Thursday, June 26 – Sunday, June 29, 2025
New York City, with Global Pods and an Online Experience

This year’s Seminar will gather participants for four days in New York City, alongside a series of Global Pods and an Online Experience. To commemorate The Flaherty's 70th anniversary, the program will be curated collaboratively by past seminar programmers Janaína Oliveira (OPACITY, 2021), Carlos A. Gutiérrez (SOUTH OF THE OTHER, 2007, with Mahen Bonetti), and Richard Herskowitz (1987 Seminar, 1999 Seminar with Orlando Bagwell, and chair of the Flaherty's 50th Anniversary Committee). Venue details will be announced in March, alongside registration opening.

Jemma Desai will contribute programming to the 2025 Flaherty Fellowship program, which will run parallel to the seminar, June 25th - June 29th, convening in person at Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film and online. A few sponsored fellowship spots are still available: if you or your institution would like to sponsor a fellowship, please see below.

Our past inspires our future. As The Flaherty enters our seventh decade, we will take stock of what the seminar has been and what it is becoming. Change is a constant in the seminar’s history. Our archive is a rich record of responsiveness to the present moment, and a long root system of intertwined influences and ideas. Our work now is to set course for the decades ahead — to continue to encourage curiosity, as both a catalyst and a crucible for cinema and conversations that help us chart ways into uncertain futures.

We are eager to share the 70th seminar experience with you, wherever you may be. Whether you join us in NYC or in Pods around the globe, we invite you to join us! 

Registration and Fellowship Applications open in March.

70th Seminar Programming Committee

Janaína Oliveira is a film scholar and curator. Professor at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ) and consultant for JustFilms - Ford Foundation, she has a PhD in History and was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Center for African Studies at Howard University. Since 2009, she has been developing research and curating film programs, mainly focusing on Black and African Cinemas, as well as working as a consultant, jury member, and lecturer at various film festivals and institutions in Brazil and abroad. In 2019, she organized the exhibition “Soul in the Eye: Zózimo Bulbul's Legacy and the Contemporary Black Brazilian Cinema” at the IFFR - International Film Festival Rotterdam. She was also a consultant for films from Africa and the Black Diaspora for the Locarno International Film Festival (2019-2020). She is the founder of the Black Cinema Itinerant Forum (FICINE) and programmed the Flaherty Film Seminar in 2021, OPACITY, and the Encontro de Cinema Negro Zózimo Bulbul from 2017 to 2021.  Besides participating in other curatorial initiatives, currently she is part of the BlackStar Film Festival curatorial team as the documentary feature film section Chair, member of Fespaco's  Selection Committee, as well as from the advisory board of Doc's Kingdom (Portugal) and the curatorial board of Criterion Channel (USA). In 2025, she will be a postdoctoral fellow at the NYU Film Department.  Samples of her work can be found here. 

Carlos A. Gutiérrez is the co-founding executive director of Cinema Tropical, the leading U.S. promoter of Latin American cinema since 2001. He has curated series for institutions, including MoMA, Film at Lincoln Center, and the Flaherty Seminar. He is the artistic director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Latin Wave festival, co-director of Cinema Tucsón. A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a Film Forum board member, Gutiérrez has served as a juror and panelist for renowned festivals and funds including IDFA, Tribeca, DocLisboa, Mar del Plata, Morelia, and the Sundance Documentary Fund. With Mahen Bonetti, Carlos co-programmed the 2007 Seminar, SOUTH OF THE OTHER.

Richard Herskowitz is a media arts curator and administrator who has served as director of Cornell Cinema, the Ashland Independent Film Festival, Virginia Film Festival, and Houston Cinema Arts Festival. He has been a programmer multiple times (1987 at Wells College, 1990 in Riga, 1999 at Duke) and president of the board of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar as well as chair of its 50th Anniversary Committee. He has taught film studies and curated media art exhibitions for museums at U.Va., Cornell, and the University of Oregon, and has written extensively on film and other cultural subjects. Richard programmed the 1987 Seminar, the 1999 Seminar with Orlando Bagwell, and was the chair of the Flaherty's 50th Anniversary Committee in 2004.

Thank you to all our partners: Ford Foundation, NYSCA, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, DCTV, William H. Donner Family Foundation, Wave Farm MAAF for Organizations, and more to be announced soon!