The visual identity for this year’s Seminar is deeply inspired by the work of Bill Brand, whose colorful public artwork MASSTRANSISCOPE embodies the spirit of movement, transition, and collective experience — ideas that are at the core of this year’s theme, Onward! As Art Director, Maliyamungu Muhande led the creative vision, drawing from Brand’s dynamic use of motion and form to shape the seminar’s visual identity. Zīle Liepins, as Designer, translated this inspiration into a striking design that reflects Flaherty’s evolving conversations, layered histories, and commitment to radical cinema.
More details on this creative process and Flaherty’s collaboration with Bill Brand will be shared soon.
ONWARD!
70th Flaherty Film Seminar
June 26–29, 2025
NYC and Global Pods
We hope you will join us for a special 70th edition of the Flaherty Film Seminar, June 26 - 29, 2025.
Offering an immersive program of screenings and carefully moderated conversations, the Seminar is an internationally recognized forum for field-building collective inquiry into the form and function of non-fiction cinema, encouraging the exchange of cinematic ideas across generations and cultures, and promoting the expansion of the limits of cinema itself.
Programs will be held in New York City, at select Global Pods, and online.
The Flaherty upholds a tradition of non-preconception. The film programs are not announced in advance, but the schedule and participation details are available below.
William Greaves discussing Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One at the 1991 Seminar, programmed by Stephen Gallagher & Coco Fusco.
““The Flaherty does, in fact, have one enduring feature: argument.
Everyone seems to disagree about what The Flaherty was, is, or should be. These debates are never resolved, always opening up ideas and films to a yet to be imagined future. In the end, contentious, pitched arguments with like-minded people about cinema, politics, and art keep The Flaherty convulsing, vibrating, and pulsing with life. Never cemented to its legacies, never inert, The Flaherty can never be defined only by its history because, as Erik Barnouw declared, it has only one goal: ONWARD.””
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In moments of great upheaval, can cinema provide fuel for a radical paradigm shift? What cultural momentum does the cinema offer us today? The very acts of making and watching non-fiction films are rooted deep in legacies of solidarity and resistance. How does this moment call on us to nourish those legacies and forge our own?
Onward! is a call to move through obstacles with collective action. Onward! is the call of the artist, the activist, the doula, the hopeful, the grieving - the people in the midst of painful transition. Onward! is animated both by the urgency of change, and the patience to know that liberation must come, will come. Onward! embraces the battlefield as the terrain of greater possibility. Freedom is an ongoing state of insistence that is carried forward in each act of making, questioning, resisting, remembering. Onward! is to stay the course and trust in the process of change.
Movement is not solitary. Onward! calls for collectivity, for curiosity, for entanglement, for hope, for solidarity across generations. Onward! is propelled by calls from the past, which too believed in the potency of the moment, and of all moments yet to come. Onward! celebrates coexisting and futurities.
Onward! is the irresistibility of resistance.
Frances Flaherty and Seminar participants at Arden House
Our format in 2025 — four days, five public programs — allows many more people to be present. An additional five programs, curated collaboratively with the seminar programmers alongside Jemma Desai, will be shared with the intensive Fellowship program, which runs concurrently June 25-29th.
The mini-seminar format echoes the Arden House Seminars that took place from 1971-1981, in direct response to President Nixon's request that “all funds for public broadcasting be cut immediately.” We are inspired by the creative coalescence of that moment, and wish to channel its' perseverance, organizing, and ingenuity into the present times.
Thank you to all the Elders and advisors who contributed their stories and ideas to our 70th Seminar design: Sally Berger, Bill Brand, John Bruce, Patti Bruck, Pablo de Ocampo, Jemma Desai, Jon Gartenberg, Jon-Sesrie Goff, Carlos Gutiérrez, Ed Halter, Richard Herskowitz, Steve Holmgren, Jason Livingston, Scott MacDonald, Louis Massiah, Janaína Oliveira, and Lynne Sachs, and, of course, (RIP) Patty Zimmermann.
Programmers
The program will be curated collaboratively by past seminar programmers Janaína Oliveira (2021), Carlos Gutiérrez (2007), and Richard Herskowitz (1987, 1990, 1999 & 2004).
Janaína Oliveira
Janaína 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.
Janaína progreammed the 2021 Seminar Opacity.
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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.
Richard Herskowitz
Richard 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 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.
He has been a Seminar programmer multiple times (1987 – Wells College, 1990 – Riga, 1999 – Duke University, with Orlando Bagwell) and president of the board of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar as well as chair of its 50th Anniversary Committee.
Carlos A. Gutiérrez
Carlos 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.
How to join us
The Seminar in
New York City
The Seminar will open in New York City on June 26 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), with the following days hosted at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium (June 27-28) and Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film (June 29). Global Pods will run on the same days as the Seminar in New York City.
Global Pods
The Seminar will take place simultaneously in Global Pods in Salaya — Thailand, New Delhi — India, Warsaw — Poland, Porto & Lisbon — Portugal, Bogotá — Colombia, Toronto — Canada, and Los Angeles — USA. Each Pod will have its own registration rates and structure, designed in collaboration with our Pod partners.
In addition to the official Seminar Pods, a series of smaller scale, self organized Gatherings will take place worldwide. Details coming soon.
Online Experience
Connect with a global community online. The online experience is a mix of synchronous and asynchronous events launching June 26 and available through July 31.
Group screenings and facilitated discussions will be scheduled at varying times to accommodate a global audience. Enjoy a curated list of resources, and access film programs online during and after the Seminar.
In-person discussions held in NYC and Pods will not be live-streamed. Some films may not be available online due to artist permissions and streaming rights.
Fellowships
The Flaherty offers a limited number of funded in-person and online Seminar Fellowships each year.
Jemma Desai will contribute programming to the 2025 Flaherty Fellowship program, which will run parallel to the seminar.
Thank You to Our Partners
We believe in the vital support of public funders! The Flaherty’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. They are also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Strategic counsel on interaction strategy and design provided by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation.
Global Pod Partners
Fellowship Partners
